May 16, 2016
This bibliography features scholarly works in French published over the last two years (2014-2015) that speak to the concerns of Yiddish Studies, widely defined. We have included here books, book chapters, articles, and special issues of journals that in some way encounter Yiddish—as the language of primary documents when investigating Ashkenazi histories in their transnational dispersion, as an identifying marker of Jewish communities and cultures from the early modern period to the present, or as a cultural artifact whose location and affiliation are constantly shifting. In this way we include studies that would not necessarily be called or call themselves “Yiddishist” or be firmly aligned with “Yiddish Studies” as such, but that make arguments and present scholarly research that form a contiguous relationship with Yiddish and Yiddish culture.
We only feature scholarly studies, and have therefore omitted important new translations and critical editions such as Jean Spector’s, Nathan Weinstock’s, and Micheline Weinstock’s translation of Yehoshue Perle’s Yidn fun a gants yor, Khurbn Varshe, and 4580 (Juifs ordinaires, Garnier 2015), Batia Baum’s translation of Avrom Sutzkever’s Griner akvarium (Aquarium vert: brefs récits, Medem Library, 2013), or the anthology “Yiddish Voices from Montreal” (“Voix yiddish de Montréal,” Moebius 139, 2013). We also left out book reviews and exhibition reviews.
We were struck by the quality and diversity of recent Yiddish scholarship in French. We feature works that range from an interdisciplinary analysis of the archival collection “Dos poylishe yidntum” to psychoanalytical interpretations of contemporary Yiddish-language interviews, from a monographic study of the work of I.J. Singer to a historical account of the founding of a Yiddish theater troupe in 1912 Montreal.
This list is focused on scholarship from the last two years but we have also included a few works from 2013 that we felt were particularly important or deserved more attention. Each entry is followed by an English translation of the original French title of the book, chapter, article, or special issue, a short English-language summary, and available links to online material.
The aim of this bibliography is to foster dialogue, intellectual exchange, and academic cooperation in Yiddish studies across national and linguistic boundaries. Our French-language bibliography complements “The Latest in Yiddish Studies in English: 2014-2015,” published by In geveb in February 2016. We understand that there is a plurality of languages of scholarship related to Yiddish Studies. Check back for further posts in this space that list recent works in Yiddish Studies in Yiddish, Polish, German, Hebrew, Spanish, Russian, and other languages.
For better or worse, this list features a majority of works from the fields of history and literature, a reflection perhaps of the interests of the editorial board and contributors of In geveb or more likely an indication of the dominance that these fields have over Yiddish Studies and its appearance in academic forums. We also anticipate that we have missed certain publications in the wide distribution of Yiddish Studies among the various disciplines of the academy. We are committed to trying to change this state of affairs. Please send additional references to new and important work that are not listed here to [email protected] and we will add them to the list.
You can download a PDF of this bibliography here.
We wish to thank Tal Hever-Chybowski and the whole team of the Paris Yiddish Center-Medem Library for their useful suggestions and comments, and for allowing us to use pictures of the Center to illustrate this article.
Books
Anctil, Pierre and Simon Jacobs, eds. Les Juifs de Québec, 400 ans d’histoire [The Jews of Quebec City, 400 Years of History]. Quebec University Press, 2015.
http://www.puq.ca/catalogue/livres/les-juifs-quebe...
This edited volume offers a comprehensive history of the Jewish community of Quebec City since 1738, detailing the socio-historical and legal aspects of the community’s integration and contribution to Québécois society, including both an overview of the community’s most prominent and influential figures and a detailed account of occasionally violent manifestations of anti-Semitism. The sixth chapter, entitled “The Great Eastern European Jewish Migration at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century,” deals more specifically with Yiddish culture and Yiddish-language materials.
Baumgarten, Jean and Trautman-Waller, Céline, eds. Rabbins et savants au village : L’étude des traditions populaires juives XIXe-XXe siècle [Rabbis and Scholars in the Village: Studying Jewish Popular Traditions, 19th-20th Century]. CNRS Editions, 2014.
http://www.cnrseditions.fr/histoire/6948-rabbins-e...
This edited volume offers a comprehensive analysis of the various private and institutional actors (both academic and non-academic) that spearheaded the study of Jewish popular traditions in Europe from the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Second World War, highlighting the role played by ethnographic studies and expeditions, private collectors, specialized museums, literati, and political parties and ideologies.
Bechtel, Delphine and Jurgenson, Luba, eds. Le tourisme mémoriel en Europe centrale et orientale [Memorial Tourism in Central and Eastern Europe]. Petra, 2013.
http://www.editionspetra.fr/ouvrage/195
This edited volume, based on a symposium held at Paris IV Sorbonne in 2010, offers a wide range of essays dealing with the personal and institutional mechanisms of “memorial tourism” in Central and Eastern Europe as a means for various communities to come to terms with the dramatic upheavals of twentieth-century Central and Eastern European history.
