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Reader Favorites 2022-2023

The Editors

It’s been a busy publishing year for In geveb, with wonderful work by new and returning contributors on a wide variety of topics, from shund theater to art song, from long lost family photographs to student-produced artwork. As our publishing year comes to a close, we’re proud to share with you a roundup of the most widely-read pieces In geveb published this year. This is only a small sampling of the wide range of materials we’ve shared with you this year, and we hope you’ll keep exploring while we’re on our publishing break. In reverse order, here are your favorite pieces that we published in the past year (drumroll, please!):


10.

Your Guide to Yiddish and In geveb at the 2022 AJS Conference by The Editors

For those who attend the conference — and for those who don’t — this guide helps you stay abreast of what folks are working on in the academic field of Yiddish. Also, importantly, it lets you know where you can get coffee with fellow Yiddishy friends and say hello to us when you’re at AJS.


9.

Yiddish in Georgia by Sarah Biskowitz and Lasha Shakulashvili

Lasha Shakulashvili recently began teaching Yiddish at the Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (TSU). TSU is one of the first academic institutions in the region to give an official academic recognition to the Yiddish language and include it in the Jewish Studies curriculum along with Hebrew. Sarah Biskowitz spoke with Lasha to learn more about him and his work.


8.

“Paris” by Abraham Sutzkever, translated by Annabel Cohen

Hav­ing found the pre­vi­ous­ly rich Pol­ish Jew­ish life dec­i­mat­ed beyond repair, Abraham Sutzkev­er decid­ed to emi­grate to Pales­tine. Like many oth­ers, he stopped in Paris, where — as the poem describes — he also began to take stock of what he had lived through. Look­ing out over the ​“city of all peo­ples,” away from the epi­cen­ter of his own trau­ma, Abraham Sutzkev­er finds he is able to breathe again, to redis­cov­er his con­nec­tion to the world, to human­i­ty, and to his Jew­ish identity.


7.

Onbotn fun robotn: Futured for Algorithmic Yiddishkayt by Alona Robach

For Purim, Alona Robach reported from a landmark conference advocating for robot Yiddishists: A group of forward-looking Yiddish scholars, barred from conference registration by discriminatory questions such as “Check this box to confirm you are not a robot,” have recently made their mark in a watershed virtual conference of their own. Di robotn celebrated the legacy of bots in the Yiddish corpus, dreaming of (electric sheep and) futures for robots in the Yiddishist world.


6.

YIVO Finds More Archival Documents in Biden Home by A. Reporter

We were honored to be the first to break this hard-hitting Purim news.


5.

Daughterhood by Helen Mintz

Helen Mintz’s essay is a beautiful reflection on translation, intergenerational continuities and discontinuities, loss and recovery, honoring the past and learning to live after it has passed.


4.

The Latest Yiddish Translations, 2022 by Dalia Wolfson

If you’re looking for the next Yiddish book to read in translation, or you just want to get a sense of the publishing landscape — across multiple languages — we have the resource for you!


3.


A Yiddish Newspaper at War with Yiddish: Abraham Cahan and the 1931 Language Debate in the New York Forverts by Gennady Estraikh

This peer-reviewed article must have struck a chord with our readers. It gets at the core of the historically fraught relationship between those working in Yiddish out of necessity and those advocating for the language as such. If you haven’t read it yet, check out this window into the history of Yiddishist education.


2.


The Golden Peacock and the Green Owl: Analyzing Yiddish Language Learners’ Experiences with Duolingo by Sarah Biskowitz

As Yiddish Duolingo approached its one-year anniversary, Sarah Biskowitz conducted a survey — with over three hundred respondents — to get a better picture of what our current moment of digital Yiddish learning looks and feels like to its participants. In this piece, she analyzes the data, which shows the rewards and limitations of consistent, active engagement with Yiddish Duolingo.


1.


Yiddish in ale lender: Yiddish Summer Programs Roundup 2023 by Alexander Stern

We’re thrilled that our readers continue to find this annual guide a helpful one-stop-shop for thinking through summer options. Did you find a good fit? Tell us about it when you get back from your summer learning!

MLA STYLE
Editors, The. “Reader Favorites 2022-2023.” In geveb, June 2023: https://ingeveb.org/blog/reader-favorites-2022-2023.
CHICAGO STYLE
Editors, The. “Reader Favorites 2022-2023.” In geveb (June 2023): Accessed Sep 29, 2023.

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The Editors