Articles

Essays and peer-reviewed scholarship in Yiddish Studies, an interdisciplinary field that engages all aspects of Yiddish cultural production, especially in its relationship to other cultures and languages.

Click here for a separate listing of open-access, peer-reviewed articles.

Review

Sisyphus: A Review of Harriet Murav's David Bergelson’s Strange New World: Untimeliness and Futurity

With this mon­u­men­tal study, Har­ri­et Murav pro­vides the first com­pre­hen­sive lit­er­ary biog­ra­phy of Bergel­son and a rich inter­cul­tur­al con­tex­tu­al­iza­tion of the Yid­dish writer’s work

Review

Review of Childe Harold of Dysna by Moyshe Kulbak, translated by Robert Adler Peckerar

Moyshe Kulbak’s Childe Harold of Dys­na—a nov­el in verse that is inspired by Lord Byron and dra­ma­tizes the char­ac­ter of the Jew­ish fla­neur — charms, delights, and brings a gen­tle sorrow.

Article

Walking with Vogel: New Perspectives on Debora Vogel

This spe­cial issue invites you to walk with Deb­o­ra Vogel as she maps the spaces of Jew­ish life through avant-garde forms. We bring togeth­er new per­spec­tives on Vogel through poet­ry, visu­al art, trans­la­tion, and schol­ar­ship, all in an attempt to fol­low the many lines of cre­ative and crit­i­cal inquiry that emerge from Vogel’s work.

Click here for a pdf of this article.

Article

Reading as the Shaping Force of Life: Debora Vogel’s Contributions to Education

The writer and edu­ca­tor Deb­o­ra Vogel con­tend­ed with ques­tions raised by avant-garde art in the 1920s and 1930s and, through­out her writ­ings, repeat­ed the fol­low­ing ques­tion as a leit­mo­tiv: What does life” mean and which forms does it assume? This arti­cle con­sid­ers how Vogel engaged with these ques­tions about form in var­i­ous essays and in her edu­ca­tion­al work at the Jew­ish orphan­age at Zborows­ka 8 in Lwów.

Review

Surreptitious Desires and Fantasy Worlds: Review of Golan Y. Moskowitz's Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context

In Golan Y. Moskowitz’s engross­ing Wild Vision­ary: Mau­rice Sendak in Queer Jew­ish Con­text, he tells of the fan­ta­sy worlds that the beloved chil­dren’s book writer and illus­tra­tor cre­at­ed over his life­time, ini­tial­ly as a form of self-preser­va­tion, a way of sur­viv­ing a world hos­tile to overt dis­plays of queer­ness and Jew­ish­ness, and even­tu­al­ly — and rebel­lious­ly — as a form of plea­sure and self-expression.

Review

Stranger in a Strange Land? A Review of Rachel Rojanski’s Yiddish in Israel

Rojanski’s work pro­vides a com­pre­hen­sive pic­ture of the events and per­son­al­i­ties that chart the his­to­ry of Yid­dish in Israel.

Review

Not Entirely Off the Derech: A Review of Ayala Fader’s Hidden Heretics

Ayala Fader’s new book ana­lyzes the dou­ble lives of hid­den heretics — and how they are forced into such a bifur­cat­ed exis­tence. It’s hard for a Yid­dishist to main­tain a neu­tral dis­tance from Hid­den Heretics, which is devot­ed to Hasidim who have almost gone com­plete­ly off the reli­gious path, but still stay inside their com­mu­ni­ties, lead­ing dou­ble or mul­ti­ple lives. 

Review

Review of Transatlantic Russian Jewishness by Gennady Estraikh

Estraikh paints a vibrant pic­ture of Yid­dish socialism’s flu­id­i­ty and its many ten­den­cies as it respond­ed to the ten­sions and trau­mas of the twen­ti­eth century.

Review

Review of Living with Hate in American Politics and Religion by Jeffrey Israel

Jef­frey Israel has writ­ten an ambi­tious, thought-pro­vok­ing, and impres­sive book about polit­i­cal love and how it can be achieved through play.

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