Coquio, Catherine. La Littérature en suspens. Écritures de la Shoah : le témoignage et les œuvres [Suspended Literature. Writing the Holocaust: Testimony and Literary Works]. L’Arachnéen, 2015.
http://www.editions-arachneen.fr/?p=3173
This book analyzes a broad range of literary works that fall into the category of “khurbn” narratives (i.e. related to concentration camps and the Holocaust). According to Coquio, these works are characterized by a form of symbolic and anthropological “break,” which she calls “désappartenance” (“unbelonging”), a notion that she relates to the concept of “suspended literature” as defined by Imre Kertész in his Nobel Prize reception speech. The second chapter of the book, entitled “‘Khurbn’: Reactions to the Catastrophe,” deals more specifically with Yiddish-language material.
Fainberg, Sarah. Les discriminés: l’antisémitisme soviétique après Staline [Victims of Discrimination: Soviet anti-Semitism after Stalin]. Fayard, 2014.
http://www.fayard.fr/les-discrimines-9782213662848
This book offers a comprehensive historical study of the sociopolitical mechanisms of racism and anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union after 1953. At the crossroads of history and political science, this book is based on a thorough study of archival materials in Russia, Israel, France, and the United States, including primary sources in Yiddish from the Medem Library in Paris and YIVO in New York.
Hazan-Brunet, Nathalie, ed. Maryan (1927-1977): La ménagerie humaine. [Maryan (1927-1977): The Human Menagerie]. Musée d’art et d’histoire du judaïsme, Paris: Flammarion, 2013.
http://www.mahj.org/fr/3_expositions/expo-Maryan-L...
This exhibition catalog, based on an exhibition held at the Paris Museum of Jewish Art and History in 2013, offers a monographic survey of the work of the Polish Jewish painter Maryan (Pinchas Burstein, 1927-1977), with a specific focus on the autobiographical dimension of his work, exemplified by his 1971 notebooks, entitled Ecce homo, featuring China ink drawings and writings in English, French, Yiddish, and Polish.
Kohn, Max. L’événement psychanalytique dans les entretiens en yiddish. [The Psycho-analytic Event in Yiddish Interviews]. MJW Fédition, 2015.
http://www.mjw-fedition.com/?ref=9#42
Featuring partial French translations of some of the three hundred interviews conducted in Yiddish by Max Kohn since 2006, this book attempts to define a “psychoanalytic event” specifically linked to the act of speaking Yiddish today. Summarizing Max Kohn’s earlier work on the specific links between Yiddish and psychoanalysis, it includes numerous individual case studies, ranging from prominent international Jewish writers from the twentieth century (Franz Kafka, Cynthia Ozick) to contemporary French Yiddishists (Charles Dobzynski, Rachel Ertel, Yitskhok Niborski).
Kohn, Max. Le préanalytique: Freud et le yiddish (1877-1897). [The Pre-Analytic: Freud and Yiddish (1877-1897)]. MJW Fédition, 2013.
http://www.mjw-fedition.com/?ref=9#35
Third, revised edition of Max Kohn’s treatise on Freud’s early writings from his “pre-analytical” period (1877-1897), first published in 1982; Max Kohn formulates the hypothesis that Freud’s notion of Witz developed in his 1905 essay Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious is key to understanding his earlier writings, and that Yiddish constitutes a “repressed” element that deeply influenced this aspect of Freud’s work.
Ksiazenicer-Matheron, Carole. Déplier le temps : Israël Joshua Singer. Un écrivain yiddish dans l’histoire [Unfolding Time: Israel Joshua Singer. A Yiddish writer in History]. Classiques Garnier, collection “Littérature, histoire, politique”, December 2012.
https://www.classiques-garnier.com/editions/index....
A monographic study of the work of I.J. Singer, with a specific focus on the notions of Yiddish Modernism, the “rise of the subject”, and the symbolic crisis affecting the relationship between the individual and the collective, as Singer feels compelled to find new ways to relate to the Jewish community and the Jewish past.
Kuhn-Kennedy, Fleur. Le Disciple et le Faussaire—Imitation et subversion romanesques de la mémoire juive [The Disciple and the Forger. Fictional Imitation and Subversion of Jewish Memory]. Classiques Garnier, 2016.
https://www.classiques-garnier.com/editions/index....
