Reviews

Zaritt calls for schol­ar­ship that starts from the premise not of the fun­da­men­tal integri­ty of the lan­guage and cul­ture, but rather from the assump­tion that what we have grown used to des­ig­nat­ing by the term ​“Yid­dish” more accu­rate­ly (though one might sug­gest in Zaritt’s spir­it, nev­er ​“prop­er­ly”) names a set of con­tin­gent inter­ac­tions, and that the con­sti­tu­tion of that set, even if always incom­plete, is the task of schol­ar­ship to come.

Jan 08, 2025

Ayelet Brinn’s com­pre­hen­sive account of the gen­der dynam­ics that shaped Amer­i­can Jew­ish cul­ture dur­ing its for­ma­tive years reminds us that rev­o­lu­tions, espe­cial­ly those that have to do with gen­der, are nev­er finite or com­plete. With exquis­ite prose and nuanced analy­sis of a wide array of sources, A Rev­o­lu­tion in Type offers a time­ly and force­ful con­tri­bu­tion to the study of Jew­ish his­to­ry, cul­ture, and gender.

Dec 16, 2024

The sto­ries in this col­lec­tion are an invi­ta­tion to reex­am­ine what Israeli lit­er­a­ture is: to expand the cat­e­go­ry of Israeli lit­er­a­ture beyond just the Hebrew lan­guage and in so doing to dis­rupt expec­ta­tions about that literature.

Dec 12, 2024

A valu­able fea­ture of Avreml Broide is the chance it offers to take a deep dive into the world of twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry rad­i­cal left activism to under­stand essen­tials of the CPUSA as an Amer­i­can subculture.

Nov 20, 2024

The con­sid­er­able achieve­ments of this book include its wide rang­ing sur­vey of the rela­tion­ship between Freud and Judaism, as well as Freud and Jew­ish lan­guages, and its detailed acquain­tance with the sec­ondary lit­er­a­ture that address­es this con­nec­tion. The work brims with ref­er­ences to fig­ures of impor­tance to Jew­ish cul­ture his­to­ry that might have been con­sid­ered sec­ondary, but high­light­ed in this con­text by their rela­tion­ship to Freud, as if illu­mi­nat­ed by a dif­fer­ent light or from the side, they emerge more ful­ly, in a Freudi­an dimension.

Nov 13, 2024

The sophis­ti­cat­ed method, the humane sub­ject mat­ter, the bold inter­pre­ta­tions and the care­ful his­tor­i­cal research all make Dust of the Earth a potent mod­el for con­tem­po­rary schol­ar­ship — in Yid­dish Stud­ies and beyond. In a moment when an increas­ing num­ber of peo­ple across the globe find them­selves in a polit­i­cal and social state of hefk­eris, up for grabs and aban­doned by their allies and lead­ers, Murav shows us that lit­er­a­ture offers one small, but pow­er­ful path back to humanity.

Oct 30, 2024

Dyn­ner frames The Light of Learn­ing​’s sweep­ing his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive with a cru­cial the­o­ret­i­cal inter­ven­tion. To think about inter­war Pol­ish Hasidism is also to think about the ongo­ing con­struc­tion of mod­ern Jew­ish iden­ti­ty, and the fraught inter­sec­tions of eman­ci­pa­tion, accul­tur­a­tion, assim­i­la­tion, and colonization.

Oct 14, 2024

Oct 10, 2024

Mer­le L. Bachman’s new trans­la­tion of a selec­tion of Nevadovska’s poems, most­ly from Lid­er Mayne, pub­lished by Ben Yehu­da Press, is an event to celebrate.

Oct 09, 2024

Seam­less­ly inte­grat­ing his­tor­i­cal analy­sis and con­tex­tu­al explo­ration of the ​“Red Jews” motif with inves­ti­ga­tions into counter-his­to­ries, this work delves into lit­er­ary motifs and soci­etal dynamics.

Jul 12, 2024