Jul 01, 2025
Image: “This Year’s Parisian Summer Fashion” Frimorgn - פרימארגן (ריגה), 3 May 1927, via Historical Jewish Press, The National Library of Israel.
Tayere leyeners, Dear readers:
For many of us, it feels as though we are not living in the same world as we were at the start of this publishing year. To say it has been a “hard year” as we have seen attacks on higher education that shake the foundations of the work many of us and our readers pursue, as we have learned of acts of violence and war and rhetoric and policies disregarding human rights and dignity that resonate with the histories and literatures many of us study, would be an understatement. At the start of this publishing year, in her review of “The Last Yiddish Speaker” Cassandra Euphrat Weston called for “a capacious and cacophonous understanding of Yiddish pasts could lead us to a fuller vision of our shared future.” It is our hope that our wide range of publishing within what might be perceived as the small confines of Yiddish Studies has helped to inform and inspire, and that it might offer some tools to build for the future even in this dark moment.
This year we have published:
- 9 translations
- 7 pedagogy pieces
- 30 blog posts
- 26 book reviews (of literary translations and academic books) and an additional book review forum consisting of six short reviews of the same academic book.
- A special issue on projects emerging from the In geveb/Fortunoff Archive fellowship
- Regular recurring resources such as: summer programs roundup, translations roundup, latest in Yiddish studies bibliography, and, of course, our Purim issue
A celebratory anniversary poster created by our newest editorial board member, Alona Bach
For us at In geveb, it has also been a year of celebration, as we have reached our 10th anniversary. This milestone has given us opportunities to reflect on our accomplishments and to think about what our future as a journal should be. We have helped to cultivate a field of Yiddish Studies that is vast and vibrant, that wrestles with urgent questions of the present and uncovers new truths about the past. Each and every piece of the hundreds of blog posts, translations, peer reviewed articles, pedagogy resources, interviews, and book reviews that have come out in In geveb over the past ten years is one that we are proud of. A generation of students, culture producers, and emerging scholars of Yiddish have now come of age with In geveb as a place to publish, to keep abreast of current research around the world, to find and share new translations, and read reviews of everything from the latest scholarly publications to new Yiddish literature, music, theater, and film. We are especially proud that we have brought this work to you — publishing roughly twice a week — at no charge. You can read everything we’ve ever published in our born-digital open-access online publication, and that makes our archive a valuable, eminently usable resource for the digital world we all now inhabit. Please help us celebrate and honor our achievements by donating to our anniversary campaign.
As we head into our summer publishing break, we want to remind you of some ways you can stay involved with the journal during these summer months:
Read: You can catch up on In geveb pieces from our archive. Everything we have ever published is available for free on our site, and that is now ten years of material to keep you busy!
Write: Although our response times may be longer over the summer, we are still open for submissions and are eager to hear about what you’re doing this summer. If you’re attending a summer language program, going to (or performing at!) a festival, reading your way through an archive, or otherwise spending your time with Yiddish, consider writing for us about it and sharing that work with our readership. Send us your pitches to [email protected].
Reflect: In particular, we are collecting essays and reflections about the ten years of In geveb’s publishing for an anniversary special issue. These can be blog pieces, creative writing reflections, art, academic articles drawing on our sources, pedagogy tools for working with In geveb materials, and more. We are particularly interested in hearing reflections about what In geveb has meant to our readers and how it has intervened in the field of Yiddish Studies.
Give: Help us celebrate In geveb with a contribution to our anniversary campaign. As we celebrate 10 years and dream about what the next 10 years can bring, we are asking our community to please give what you can and support In geveb financially, whether this is your first time giving or whether you are a long-time supporter. If we want In geveb to continue to grow and thrive and remain a central address for the study of all things Yiddish online, we need your help to launch our second decade. Our goal is to raise $20,000 by our official tenth birthday: August 15, 2025. We invite you to donate to support In geveb and to honor everyone who has got us this far.
We are grateful to our community of readers, writers, and supporters and proud of all we have accomplished together. If you have read something we published; if you have spent time talking or thinking about it; if you have shared it with a friend; if you have donated to us, cited us, or sent us your writing—a hartsikn dank.
We wish you a rejuvenating summer, and look forward to learning with you again in the fall,
Jessica Kirzane and the rest of the In geveb team