Fleur Kuhn-Kennedy analyzes four Jewish novels written in different languages—Joseph Opatoshu’s In poylishe velder, I.B. Singer’s Der sotn in Goray, André Schwarz-Bart’s Le Dernier des Justes and David Grossman’s See Under: Love—specifically the ways in which they imitate and subvert Jewish tradition, intertextuality becoming a mirror for identification or projection.
Leselbaum, Jean, and Spire, Antoine, eds. Dictionnaire du judaïsme français depuis 1944 [Dictionary of French Judaism since 1944], Armand Colin/Le bord de l’eau, 2013.
http://www.armand-colin.com/dictionnaire-du-judais...
This dictionary offers a wealth of information about Jewish life and culture in France since 1944; a number of entries cover Yiddish culture and Yiddish-related topics; the “Yiddish” entry itself was written by Gilles Rozier.
Lindenberg, Judith (et al.), eds. Écritures de la destruction dans le monde judéo-polonais de la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale à la fin des années soixante : productions, trajectoires, réseaux [Writings of the Destruction in the Polish Jewish world, from the End of World War II to the 1960s: Productions, Trajectories, Networks]. CNRS Editions, 2016.
This edited volume offers a selection of papers initially presented at a symposium at the Paris Museum of Jewish Art and History (Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme) in June 2014, analyzing the genre of the “khurbn” narratives (mostly but not exclusively in Yiddish) after 1945 in a broad sense, i.e. bearing witness both to the Shoah itself and to pre-war Polish Jewish culture.
Niborski, Yitskhok, et al., eds. Avrom Sutzkever, poète et héros du XXe siècle. [Avrom Sutzkever, Poet and Hero of the 20th Century]. Maison de la culture Yiddish – Bibliothèque Medem, 2013.
http://yiddishweb.com/avrom-sutzkever-poete-et-her...
This exhibition catalog includes a detailed account of the life and work of Sutzkever, reproductions of archival documents, and an essay by Yitskhok Niborski, “Avrom Sutzkever, un poète pour la vie” (“Avrom Sutzkever, A Poet for Life”). Niborski’s essay is published in both French and Yiddish.
Nieszawer, Nadine, ed. Artiste juifs de l’école de Paris, 1905-1939. [Jewish Artists of the School of Paris, 1905-1939]. Somogy, 2015.
http://www.somogy.fr/livre/artistes-juifs-de-lecol...
Second, updated trilingual edition (French-Russian-English) of this comprehensive volume about Jewish artists (many of them native Yiddish speakers) of the school of Paris, including Marc Chagall (1887-1985), Chil Aronson (1898-1966), and Hersch Fenster (1892-1964), author of Undzere farpaynikte kinstler (Our Martyred Artists, 1951), the first work published on this topic. This volume includes biographical notes, bibliographies of each artist, and reproductions of important works.
Poznanski, Renée and Simon Perego. Le Centre de documentation juive contemporaine, 1943-2013 : documenter la Shoah [The Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation, 1943-2013: Documenting the Holocaust]. Éditions du Mémorial de la Shoah, 2013.
http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/files/catalogue-d...
A detailed historical analysis of the activities of the Center for Contemporary Jewish Documentation (now known as Centre de Documentation du Mémorial de la Shoah, or Documentary Center of the Paris Shoah Memorial) since its foundation by Isaac Schneersohn in Grenoble in 1943 as part of the underground resistance movement to the present day.
Werber, Michel. La parole d’Abusz Werber [The Word of Abusz Werber], ed. Didier Devillez. Institut d’Études du Judaïsme (Université Libre de Bruxelles), 2015.
http://www.ulb.ac.be/facs/philo/judaisme/index-9.h...
A monographic study of the life and work of Michel Werber’s father, Abusz Werber: born in Poland, Abusz Werber became the leader of the Linke Poalei Sion in Belgium, and one of the founders of the Committee for the Defense of the Jews of Belgium during the Second World War, a resistance organization that helped several thousands Jewish children and adults escape deportation. As part of its resistance activities, Werber was also the chief editor of the underground Yiddish-language journal Undzer vort.
Book Chapters
Anctil, Pierre, “1907, un quotidien yiddish à Montréal, le Keneder Odler” [“The Keneder Odler, a Yiddish daily in Montreal, 1907]. In De la Belle Époque à la Crise; chroniques de la vie culturelle à Montréal [From the Belle Époque to the Crisis: Chronicles of Cultural Life in Montreal], edited by Denis Saint-Jacques and Marie-José des Rivières. Nota Bene, 2015.
https://www.intranet.fse.ulaval.ca/fichiers/public...
This article offers an in-depth historical analysis of the publication of the Montreal-based Yiddish-language daily newspaper Keneder Odler, a window into Yiddish life and culture in Montreal in the beginning of the twentieth century.
