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.
Review
“To what might the yard have been compared?”
“Ach, the things a poor tailor has lived to see! We live in times when the coats go around making themselves.” A review of a recent translation of Kulbak’s Zelmenyaner.
Oct 11, 2015
Review
“The Worst Good Idea Ever”? The Birobidzhan Project and Soviet Jewish Culture
Masha Gessen’s new book explores the history of the Jewish Autonomous Region of Birobidzhan through the story of David Bergelson and Simon Dubnow, whose thought and writing influenced its development.
Jun 26, 2017
Review
Judgment
In time for the one hundredth anniversary of the October revolution, Dovid Bergelson’s novel Mides-hadin is out in a new translation by Harriet Murav and Sasha Senderovich.
Nov 07, 2017
Review
How to be Both: Officials and Artists Vying for the Limelight
Mayhill Fowler’s book shines light on the blind spots of national cultural histories of turn of the century Ukraine, following the often uneasy interface between authorities and art institutions.
Mar 26, 2018
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
Sisyphus: A Review of Harriet Murav's David Bergelson’s Strange New World: Untimeliness and Futurity
With this monumental study, Harriet Murav provides the first comprehensive literary biography of Bergelson and a rich intercultural contextualization of the Yiddish writer’s work
Dec 08, 2021
Article
‘Brother Jews of the Entire World!’ Bergelson, Hofshteyn, and Soviet-Yiddish in the Worldwide Jewish Family
This article looks at the wartime artistic and journalistic output of Dovid Bergelson and Dovid Hofshteyn to see how these writers appropriated Soviet terminology to paint Soviet Jews as the elder brothers in a worldwide Jewish family.
Nov 01, 2022
Review
Review of Sasha Senderovich's How the Soviet Jew Was Made
In this recently-published study, Senderovich challenges this fixed notion of the Soviet Jew, and recounts a complex prehistory of the Soviet Jew in the immediate context of interwar Soviet culture.
Feb 27, 2023