Apr 15, 2026
While preparing for the In geveb roundtable at the Association for Jewish Studies conference in December 2025, I combed through the journal’s entire website in search of contributions that might serve a primarily utilitarian, information-sharing function. The ten-page Word document that I generated from this survey lists dozens of articles and blog posts that possess what in librarian-speak is called “reference value.” Most of these contributions have appeared in the Pedagogy, Blog, and Reviews sections of In geveb.
Certain of the “utilitarian” resources shared by In geveb may seem self-evident by their very nature. Take, for example, these examples of “para-academic” scholarship:
Bibliographies. Among the regular features of In geveb are lists of “The Latest in Yiddish Studies”—most of them documenting current scholarship in English, with a few others covering French- and Russian-language scholarship. “The Latest Yiddish Translations” is another of the journal’s bibliographical rubrics. (Some of the Yiddish translations in the lists are into languages other than English.)
Research guides. In 2016 and 2017, I contributed a multipart guide to “Resources in Yiddish Studies,” covering a mix of print and online sources. “Resources in Yiddish Studies” retains its basic value as a gateway to primary sources and scholarship in the field, even though I haven’t updated this guide. (A complementary online guide, which does get updated, is the New York Public Library’s Yiddish Research site.)
Romanization, aka transliteration/transcription. One of the most frequent questions that Yiddish Studies authors ask librarians involves romanization standards for Yiddish—especially for citation purposes in bibliographies, footnotes, and endnotes. (Romanization is an umbrella term that librarians use for what is often referred to as transliteration and/or transcription.) Isaac L. Bleaman’s “Guidelines for Yiddish in Bibliographies: A Supplement to YIVO Transliteration” (2019) offers an essential (and flexible!) tool to address these questions.
Other informational resources in In geveb stand at a slight remove from the tools described in the preceding paragraphs. At a recent In geveb editorial board meeting, for example, Jessica Kirzane remarked that “Yiddish in ale lender! Yiddish Summer Programs Roundup” consistently ranks among the site’s top ten posts every year. This feature runs a few months in advance of summertime, offering practical information regarding the intensive Yiddish-language programs that will be offered each year. Though the annual roundups are time-bound, they’re included in my ten-page list on account of their informational value. Similarly, “Teachers Weigh In” is another useful feature that addresses the instructional concerns of professors and instructors.
Over the years, In geveb has occasionally published essays, reviews, and interviews introducing readers to archival resources. Quite recently (2025), an entire special issue was devoted to “Engagement with Yiddish Language Materials in Video Holocaust Testimony: Projects of the In geveb/Fortunoff Archive Fellowship.” Much of this issue is devoted to pedagogical applications deriving from the fellowship program (including a teaching guide, designed by Joanna Spyra), which, as the subtitle indicates, was co-sponsored by In geveb. And in January 2026 a call for submissions went out for a special issue of In geveb, “The Yiddish Archive,” scheduled for publication in the fall of 2027.
In its very first year, one of In geveb’s co-founders, Saul Noam Zaritt, published an interview with computer scientist and Yiddishist Refoyl Finkel, “Digital Futures: The Great Hope of Yiddish OCR.” Great strides have been made since then, most notably through the Yiddish Book Center’s Jochre application (designed by Assaf Urieli) and, more messily, via the Historical Jewish Press - JPress site. How accurate are these applications? What types of improvements are envisaged for them? And what is the status of optical character recognition for Yiddish cursive? This might be a good time for a sequel to the Zaritt-Finkel interview.
Looking ahead, I hope that In geveb will expand its bibliographical coverage of current Yiddish Studies scholarship. The rubric of “The Latest in Yiddish Studies” might branch out to include lists of recent German, Polish, and Hebrew scholarship on Yiddish. (Bibliographies of scholarship in French and Russian could also be updated.)
Another topic of interest concerns the field’s major digital corpora: the Yiddish Book Center, the Universal Yiddish Library (a collaborative effort involving the YBC, YIVO, the New York Public Library, and the National Library of Israel), and—especially—JPress. What criteria are employed for the inclusion of titles in these expanding digital collections? How much does it cost to digitize a newspaper run? What are the technical requirements for producing a digital repository of Yiddish-language sources? These questions (and more) might serve as the basis for conversations with key decision-makers and librarians involved in these digitization initiatives.
Hanging over us are the ramifications of artificial intelligence, whose impact on the research, writing, and teaching has exploded over the past few years. Where do we see it heading? For example, “The use of AI as a tool for access” is listed among possible topics for the forthcoming special issue on archives.
Over the course of the past several decades, we’ve observed a continuously evolving array of online Yiddish Studies discussion platforms. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Mendele email list and its spinoffs, The Mendele Review and Yiddish Theatre Forum, were very lively scholarly forums. For the past several years, Facebook has hosted several Yiddish-interest groups, such as the moderated Yiddish Research – Yidforsh group. In addition, there are niche Yiddish Studies–allied sites such as the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project. And since 2015, In geveb has established itself as not only an indispensable platform for scholarly discourse but also a repository of practical guidance for teaching and research across the field of Yiddish Studies.