Anctil, Pierre. “1912, une troupe de théâtre yiddish permanente à Montréal” [“A Permanent Yiddish Theater Troupe in Montreal, 1912”]. In De la Belle Époque à la Crise; chroniques de la vie culturelle à Montréal Montréal [From the Belle Époque to the Crisis: Chronicles of Cultural Life in Montreal], edited by Denis Saint-Jacques and Marie-José des Rivières. Nota Bene, 2015.
https://www.intranet.fse.ulaval.ca/fichiers/public...
This article covers a lesser-known aspect of early Yiddish cultural life in Montreal, and of the geographical extension of Yiddish theater, by documenting the founding of a permanent Yiddish theater troupe in Montreal in 1912.
Anctil, Pierre. “Un siècle de vie yiddish à Montréal” [“A Century of Yiddish life in Montreal”]. In Histoires d’immigrations au Québec [Histories of Immigrations in Quebec], edited by Guy Berthiaume, Claude Corbo, and Sophie Montreuil. Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2014.
http://www.puq.ca/catalogue/livres/histoires-immig...
In this article, Anctil offers a summary of his ongoing research about the history Yiddish life and culture in Montreal, from the specific perspective of migration studies.
Baumgarten, Jean. “Les gloses en yiddish ancien, de la lexicographie à la grammaire” [“Glosses in Old Yiddish, From Lexicography to Grammar”]. In Penser l’histoire des savoirs linguistiques: Hommage à Sylvain Auroux, edited by Sylvie Archaimbault, Jean-Marie Fournier, and Valérie Raby. ENS, 2014, 285-301
http://catalogue-editions.ens-lyon.fr/fr/livre/?GC...
This article provides a comprehensive philological analysis of Old Yiddish glosses in the margins of sacred texts in Hebrew, a subject first studied by Baumgarten in the context of his Introduction à la littérature yiddish ancienne (Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, 1993, English transl. 2005).
Kichelewski, Audrey and Judith Lindenberg. “Les enfants accusent. Témoignages d’enfants survivants dans le monde polonais et yiddish” [“Children as Prosecutors: Testimonies of Survivor Children in the Polish and Yiddish World”]. In L’Enfant-Shoah après 1945 [Survivor Children After 1945], edited by Ivan Jablonka. Presses universitaires de France, 2014.
http://www.puf.com/Autres_Collections:L’Enfant-Sho...
This article offers an historical analysis of the importance of the collection of the testimonies of survivor children in Poland in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, with a specific focus on the work of the Central Jewish Historical Commission.
Kichelewski, Audrey. “Les Juifs polonais en France et en Israël. Représentations, trajectoires et instruments de la mémoire.” [“Polish Jews in France and Israel. Representations, Trajectories and Tools of Memory”]. In Diasporas, exils, cosmopolitisme, edited by Joanna Nowicki and Luciana Radut-Gaghi. Éditions du Relief, 2015.
http://www.lautrefrancophonie.fr/spip.php?rubrique...
The result of an international research project, focusing specifically on Polish Jewish immigration to France and Israel, from the end of the nineteenth century to 1968, in its demographic and sociological aspects, questioning reasons for departure, assimilation, and ties with the homeland.
Kuhn-Kennedy, Fleur. “Entretien avec Batia Baum : une fin qui n’en est pas une” [“A Conversation with Batia Baum: an End that was not“]. In Fin(s) du monde, edited by Claire Cornillon, Nadja Djuric, Guido Furci, Louiza Kadari, and Pierre Leroux. Pendragon, 2013.
http://www.pendragon.it/libro.do?id=2176
A conversation on Batia Baum’s experience as a translator of Yiddish into French, on rediscovering the mother tongue, and on the Yiddish language as a language “which contains translation.”
Kuhn-Kennedy, Fleur. “Entre deux fins du monde : roman historique et messianisme juif” [“Between Two Ends of the World: Historical Novel and Jewish Messianism”]. In Fin(s) du monde, edited by Claire Cornillon, Nadja Djuric, Guido Furci, Louiza Kadari, and Pierre Leroux. Pendragon, 2013.
http://www.pendragon.it/libro.do?id=2176
A study of three novels—Joseph Opatoshu’s In Polish Woods, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Satan in Goray and David Grossman’s See Under: Love—highlighting the ways in which they repeat in the act of writing a past apocalypse, and respond to the messianic void by creating a deceitful Messiah. Kuhn-Kennedy argues that in response to disenchanted modern messianism, these Yiddish writers betray and “usurp” the authority of the Jewish Law, turning history into an eternal return of catastrophe, creating multiples figures of false messiahs with which they identify.
