Articles
Essays and peer-reviewed scholarship in Yiddish Studies, an interdisciplinary field that engages all aspects of Yiddish cultural production, especially in its relationship to other cultures and languages.
Click here for a separate listing of open-access, peer-reviewed articles.
Article
The Anarchist Sage/Der Goen Anarkhist: Rabbi Yankev-Meir Zalkind and Religious Genealogies of Anarchism
Anna Elena Torres
How can a political philosophy of anarchism emerge from Talmud study? Yankev Meir Zalkind, early twentieth-century Yiddishist, shows our readers how.
Feb 27, 2019
Article
Yokhed ve-tsiber: Individual Expression and Communal Responsibility in a Yiddish Droshe by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik
Ariel Evan Mayse
Scholarship on Soloveitchik’s teachings has tended to focus exclusively on his Hebrew or English works rather than his Yiddish writings, but the present essay traces Soloveitchik’s style and exploring the nuances of intellectual legacy through the lens of an important Yiddish homily, a little-studied but critical essay called “Yokhed ve-tsiber” (“The Individual and the Collective”), an undated work was first delivered as a droshe (sermon) on his father’s yortsayt.
Feb 11, 2019
Article
A Guide to the Ze’enah U-Re’enah: Correcting Some Misconceptions
Morris Faierstein
The most popular Yiddish book ever published gets its story right.
Feb 11, 2019
Article
A Linguistic Bridge Between Alienation and Intimacy: Chabad’s Theorization of Yiddish in Historical and Cultural Perspective
Eli Rubin
Yiddish has always been the oracular mainstay of Chabad’s intellectual and spiritual trajectory.
Jan 28, 2019
Article
A Narrow Path: Language and Longing for a Holy Place that is Lost
Aviv Luban
For the nascent Polish Braslev Hasidic movement, the events of 1917 and their aftermath severed the group from its Holy Place: the grave of Reb Nakhmen in what is now Uman, Ukraine. This geopolitical reality elicited a unique literary and spiritual response in the form of an impassioned prayer, penned by Reb Yitskhok Brayter (c. 1886-1942), a leader of that community.
Jan 27, 2019
Article
Man, Woman, and Serpent: Kabbalah and High Modernity in the Early Writings of Aaron Zeitlin
Nathan Wolski
This study presents a translation and analysis of Aaron Zeitlin’s 1924 essay, “Man, froy un shlang,” published in Illustrirte vokh.
Dec 25, 2018
Article
The Shtik Kabole Niger Couldn’t Digest: Poetry, Messianism, and Literatoyre in Aaron Zeitlin’s Keter
Nathan Wolski
This study presents a translation and analysis of Aaron Zeitlin’s (1898-1973) poem “Keter: Fragmenten fun a rapsodye,” published in 1923, at the height of the Warsaw expressionist explosion of the early twenties.
Nov 29, 2018
Article
Traveling and Traversing Chabad’s Literary Paths: From Likutei torah to Khayim gravitser and Beyond
Eli Rubin
This paper aims to complicate the neat chronology that bifurcates modern Jewish literature from its Hasidic roots, using Fishl Schneersohn’s novel Khayim Gravitser and Avraham Shlonsky’s Hebrew translation of the novel to demonstrate that these authors continued the Hasidic literary tradition of Chabad even as they embraced alternative literary forms in the cause of new aesthetic agendas.
Oct 09, 2018
Article
'Before the bow that was drawn': The Vilna Komitet and its documentation of the destruction of Polish Jewry, 1939–1940/41
Miriam Schulz
Translation by Joshua Price and Miriam Schulz
A translation of the introduction of Miriam Schulz’s recent book, Der Beginn des Untergangs: Die Zerstörung der jüdischen Gemeinden in Polen und das Vermächtnis des Wilnaer Komitees (“Before the bow that was drawn”: The Vilna Komitet and its documentation of the destruction of Polish Jewry).
May 14, 2018
Review
Yiddish Mass Culture in History and Practice: Eddy Portnoy's Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange But True Stories of the Yiddish Press
Ayelet Brinn
Apr 09, 2018