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

Review of Sutzkever Essential Prose, translated by Zackary Sholem Berger

Halff offers a spe­cif­ic and detailed cri­tique of the trans­la­tion, while also acknowl­edg­ing that in this book, filled with Sutzkever’s metaphors, imagery, and motifs, won­ders await.”

Review

New Resources for Studying Jewish Women's Lives in Early Modern Europe

Two new pub­li­ca­tions offer rich and engag­ing mate­r­i­al for the fur­ther explo­ration of Jew­ish life in ear­ly mod­ern Europe.

Review

Review of Yiddish: A Biography of a Language by Jeffrey Shandler

Shandler’s biog­ra­phy can be read as a chron­i­cle of expand­ing notions of folk­stim­lekhkayt, from the old vos far a yid redt nisht ken yidish (what kind of [Ashke­nazi] Jew doesn’t speak Yid­dish) stan­dard to the Yid­dish being used and devel­oped by cohorts of non-native speakers.

Review

Review of Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature, by Miriam Udel

Review of Hon­ey on the Page: A Trea­sury of Yid­dish Children’s Lit­er­a­ture, edit­ed and trans­lat­ed by Miri­am Udel.

Review

The Place of German in the History of Jewish Nationalism: Review of German as a Jewish Problem by Marc Volovici

Ger­man as a Jew­ish Lan­guage chal­lenges the dis­tinc­tions made between Jew­ish” and non-Jew­ish” lan­guages and con­cur­rent­ly empha­sizes the per­me­abil­i­ty between dis­ci­pli­nary boundaries.

Review

Review of The Rise and Fall of Jewish American Literature by Benjamin Schreier

The Rise and Fall makes strik­ing­ly clear claims about all that is wrong with the field, from its insid­erism to its uncrit­i­cal reliance on cul­ture” and eth­nic­i­ty.”

Review

Review of Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Poetry by Adriana X. Jacobs

Jacobs (who, in addi­tion to being a schol­ar of mod­ern Hebrew lit­er­a­ture, is also an accom­plished trans­la­tor and poet) offers a rethink­ing of the mod­ern Hebrew canon as fun­da­men­tal­ly shaped by what she calls a trans­la­tion­al poetics.”

Article

The Goldenberg Variations: The International “Star System” and the Yiddish Theater of Buenos Aires in 1930

From the 1920s until the 1950s, Yid­dish Buenos Aires host­ed a thriv­ing the­atri­cal land­scape. Crit­ics com­plained that the pub­lic’s ado­ra­tion of stars” pro­pelled a pre­pon­der­ance of shund at the expense of bet­ter” (lit­er­ary) plays.

Article

On Yiddish Nuances: Yiddishkayt as Listening Key in the Music of Osvaldo Golijov

This paper approach­es Osval­do Golijov’s music from the inter­sec­tion of musi­col­o­gy and Yid­dish studies.

Article

Musical Comedy as Compromise Formation: Judío and Judía (1926), by Ivo Pelay

Ivo Pelay’s 1926 plays Judío and Judía, Jew” and Jew­ess,” the­ma­tize anx­i­ety not only about the Argen­tine­ity of Jews, but also about the Jew­ish­ness of Argenti­na: the promise of assim­i­la­tion and the threat of subversion.

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