Reviews

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

Oct 20, 2021

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. 

Oct 17, 2021

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.

Oct 12, 2021

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

Oct 08, 2021

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.”

Jun 23, 2021

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

May 24, 2021

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.

May 21, 2021

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

May 19, 2021

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

May 18, 2021

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.”

May 09, 2021