Blog

Her Birth and Later Years and Pomiędzy światami/ Between Worlds are more than poems and essays; these books are a testament to Irena Klepfisz’s life as a survivor, a Jewish lesbian, a Yiddishist, and a political activist.

Oct 21, 2024

An interview with a pioneering Yiddish feminist translator.

Jun 19, 2023

A lyrical essay on relationships between a translator and previous generations: Liba Augenfeld, a native Yiddish speaker who lived in Vilna before the Holocaust and could share linguistic and cultural knowledge she knew first hand, and the translator’s own mother who had a conflicted relationship with Yiddish.

May 25, 2023

Joanna Russ’ 1983 schematic of strategies and dynamics that suppress women’s writing — along with some additions specific to modern Yiddish culture — helps explain both the historical suppression of Yiddish women writers and more recent challenges to feminist scholarship on women’s Yiddish writing. Faith Jones guides us to make the Yiddish future together, and to make our place in it.

May 31, 2022

The fabled booklet Di Froyen Women and Yiddish: Tribute to the Past, Directions for the Future: Conference Proceedings, published in 1997, which records the Di froyen conference held October 28-29, 1995, reminds us of the conference’s legacy as a turning point for women in Yiddish. More than that, it underscores participants’ visionary goals and uphill work to achieve them. It also raises questions of gender, language, and power that continue to animate contemporary feminist Yiddishist debates.

Apr 28, 2022

What kind of life will there be after the Resurrection of the Dead?

I may not believe in an afterlife or in resurrections, but I do believe that cultures can be reawakened and revived in new generations.

Jan 07, 2020

In August 2018, Australian theatre maker and director Samara Hersch, along with Chamber Made, a company operating at the ‘nexus of contemporary performance, music and sound’, presented Dybbuks – a production in three acts exploring ideas of possession; of women being with the dead; of desire, ritual, and voice. Here, Nicola Menser Hearn reviews the production and discusses it with Hersch.

Nov 30, 2018

On making community and a Yiddish feminist podcast, or: where the academy ends and the self begins.

Aug 15, 2017