Rousselet, Cécile. “Métaphore et référent de Babel — Le statut narratif ambigu du yiddish dans Le schizo et les langues de Louis Wolfson” [“Metaphor and Referent of Babel: The Ambiguous Narrative Status of Yiddish in Louis Wolfson’s Le Schizo et les langues”]. In Dialogues schizophoniques avec Louis Wolfson [Schizophonic Dialogues with Louis Wolfson], edited by Juliette Drigny, Sandra Pellet, and Chloé Thomas. L’Imprimante, 2016.
http://editionlimprimante.wix.com/letap#!descripti...
This article analyzes the ambiguous status of Yiddish in the writings of Louis Wolfson (born in 1931), a schizophrenic New York Jewish writer who cut himself off from his English-speaking environment and invented a new personal language based on a mixture of French, German, Russian, and Hebrew, an experience related in his French-language autobiographical work Le Schizo et les langues, published by Gallimard in 1970. Wolfson was a heritage speaker of Yiddish and, as a result of his total rejection of English, resorted to Yiddish to communicate with his parents.
Articles
Anctil, Pierre. “'Créée par le peuple et pour le peuple' : Réflexions sur les origines historiques de la Bibliothèque publique juive de Montréal.” [“Created by the People and for the People: Reflexions on the Historical Origins of the Jewish Public Library of Montreal”]. Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, vol. 22 (2014): 32-53.
http://cjs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cjs/article...
This article examines the creation of the Jewish Public Library of Montreal, founded in 1914, at a time when Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe was at its peak, showing how a distinctive Yiddish-speaking Jewish identity emerged in Montreal.
Bechtel, Delphine. “Le théâtre yiddish Gimpel de Lemberg: une Odyssée oubliée (III).” [“The Gimpel Yiddish Theater in Lemberg: a Forgotten Odyssey”]. Cahiers Bernard Lazare 351-352 (2013): 34-37.
An earlier version of this article (Yod: revue des études hébraïques et juives, issue 16, 2011) is available online: http://yod.revues.org/659
The article recounts the fifty years (1989-1939) during which the Gimpel Theater, founded by Jakob Ber Gimpel (1840-1906), was a central institution of Yiddish culture in Galicia. The Gimpel Theater attracted important figures of American Yiddish theater and became a breeding ground for artists who then left for Berlin, Vienna, New York, or even Hollywood. The article also recalls the three generations of the Gimpel family (actors, musicians), who played a role of mediation between scholarly and popular culture, between Polish, Austrian, Jewish, and American spheres, between various traditions and identities.
Brossat, Alain and Jean-Marc Izrine (Interview by Marco Candore). “Le Yiddishland, une déterritorialisation révolutionnaire.” [“Yiddishland, a Revolutionary Deterritorialization”]. Chimères, N°83 (2014/2): 103-108.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-chimeres-2014-2-page-...
Discusses the influence of Yiddish workers movements on the revolutionary climate of the 1960s in France, and the question of the legacy of the political Yiddishland in its conjunction with the commemoration of a lost culture, Zionism, and anti-Semitism.
Elsky, Julia. “Informations juives (1941-1942) ou les ambiguïtés d’un périodique français/yiddish pendant l’Occupation.” [“Jewish News (1941-1942), or the Ambiguities of a French-Yiddish Periodical in Occupied France”]. Archives Juives 46, 2 (2013): 116-30.
http://www.cfaj.fr/AJ/Sommaire_462.htm
This article studies the weekly circular Informations juives (1941-1942), published by the Association consistoriale israélite of Paris, bringing to light the tensions posed by its French-Yiddish bilingualism, juxtaposing articles on Jewish literature, culture and history and Nazi laws, the voice of both the authorities and the community.
Ertel, Rachel. “La permanence du yiddish.” [“Permanency of Yiddish”]. Vacarme, 62 (Winter 2013): 171-93.
http://www.vacarme.org/article2220.html
The inaugural lesson delivered by Rachel Ertel, one of France’s foremost translator of Yiddish literature, at the international conference on the “Permanency of Yiddish” hosted by Unesco in 2012. An overview of Yiddish culture and its transmission in France after the Holocaust.
Ertel, Rachel. “L’anéantissement dans la poésie yiddish soviétique.” [“Annihilation in Soviet Yiddish Poetry”]. Fabula / Les colloques, Témoigner sur la Shoah en URSS.
http://www.fabula.org/colloques/document2791.php, page consultée le 22 février 2016.
This article first traces the origins of Yiddish Soviet literature, before focusing on four avant-garde poets: Dovid Hofstein, Peretz Markish, Shmuel Halkin, Itzik Fefer. Ertel examines the poetic representation of the khurbn under the Stalinist regime, elaborating a difference between a “poetic of the cry” and a “poetic of silence”.
