Reviews

As Women on the Yiddish Stage makes clear, women were not peripheral figures but central players in the making of Yiddish cultural life. Their stories, whether told through archival fragments, recovered memoirs, or close readings of performance, call for a more inclusive and accurate understanding—one in which actresses are not merely remembered for their presence onstage, but recognized for their lasting cultural impact.

Jun 30, 2025

These three wriers with lives unfolding in three different localities—Tsarist Russia, Poland, and the US—wrote plays that grapple with issues —such as the tragic fate of the agune (“chained wife”), motherhood, self-realization, sex work, financial independence, and reproductive autonomy— that unfortunately are still urgent a century later.

Jul 09, 2024

This is the first book-length collection of Gorshman’s work to be translated into English, with only a handful of stories elsewhere.

Feb 19, 2024

The women in A Provincial Newspaper and Other Stories are complex, multifaceted characters, and they do not uniformly fixate on love.

Feb 12, 2024

Schachter calls us to think beyond the androcentric, to imagine and create an understanding of modern Jewish literature that places women at its center.

Feb 02, 2022

Murphy’s translations of Perl’s stories allow us to appreciate an ever more colorful canvas of modern Yiddish literature.

Feb 28, 2021

Oct 11, 2020

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

Oct 06, 2019

Jun 24, 2019