Apr 16, 2025
A celebratory anniversary poster created by our newest editorial board member, Alona Bach
Put on your birthday hats and hang your streamers because In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies is turning ten this year!
Caring for this journal and helping it to grow these ten years has been such a labor of love for me, personally, and for all who have been involved with this scholarly and community-building project. Through the journal I have gotten to understand the field of Yiddish Studies in new ways (and I hope you have too!): I have built connections to Yiddishists in other countries, those working inside and outside of academia, students just starting on their Yiddish-learning journeys, and scholars outside of Yiddish who helped me to see how Yiddish writing can speak to other fields.
From where I sit at the helm of this journal I see 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. It is a grand bird’s-eye view, and it is realized through our editors’ engagement with the minutiae of each article, from layout and images to syntax and punctuation. 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. 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.
While we always aimed to be more than “just” a traditional academic journal, we could only dream of the ways that In geveb would become a community both online and in real life. 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. It’s a generation who knows each other’s names, in part, because they can say, “I read your piece on In geveb”!
Community participation has been the key to In geveb’s success. Over 400 people have written for In geveb over the past 10 years. Our editorial board has grown larger and more diverse in terms of disciplines represented and geographic spread. Our early editors have gone from being graduate students to respected scholars, translators, librarians, and professionals in the broad world of Yiddish studies. Hundreds of people have supported In geveb financially and thousands follow our publication by email and social media.
This ten year yoyvl celebration belongs to all of you. We are excited to be celebrating this milestone with you: our beloved readers, contributors, supporters, and community who make this work possible and meaningful.
Scholars Reflect: The Impact of In geveb
On April 3, we kicked off our yoyvl celebration with a panel discussion at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, co-sponsored by the Yiddish Book Center, titled “Yiddish Studies in the Digital Age: 10 Years of In geveb.” This was a wonderful opportunity to hear from a group of scholars who have all been involved with In geveb in a range of roles to reflect on what this “born digital” journal has contributed to the field of Yiddish studies and what the future for the journal — and the field — might hold.
Panelists included:
former Peer Review Associate for In geveb Elena Hoffenberg
founding co-editor of In geveb and past president of In geveb’s board of directors Eitan Kensky
members of In geveb’s board of directors Eddy Portnoy and Rachel Rubinstein
The evening was introduced and moderated by chief editor of In geveb Jessica Kirzane and president of In geveb’s board of directors Madeleine Cohen.
It was particularly meaningful to hear reflections on a broad array of ways that In geveb has shaped the field of Yiddish Studies: by expanding the canon of Yiddish literature through translating less-commonly studied texts; by providing a visible forum for serious Yiddish scholarship to inspire new generations of scholarship; by thinking critically about what to do with Yiddish Studies in the age of mass digitization; and by speaking to our audience with inside jokes that bring a sense of delight and belonging to a field that might otherwise feel isolatingly esoteric.
You can watch the panel here:
If you’re excited about this conversation, we hope you’ll join in! Over the coming weeks and months we will open up opportunities for you to share your own reflections on what the journal means to you and the impact it has had on the field of Yiddish Studies, Yiddishism, or any of the other places it has made a splash.
Help us Celebrate In geveb with a Contribution to Our Anniversary Campaign
Now 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.
We are so grateful to the foundations and individuals that have supported us for the past ten years, you have kept us going. For much of that time our budget has stayed nearly level. We have focused our limited resources on paying our staff of part time editors, compensating our contributors (which is something not all journals are committed to doing!), and maintaining our website, and have relied on volunteer efforts to fundraise, to maintain our non-profit status, and to go the extra mile to organize events and ensure the high quality of all our content.
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.
Dedicate Your Donation!
In our fundraising campaign we are honoring four people who have played key roles in making In geveb what it is today:
Eitan Kensky, founding co-editor & first president of In geveb’s board of directors
Saul Noam Zaritt, founding co-editor & first chief editor of In geveb
Madeleine (Mindl) Cohen, former chief editor & current president of In geveb’s board of directors
Jessica Kirzane, In geveb’s chief editor for the past seven years
We invite you to dedicate your donation to one of our honorees and to leave a comment telling us what you value about In geveb.
Over the coming months we look forward to sharing more here in our updates and on the In geveb blog about all the accomplishments of the past ten years, our hopes and dreams for the future, and why we need financial support from our community to continue our work.
We are grateful to the chairs of our fundraising committee, Sean Sidky and Daniel Kirzane, for their work to help us sustain In geveb into the future.
So, to recap (because this blog post was long, but there are some things I really want you to come away with!):
- Happy 10th Birthday In geveb!
- Mazl Tov to everyone who has made In geveb such a wonderful publication for the past ten years!
- Send In geveb a birthday present!
- If you choose to, you can dedicate your gift to one of our honorees, and you can leave us a comment to show In geveb some extra love.
Yours with gratitude and celebration,
Jessica Kirzane, editor-in-chief, on behalf of all the Ingevebnikes
