Reviews
Review
Review of A Permanent Beginning: R. Nachman of Braslav and Jewish Literary Modernity by Yitzhak Lewis
Yitzhak Lewis shows how Reb Nachman initiated a new era of Jewish literature that shaped nineteenth- and twentieth-century Yiddish and Hebrew writing.
Mar 30, 2021
Review
Review of Jewish American Writing and World Literature: Maybe to Millions, Maybe to Nobody by Saul Noam Zaritt
Replete with insightful close readings of key historical and literary texts, Jewish American Writing and World Literature complicates the limiting binary of the national/transnational models.
Mar 15, 2021
Review
Sewn with the Tiniest of Pearls
Murphy’s translations of Perl’s stories allow us to appreciate an ever more colorful canvas of modern Yiddish literature.
Feb 28, 2021
Review
Transformation or Distortion? Anthologizing Yiddish in a Postvernacular Age
How Yiddish Changed America and America Changed Yiddish is a highly enjoyable collection assembled with undisguised love for Yiddish culture, which at the same time reflects that culture’s remarkable vitality and variety.
Jan 12, 2021
Review
Review of Der Nister’s Soviet Years: Yiddish Writer as Witness to the People by Mikhail Krutikov.
Krutikov’s philological skillset and meticulous archival research shine throughout this book, a landmark study of both Der Nister and Yiddish literature under Stalin.
Jan 12, 2021
Review
Review of Ariel Mayse's Speaking Infinities
In his recent meticulously-researched and sensitively-written work, Ariel Evan Mayse brings to the attention of the contemporary reader a remarkable theology of language to be found in the teachings of Dov Ber Friedman, the Maggid of Mezritsh (1704-1772).
Oct 28, 2020
Review
A Yiddish Studies to Come: In Conversation with Adam Zachary Newton’s Jewish Studies as Counterlife
Newton’s book provides a stirring call for a Jewish Studies to come, a proposal for new forms of affiliation, both within the loose boundaries of Jewish Studies and extending outward to the whole of the Humanities and to the university as an institution. What might it mean for Yiddish Studies to participate in this coming community?
Oct 05, 2020
Review
Review of: Benny Mer, Smocza: A Biography of a Jewish Street in Warsaw
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
Review
Review of Seeds in the Desert by Mendel Mann, translated and with an introduction by Heather Valencia
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