Mar 13, 2025
In geveb is announcing some changes in terminology and approach in light of the recent executive orders by the Ahasuerus administration. While others have been making such changes quietly, we have determined that our audience will appreciate our being forthright as we lay out a clear plan for future publications.
With regard to disease and health, we want to be clear that there is to be absolutely no discussion of contagion. Not tuberculosis and the way Yiddish culture was shaped by its spread, not cholera and how it struck vulnerable populations as it spread through 19th century Europe, not COVID and how Yiddish was impacted by being moved to Zoom, not antisemitic ideas of Jews spreading disease, and definitely not a discussion of the epidemic of repugnant racist ideas that proliferate through authoritarianism. None of these are relevant to our mission of publishing Yiddish Studies work that is relevant and meaningful for our audience, and we wouldn’t want these ideas to spread
Whither queer Yiddishkayt, you ask? Nowhere. We will no longer be discussing queer Yiddishkayt, a queer Yiddish subculture, the lefty queer Yiddish future, the utopian queerness of summer programs, queer readings of aggressively straight Yiddish literature, or the beautiful, radical, accessible possibilities of performance and Yiddish. We also won’t be discussing, or teaching about, gender diversity. We are a digital publication so we can only operate in binary. In fact, we will also remove from our journal any discussion of people in the history of Yiddish language and culture who failed to conform to gender norms more broadly. There will be no women who wrote in Yiddish: From now on, we will uplift the well known triple-threat truism that (1) women did not write (2) they wrote so badly (3) thank goodness men inspired them to write. We will also omit mention of men who were like women insofar as they couldn’t read loshn-koydesh (throw your tsenerenes in the back of your closets, we don’t need them anymore). We’re also avoiding mention of modern notions of love that flew in the face of traditional patterns of arranged marriage (for that reason, we are also refusing to publish anything related to novels, in any language).
We will also remove any and all reference to race or diversity. This includes references to Yiddish representations of race and racialization, vocabulary terms that would allow us to discuss race or anti-racism, and even descriptions of racism itself in Yiddish literature. We don’t need to talk about Shmuel Charney. Of course, being a Yiddish Studies journal of good repute (and we want to stay that way!), we also won’t discuss the racialization of - or racism against - Jews and Yiddish speakers. We will no longer discuss using Yiddish to teach about antisemitism. We won’t publish any articles that in any way describe the treatment of Jews as different from the treatment of non-Jews. It goes without saying that discussion of the Holocaust falls outside our purview as a Yiddish Studies journal in compliance with these new rules. We’d prefer if scholars went on studying the Holocaust without the slightest nod to Yiddish, please. Furthermore, in order to build a fence around the notion of not discussing race or diversity, we have decided to remove any discussion of Yiddish culture that in any way describes it as different from its surrounding cultures: we’re using a lot of White-Out. From now on, at In geveb, there will be no references to Yiddish speakers or to the Yiddish language whatsoever.
With regard to inclusivity, we want to be especially clear. We will include no one. Not scholars or emerging scholars, not musicians or other performers and not their audiences, not children, not elders, not speakers of Yiddish, not students of Yiddish, and definitely not Yiddish teachers. We also won’t include people who don’t speak Yiddish. We won’t even include people who don’t know what Yiddish is. Not Jews and not non-Jews. Not Hasidim and not secular folks. Not poets or writers of prose, not people who work on shund and not people who look down on people who work on shund. Not people who tell jokes. Not people with viewpoints who differ from one another. No one is welcome here.
Finally, in light of an illegal and currently challenged executive order to revert to Soviet orthography, In geveb has decided to overcomply in advance by removing all Yiddish AND, lehavdil, English characters (in an abundance of caution) and replacing them with Wingdings. 🕈︎☜︎☹︎👍︎⚐︎💣︎☜︎ ❄︎⚐︎ ❄︎☟︎☜︎ ☠︎☜︎🕈︎ ✋︎☠︎ ☝︎☜︎✞︎☜︎👌︎📬︎