Ertel, Rachel. “Première nuit dans le ghetto, Abraham Sutzkever.” [“First Night in the Ghetto, Abraham Sutzkever”]. Translated and presented by Rachel Ertel. Po&sie, Editions Belin, n°144 (2013): 42-57.
http://www.editions-belin.com/ewb_pages/f/fiche-ar...
A brief presentation of Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever, followed by a translation into French of a selection of ghetto poems, in celebration of the centennial of his birth.
Ertel, Rachel. “Les fantômes du 9 rue Guy Patin. (En souvenirs).” [“The Ghosts of 9 rue Guy Patin (In Memory)”]. Les Temps Modernes, no. 686 (2015/5): 21-54.
http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Revue-...
An essay on the Yiddish cultural center on Guy Patin Street in Paris, originally a home for Jewish girls founded by baroness Edmond de Rothschild, and which hosted refugees starting in 1946, including many writers, poets, artists, and performers.
Ertel, Rachel. “‘Nous sommes les souvenants qui refusons l’oubli.’ Pouvoirs de la poésie.” [“‘We Are the Ones Who Remember Who Refuse to Forget’. Powers of Poetry”]. Le Coq-héron, no. 221 (2015/2): 14-19.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-le-coq-heron-2015-2.h...
Building on a verse by Yiddish poet Jacob Glatstein, Ertel poses the question of the poetic, collective “we” in response to the Catastrophe. Jewish memory and its durability are addressed through a reading of Yiddish Holocaust poetry.
Kichelewski, Audrey. “Derniers des Mohicans ou nouveaux marranes ? Etre Juif en Pologne communiste et catholique, 1945-1989.” [“Last of the Mohicans or New Marranes? Being Jewish in Communist and Catholic Poland, 1945-1989”]. Documents et Mémoires de la revue Chrétiens et société, no. 27, edited by Catherine Maurer and Catherine Vincent, “La coexistence confessionnelle en France et en Europe germanique et orientale du Moyen Age à nos jours”, LARHRA (2015): 323-38.
http://larhra.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/node/2469
A study of postwar Poland, which lost its ethnic and religious minorities during the war, resulting in an overwhelming Catholic majority (over 90%). The author shows how the promises of reconstruction and of a new regime were in fact rooted in the spirit of Christianity and the values it carried.
Kichelewski, Audrey. “‘Déshonorée par des actes barbares…’ Comprendre la violence antijuive en Pologne au sortir de la Seconde guerre mondiale.” [“”Dishonored by Barbarian Acts…” Understanding Anti-Jewish Violence in Poland in the Aftermath of the Second World War”]. Histoire@politique, no. 24 (2014).
http://www.histoire-politique.fr/index.php?numero=...
This article focuses on the history of the traumas of the war and their effects, covering the anti-Jewish violence in post-war Poland, the reasons why Poland was a “bloodland” at the end of the war. It traces the reactions of the various actors present at the time, including reference to Yiddish theater and newspapers.
Kichelewski, Audrey. ““S’enfuir et secourir”, 1944-1948. Brichah et l'émigration des Juifs de Pologne.” [“”Escaping and Saving”, 1944-1948. Brichah and the Emigration of Polish Jews”]. Bulletin de l’Institut Pierre Renouvin, no. 38, Mouvements clandestins et réseaux internationaux (2013/2): 49-68.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-bulletin-de-l-institu...
This article exposes the work of Brichah, a Polish organization which helped 120,000 Jews leave the country in the aftermath of the Second World War, based on Polish administrative archives and testimonies.
Kohn, Max. “L’humour et la psychanalyse.” [“Humor and psychoanalysis”]. Champ psy, no. 67 (2015/1): 125-31.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-champ-psychosomatique...
Jewish humor is explored in this article from both an anthropological and psychoanalytical stance, along with the role of Yiddish witticisms and their connection with linguistics and psychoanalysis.
Kotlerman, Ber Boris. “Des Juifs de Provence au XIIIe siècle aux Juifs d’Union Soviétique: le roman en Yiddish Galgal hakhoyzer (La Roue tourne) de Natan Zabare.” [“From 13th-Century Provence Jews to Soviet Union Jews: Natan Zabare’s Yiddish Novel Galgal hakhoyzer (The Wheel That Turns)”]. Revue des Études Juives 173, 1-2 (2014): 181-89.
http://poj.peeters-leuven.be/content.php?url=issue...
This article considers the last work of Soviet Yiddish writer Natan Zabare, a historical novel first published in Sovetish heymland in the 1970s, arguing for its uniqueness in the Jewish Soviet literary canon of the time.
