Reviews

The his­to­ry of Smocza, a Jew­ish Street in War­saw, is not the sto­ry of the world-renowned fig­ures, but rather of every per­son who ever lived or died there, includ­ing those who are lost to our col­lec­tive memory.

Jun 07, 2020

These sto­ries take place in Israeli cities, towns, and vil­lages, in the post-war Sovi­et Union, and in Poland of the inter­war peri­od. How­ev­er, it is often very dif­fi­cult to tell where the sto­ries actu­al­ly take place, because they express an expe­ri­ence of dis­lo­ca­tion and total disorientation.

May 20, 2020

In new trans­la­tions by Daniel Kennedy, Hersh Dovid Nomberg’s War­saw Sto­ries (White Goat Press) and Zal­man Shneour’s A Death: Notes of a Sui­cide (Wake­field Press) can right­ful­ly be labeled ​“clas­sic”; they reach across time and space to name an eter­nal — and unro­man­tic — facet of human experience.

Apr 29, 2020

Rachel Ertel has been one of the most pro­lif­ic trans­la­tors from Yid­dish to French. In Mémoire du yid­dish: Trans­met­tre une langue assas­s­inée [A Mem­o­ry of Yid­dish: Trans­mit­ting an Assas­si­nat­ed Lan­guage], an inter­view with the French jour­nal­ist Stéphane Bou pub­lished as a book in 2019, Rachel Ertel, who was born in July 1939, looks back chrono­log­i­cal­ly on her life’s journey.

Feb 06, 2020

In her work on images of the Low­er East Side, Blair spot­lights the para­dox­es of the neigh­bor­hood’s dynam­ic sta­tus as site of mem­o­ry and of artis­tic exper­i­men­ta­tion and high­lights sto­ries and voic­es often left out of Amer­i­can col­lec­tive memory.

Dec 09, 2019

The Rise of the Mod­ern Yid­dish Stage is a mon­u­men­tal work that tells the sto­ry of Avrom Gold­faden, Yid­dish the­ater’s most cen­tral, con­found­ing, and enig­mat­ic fig­ure while also sit­u­at­ing it in the con­text of Yid­dish theater’s ini­tial development. 

Nov 25, 2019

Kre­mer reviews two new vol­umes deal­ing with Yid­dish poet­ry, both pub­lished in Poland in 2018, which focus on the work of women poets. 

Nov 17, 2019

In this ground­break­ing study, Lachs draws upon often ignored doc­u­ments of pop­u­lar cul­ture (con­ven­tion­al­ly writ­ten off as shund by her pre­de­ces­sors) in order to paint a vivid pic­ture of work­ing class immi­grant Lon­don at the turn of the 20^th century.

Nov 04, 2019

Sienna’s book attempts to set the record straight (as it were) by bring­ing togeth­er and deeply anno­tat­ing 120 diverse Jew­ish texts that each shed some light on Jew­ish LGBTQ lives, Jew­ish his­to­ries of same-sex eroti­cism, and Jew­ish expe­ri­ences of gen­der transgression.

Oct 28, 2019

Oct 24, 2019