Aug 03, 2024
A chart, from Google Analytics, displaying the number of views per week of the most popular pages of In geveb over the past 12 months.
INTRODUCTION
It’s been a busy publishing year for In geveb, with work by new and returning contributors on a wide range of topics. This year we’ve brought you translations of essays, memoirs, stories, and poetry; teaching guides and reflections on making Yiddish instruction more accessible and inclusive; interviews with Yiddishists around the world; reviews of academic books, translations, and theater; and groundbreaking new scholarship. As our publishing year comes to a close, we’re proud to share with you a roundup of the most popular pieces In geveb published this year.
You’ll notice that a great many of the most widely read pieces are those relevant to the ongoing war in Israel/Gaza — we are grateful to have had the opportunity to serve as a resource for our reading community during this difficult time.
This is only a small sampling of the many materials we’ve shared with you this year and we hope you’ll keep exploring while we’re on our publishing break. We know you will find some hidden gems that may have received fewer clicks, but are no less insightful and exciting.
In reverse order, here are your favorite pieces that we published in the past year (drumroll, please!):
Illustration by Dina Matus for Rachel Lipstein’s Zwischen dem Abend und Morgenrot (Lodz: Farlag Achrid, 1921). Courtesy of the Robin Lissak Collection.
10. Gendered Literary Debates in Yiddish
This translation special issue of In geveb consists of a collection of primary source documents curated and translated by Anita Norich, Faith Jones and David Mazower. It illuminates the stances and strategies accompanying the emergence of women writers in modern Yiddish literature.
Fernard Léger, Woman with a Book (1923), MOMA, via wikiart.
9. Loyt di Leyeners: Responses to “New Yiddish Poetry from the Israel-Gaza War”
Among the most popular pieces this year were those we published in response to the Israel-Gaza War, including new Yiddish poetry and accompanying translations. Our readers had strong opinions on these pieces. We have tremendous respect for our readers in all their convictions, even — especially — when they express concerns about what we publish. We were pleased to share these responses publicly in order to broaden conversation about poetry in the midst of disaster.
8. The Latest Yiddish Translations, 2023
We are delighted to bring to you the rich and varied world of Yiddish in translation - into a variety of world languages - all in one place for easy browsing.
Bird and shrubs in a sunny desert landscape in Israel. Photo credit: Ber Kotlerman.
7. New Creation
A new Yiddish poem by Ber Kotlerman, composed on Motsei Simchat Torah 5784, on the heels of trauma, and translated by Jessica Kirzane.
6. Yiddish in ale lender! Yiddish Summer Programs Roundup, 2024
Each year we share with you up-to-date information about where and when you can learn Yiddish this summer, including costs and application dates. This takhles collection routinely makes it into our top ten lists, which is how we know that you find us not only interesting but practically useful as you navigate Yiddishland.
Still from The Zone of Interest (2023), courtesy of A24.
5. Yiddish and the Jewish Voice in Zone of Interest
As Justine Orlovsky-Schnitzler explains in her Yiddish-forward review of this Academy Award-winning film, “Whether or not The Zone of Interest is a good film does not hinge on the usage of a minute-long melody [in Yiddish]. But I do believe its employment tells us the film was impeccably researched by a Jewish director with a clear vision for who ought to say what, and when.”
A Soviet-era portrait of the Frierdiker Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880−1950), clandestinely preserved by Chabad hassidim in the aftermath of his forced departure from the USSR in 1927. Courtesy of Rabbi Sholom Ber Chaikin via Chabad.org.
4. “Kaddish Denied” or “The Living Orphan”
“Kaddish Denied,” by Avrohom Eliyohu Plotkin (Rayatz), translated by Eli Rubin, is a semi-autobiographical tale illuminating Chabad’s Soviet era struggle for the survival of Jewish learning and practice.
Image: woodcut by A. Kolnik, for the volume Gaystike erd by Avrom Sutzkever (New York: Der Kval, 1961)
3. Resources for Teaching About Israel/Palestine
Shachar Pinsker and Jessica Kirzane compiled this list in October 2023 to help instructors and students find Yiddish resources they could use as they reflected on the ongoing war. Please send us additional suggestions so we can continue to develop this guide.
Image by Alexander Bogen accompanying Avrom Karpinovitch’s story “Don’t Forget,” republished in the collected edition of his stories, Der veg keyn Sdom (I. L. Peretz Farlag, 1959). Image courtesy of the Yiddish Book Center Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library.
2. Don’t Forget
Shachar Pinsker translates Avrom Karpinovitsh’s harrowing story of a Jewish Holocaust survivor and Palmach soldier’s confrontation with a Palestinian Arab.
Image: “Death with a Woman in His Lap”(Tod mit Frau in Schoss, 1921), a woodcut by Käthe Kollwitz.
1. New Yiddish Poetry from the Israel/Gaza War
Over the painful months since October 7 and the ensuing war, contemporary Yiddish poets have documented, protested, mourned, and expressed political and emotional responses to the unfolding events through the Yiddish word. We are grateful to Zackary Sholem Berger for his co-editing work in collecting, curating and translating these poems.