Ksiazenicer-Matheron, Carole. “Traduire.” [“Translating”]. Plurielles n°18 : Que faisons-nous de notre histoire ?, AJHL (2013): 143-52.
http://www.ajhl.org/plurielles/PL18.PDF
An account of the author’s relationship to Yiddish language and culture and her work as a translator of Yiddish literature into French.
Kuhn-Kennedy, Fleur. “D’un je à l’autre : les langages d’André Schwarz-Bart.” [“From One “I” to the Other: The Many Languages of André Schwarz-Bart.”]. Plurielles no 18 : Que faisons-nous de notre histoire ?, AJHL (2013): 31-40.
http://www.ajhl.org/plurielles/PL18.PDF
This article reflects on heritage and the recreation of one’s own (hi)story through an examination of the novel Le Dernier des Justes (The Last of the Just), by André Schwarz-Bart, which creates an account out of a Jewish legacy which was never entirely inherited, and can therefore be voiced only through literary reconstruction and transference. Schwarz-Bart, whose native language was Yiddish (though a language he never learned to read or write), wrote his novels in what can be described as a French “haunted” by Yiddish.
Kuhn-Kennedy, Fleur, Eléonore Biezunski, Akvile Grigoraviciute, Daniel Kennedy and Constance Pâris de Bollardière. “Mark Turkow et sa ‘communauté imaginée’ : l'activité éditoriale comme engagement intellectuel.” [“Mark Turkow and His ‘Imagined Communities’: Publishing as Intellectual Commitment”]. Plurielles, no. 19 : Les Intellectuels juifs. Itinéraires, engagements, écritures, AJHL (2015): 140-50.
This article reflects the work of a few young scholars in Yiddish Studies in Paris on the “Dos poylishe yidntum” collection published by Mark Turkow in Buenos Aires between the years 1946 and 1966. The authors evoke the important and unusual role played by Turkow, not strictly editorial.
Lévy, Marie-Françoise. “La mémoire n'est pas chronologique. Entretien avec Robert Bober.” [“Memory is Not Chronological. Conversation with Robert Bober”]. Sociétés & Représentations, no. 38 (2014/2): 309-28.
http://www.cairn.info/revue-societes-et-representa...
Robert Bober, documentary filmmaker (Sholem Aleichem, a Yiddish Writer) and writer (Quoi de neuf sur la guerre), won in 2013 the Max Cukierman Prize for the promotion of Yiddish language and culture. In this interview he discusses his involvement with a language and culture lost and found again.
Meron, Guideon and Oded Chalom. “Moche Shapira, Tristesse sur le lac de Tibériade.” [“Moche Shapira, Sadness on Lake Tiberias”]. Plurielles no. 18 : Que faisons-nous de notre histoire ?, AJHL (2013): 82-90.
http://www.ajhl.org/plurielles/PL18.PDF
This study tells the story of journalist B. Waldak’s trip to Mandate Palestine in the summer of 1936, commissioned by the Forverts to report on Zionist activity. Waldak’s article ultimately informs its readers of the number of suicides amongst pioneers and of the difficulties and hardships they had to confront. Historian Gour Alroui, professor at the University of Haïfa, recently found the article in the YIVO archives.
Pâris De Bollardière, Constance. “Fajwel Schrager (né Ostrynski), bundiste, directeur de l’ORT France et du bureau parisien de l’Union mondiale-ORT. (Krynki (Empire russe), 2 mai 1907 – Paris, 13 juin 1979).” [“Fajwel Schrager (born Ostrynski), Bundist, Director of ORT France and the Parisian Bureau of World ORT. (Krynki (Russian Empire, May 2nd 1907- Paris, June 13th 1979)”]. Archives Juives, Vol. 48 (2015/1): 136-40.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-archives-juives-2015-...
This article presents the life and actions of Fajwel Schrager, a key figure in the French bundist movement. After arriving in France from Poland in 1927, he was involved with the Kultur-lige and was an editor for Naye Presse, the communist Yiddish daily. He joined the French army during the war and eventually went on to create in 1944, with others, the CRIF (the French Jewish umbrella organization).
Perego, Simon. “Du CDJC au Centre de documentation du Mémorial de la Shoah, 1943-2013 : documenter le génocide des Juifs d’Europe.” [“From the CDJC to the Resource Center of the Mémorial de la Shoah, 1943-2013: Documenting the Genocide of European Jews”]. Histoire@Politique, no. 22 (January-April 2014): 269-82.
http://www.histoire-politique.fr/index.php?numero=...
