Blog

Through trans­la­tion and cre­ative writ­ing — in the form of found poems — Dalia Wolf­son explores the expe­ri­ences of the women recit­ing tkhines in the Ear­ly Mod­ern period.

Jul 12, 2024

An inter­view with trans­la­tor Ellen Cassedy about her two trans­la­tions of Yid­dish children’s poet­ry into Eng­lish: a col­lec­tion of pre­war children’s poems for a book called ​“Yid­dish Zoo” and a col­lec­tion of Boris Sandler’s ​“Good Morn­ing” poems for children.

Nov 16, 2020

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

As a com­pos­er and per­former of Yid­dish music, Rosen con­fronts the fact that most mem­bers of my audi­ence do not under­stand the lan­guage of the texts he per­forms. Yet, while music does not com­mu­ni­cate infor­ma­tion in the same way as lan­guage, it can lead lis­ten­ers towards spe­cif­ic asso­ci­a­tions and mean­ings. There are mul­ti­ple instances in which trans­la­tion, imag­ined or guid­ed, takes place dur­ing a musi­cal per­for­mance and the com­pos­er and per­former medi­ates these processes.

Dec 16, 2019

Maranne Windsperg­er inter­views punk­folk artist Daniel Kahn about his approach­es to transadap­ta­tion and translation.

Dec 16, 2019

The recent pub­li­ca­tion of Robert Alter’s long-await­ed com­plete trans­la­tion of the entire Hebrew Bible into Eng­lish is a en enor­mous achieve­ment. But Alter is not the first to tack­le this mon­u­men­tal project; almost a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er, Solomon Bloom­garten — bet­ter known by his pen name, Yehoash — pro­duced a land­mark trans­la­tion of the same text into Yiddish. 

Apr 05, 2019

In geveb​’s found­ing edi­tor dis­cuss­es dif­fer­ent mod­els of Yid­dish in rela­tion to world lit­er­a­ture through the fig­ures of Sholem Asch and Jacob Glatstein. 

Jan 23, 2017

Pro­fes­sor Ani­ta Norich con­cludes our series of reflec­tions on Trans­lat­ing Yid­dish in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry by recon­sid­er­ing our rela­tion­ship to ambi­gu­i­ty in translation. 

May 12, 2016

In geve­b’s Man­ag­ing Edi­tor for Trans­la­tions reflects on the need and pos­si­bil­i­ties for trans­lat­ing the archives of Yid­dish cul­ture, in addi­tion to the greats of its literature. 

May 10, 2016

Zackary Sholem Berg­er reflects upon the round­table dis­cus­sion at AJS last Decem­ber that inspired this series, and on his own moti­va­tions as a trans­la­tor from Yid­dish and a writer in Eng­lish and Yiddish. 

May 08, 2016