Call For Submissions: Yiddish Science Fiction

“Sitting there reading the paper they heard the hum of the approaching aerotrain. They could hear the noise of the wings as the hum grew louder and closer. Then the bird-ship descended obliquely not far from them…”

— “In the Future City of Edenia,” Kalman Zingman (trans. Jordan Finkin)

“It’s better to keep in mind the Yiddish nowhere-land. One must live on this earth, true; but to be entirely earthbound is also unhealthy.”

— “Yiddish Science and the Postmodern,” Jonathan Boyarin (trans. Naomi Seidman)

Emerging in the late nineteenth century and buoyed by the “scientific romance” genre led by H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, Yiddish science fiction is a little-studied form that asks to be reconsidered. Its earliest adopters included Avner Tenenboym (1848-1913) and Mendele Moykher Seforim with their own adaptations (both actual and, for the former, imagined) of Verne’s works, followed by a sprinkling of novels in the 1920s and 1930s, and a significant platform in Sovietish Heymland in the 1970s and onwards. By the 1960s, a word for the genre had been codified: “faktazye”—a neologism of both fact and fantasy—in Uriel Weinreich’s English-Yiddish dictionary. Yiddish science fiction continues to be written and published today, from the fantastical tales of Velvl Chernin in the Birobidzhaner Shtern to the release of such works as Ethel Niborski’s Di ummeglekhe vakatsye (2014). ^{1 1} For the most recent and comprehensive English treatment of the history of Yiddish science fiction, see Stephen Cohen, “Leybl Botwinik’s Di Geheyme Shlikhes: A Groundbreaking Yiddish Science-Fiction Novel,” in Jewish Fantasy Worldwide: Trends in Speculative Stories from Australia to Chile, ed. Valiera Estelle Frankel (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2023), 101-119, and Leybl Botwinik, “Yiddish SF&F 101* – Part 2,” CyberCozen 33, no. 2 (February 2021): 3-10.

In counterpoint to pervasive popular conceptions of Yiddish as backward-facing or nostalgic, we invite submissions to a special issue of In geveb on “Yiddish Science Fiction” that looks specifically toward Yiddish futures that touch on themes of science or technology. We are interested in (though not limited to) pieces that consider topics such as the following:

— The geographies and empires of Yiddish science fiction worlds

— Time-travel in contemporary Haredi Yiddish writing

— Utopia, dystopia and heterotopia

— Histories and politics of Yiddish science fiction publishing

— Intersections of Yiddish techno-imaginaries with Jewish futurities (prophesy, mysticism, messianism)

— Theorizations of the Yiddish/Jewish science fiction anthology

— Yiddish inflections in contemporary non-Yiddish-language science fiction

— Material/visual expressions of Yiddish futures

As part of this special issue, we are accepting entries for the following sections:

— Blog (reviews, short essays, interviews, etc.)

— Pedagogy (teaching guides)

— Texts & Translations, including for a special contemporary creative writing category of miniyaturn (100-250 word science fiction “miniature” narratives in Yiddish, with English translations).

Collaboration is permitted. Please note this issue will not be peer-reviewed for academic articles. See our submissions page for section guidelines.

Those interested should send a brief biography (max. 100 words) and a short abstract (for Pedagogy or Blog pitches, max. 200 words), or the full Yiddish and English text (for Translations or miniatures) to [email protected] and [email protected].

These submissions are due by April 28, 2025. Authors chosen for editing and publication will be notified in early summer 2025, with full drafts due in early September 2025, and publication scheduled for early spring 2026.

Special Issue Guest Editors:

Alona Bach

Sebastian Schulman

Dalia Wolfson