Created under the German occupation in Grenoble in 1943, the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine (“Center for Contemporary Jewish documentation”) was renamed Centre de documentation du Mémorial de la Shoah in 2013. An essential institution for researchers specialized in German and French anti-Semitic persecutions in France between 1940 and 1944 and in the study of the Holocaust, its resources have been used in many ways in the course of the last seven decades. The Centre de documentation is the home to an important collection of yizker-bikher as well as Yiddish language newspapers such as Naye prese.
Ringuet, Chantal. “Les aventures d’une traductrice dans le Yiddishland à l’ère postvernaculaire.” [“The Adventures of a Translator in Yiddishland in the Postvernacular Age”]. Convergences francophones 2.1 (2015): 72-90.
http://mrujs.mtroyal.ca/index.php/cf/article/view/...
An article discussing the act of translation from Yiddish in the “postvernacular era” (Jeffrey Shandler). Ringuet evokes the links between translation, transmission, and memory (Paul Ricoeur), focusing on the specificities of translating Yiddish into French in Montreal.
Sagnol, Marc. “Evocations de Galicie, D’Ustrzyki Dolne à Wyjnitz.” [“Evocations of Galicia, From Ustrzyki Dolne to Wyjnitz”]. Plurielles n°18 : Que faisons-nous de notre histoire ?, AJHL (2013): 153-62.
http://www.ajhl.org/plurielles/PL18.PDF
Marc Sagnol returns to the former towns of Kossow, Kuty and Wyjnitz, in the Carpathian Mountains, birthplace of writers and poets such as Josef Burg (Wyjnitz 1912- Czernowitz 2009), regular contributor to Tshernovitser bleter and Sovetish heymland.
Starck-Adler, Astrid. “Le Léviathan de Joseph Roth. La problématique juive et le shtetl.” [“Joseph Roth’s Leviathan. The Jewish Question and the Shtetl”]. Études Germaniques, no. 275 (2014/3): 423-39.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-germaniques-20...
A study of Joseph Roth’s novel The Leviathan and the theme of the Ostjuden.
Tauber, Michèle. “Itsik Manguer : la Bible revisitée par un poète yiddish troubadour.” [“Itzik Manger: The Bible Reinterpreted by a Yiddish Troubadour Poet”]. Tsafon 66 (2013-2014): 91-108.
http://www.tsafon-revue.com/?Sommaire-du-no-66-aut...
This article focuses on two collections by Itsik Manger published in 1935 and 1936: Di humesh-lider (The Pentateuch Songs) and Di megile-lider (The Megillah Songs), arguing that as a heir of the Jewish tradition, Manger invites the Biblical times into early twentieth-century Eastern Europe.
Tordjman, Laetitia. “Avant-gardes diasporiques et émergence du ‘tiers espace’ : Banjo de Claude McKay et Les Contrebandiers d’Oser Warszawski.” [“Diasporic Avant-Gardes and the Emergence of the ‘Third Space’: Claude McKay’s Banjo and Oser Warszawski’s Smugglers”]. Itinéraires, 2015-2 (2016).
http://itineraires.revues.org/2848
A comparative analysis of Jamaican-born writer Claude McKay and Polish Yiddish-speaking writer Oser Warszawski, which reads Homi Bhabha in order to evidence a desire to create a new space in their works of fiction—a “third-space” or an “in-between space.”
Zian, Yasmina. “Le “colporteur, le profiteur, et le bolchévique”. Trois visions du juif étranger en Belgique marquées par la Première Guerre Mondiale et la Révolution russe.” [“The “Peddler, the Parasite, and the Bolshevik”. Three Visions of the Foreign Jew in Belgium Marked by World War I and the Russian Revolution”]. MuséOn, Revue d’art et d’histoire du Musée Juif de Belgique, issue 6 (December 2014): 43-51.
http://www.new.mjb-jmb.org/index.php?option=com_co...
This article analyzes the public perception of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Belgium in the immediate aftermath of the First World War.
Journal Issues
Langues et cité, Bulletin de l’observatoire des pratiques linguistiques [Languages and City, Bulletin of the Observatory of Linguistic Practices], 27 (December 2015)
http://www.culturecommunication.gouv.fr/Politiques...
Le yiddish [Yiddish].
This special issue of the Bulletin of the Observatory of Linguistic Practices (a government organization that is part of the French Ministry of Culture) provides a summary of the history of Yiddish language and culture with a special focus on the history of Yiddish culture in France, with contributions by Yistkhok Niborski (“Yiddish Culture in France”), Tal Hever-Chybowski (“Sholem-Aleykhem in Paris” and “What is Yiddishism?”), Arnaud Bikard (“Majors Trends and Texts of Old Yiddish Literature”), Natalia Krynicka (“A Chronology of Yiddish Literature”), and Gilles Rozier (“A Thousand Doors Leading to Yiddish Culture”).