Jun 2021
A collection of translations, articles, and reflections about different aspects of Jewish encounters in Yiddish with slavery and race in the United States.
Reckoning with American Racism and Racist Violence
Our 2021 updated Special Issue in honor of the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, in partnership with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Blog
Reckoning with American Racism and Racist Violence, af Yiddish
Jessica Kirzane
In this updated version of our special issue on Race, af Yiddish, we offer a range of texts about local and international Yiddish representations of early twentieth century American racist violence.
Jun 25, 2021
Blog
“The Most Awful Scenes”: The Tulsa Massacre and Racist Violence in the Yiddish Press
Uri Schreter
Uri Schreter traces attitudes about race in the United States evident in Yiddish newspapers’ coverage of the Tulsa massacre — often simultaneously denouncing the violence and propagating racist ideas.
Jun 25, 2021
Blog
The Skotsboro Boys in Soviet Minsk
Andrew Sloin
Andrew Sloin guides us through a Soviet Yiddish pamphlet about the Scottsboro trial in the United States to reveal how this incident “became a prism to refract the long history of racial and class domination in the United States and a rallying cry to cultivate the spirit of internationalist socialist solidarity among Soviet readers.”
Jun 25, 2021
Pedagogy
Teaching Race Through Yiddish Literature in Israel
Hannah Pollin-Galay
In this piece Hannah Pollin-Galay reflects on the possibilities and limitations of teaching race through Yiddish literature at an Israeli university.
Jun 25, 2021
Texts & Translation
An Excerpt from Mississippi
Leyb Malakh
Translation by Ellen Perecman
Edited by Alyssa Quint
An excerpt from Leyb Malakh’s Yiddish-language play entitled Mississippi, which was written and performed for the first time in Warsaw in 1935.
Jun 25, 2021
Texts & Translation
Selections from Neger-Dikhtung in Amerike (Negro-Poetry in America)
Anita Scott Coleman , Angelina Weld Grimke and Clarissa Scott Delaney
Translation by Robert Magidoff
Edited by Eli Rosenblatt
Eli Rosenblatt introduces three poems by African American women poets of the Harlem Renaissance, translated into Yiddish by Robert Magidoff for the 1936 anthology Neger-Dikhtung in America (Negro-Poetry in America), published in Moscow.
Jun 25, 2021
Texts & Translation
A Life in Peril (Scenes from the South)
Yerakhmiel Lazarson
Translation by Josh Parshall
A short vignette, taken from a collection of children’s literature published in 1933, exploring anti-Black violence.
Jun 24, 2021
Article
Af der shvel un in der fremd: A feuilleton on Yiddish, Race, and the American Literary Imagination
Adam Zachary Newton
Adam Zachary Newton examines the American Jewish literary impulse to claim both whiteness and alienation while identifying with Black Americans.
Jun 21, 2016
Article
Beyond the Color Line: Jews, Blacks, and the American Racial Imagination
Jennifer Young
NYU Doctoral Candidate Jennifer Young explores the complicated ways in which American Jews claimed whiteness while examining and often identifying with Black American struggles.
Jun 21, 2016
Joseph Opatoshu's "Lintsheray"
A translation of Opatoshu’s 1920s story about a lynching in the American south and excerpts of two articles analyzing the representation of race in the story.
Texts & Translation
לינטשערײַ
A Lynching
Joseph Opatoshu
Translation by Jessica Kirzane
The gritty, and controversial 1920s account of a lynching by Joseph Opatoshu.
Jun 21, 2016
Article
Yiddish Exceptionalism: Lynching, Race, and Racism in Opatoshu’s “Lintsheray”
Marc Caplan
How can Yiddish describe the scene of a lynching of a black man? Marc Caplan examines the language strategies of Opatoshu’s “Lintsheray.”
Jun 21, 2016
Article
“This is How a Generation Grows”: Lynching as a Site of Ethical Loss in Opatoshu’s “Lintsheray”
Jessica Kirzane
What can Opatoshu’s controversial story about a lynching tell us about the complex Jewish encounter with American culture and the potential loss of an ethical tradition.
Jun 21, 2016
Texts & Translation
אַ שאלה
A Problem
Joseph Opatoshu
Translation by Zeke Levine and Raphael Halff
Short story from Milgroym issue 6
Jul 01, 2019
Isaac Meir Dik's translation of "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
A translation of Isaac Meir Dik’s introduction to his translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and a teaching guide for this translation.
Texts & Translation
די שקלאַפֿערײַ אָדער די לײַב־אייגנשאַפֿט
Slavery or Serfdom
Isaac Meir Dik
Translation by Eli Rosenblatt
Dik’s introduction to his 1868 translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
Nov 17, 2015
Pedagogy
Teaching Guide for Dik’s “Slavery or Serfdom” (trans. Rosenblatt)
Jessica Kirzane
The first in a series of teaching guides, this one for Eli Rosenblatt’s translation of Isaac Meir Dik’s introduction to his 1868 adaptation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).
Oct 25, 2016
Black Lives Matter
Blog
Voices from Black Lives Matter Protests: קולות פֿון בלעק לײַװס מעטער פּראָטעסטן
Zackary Sholem Berger, Sara Feldman and Anthony Russell
Bilingual reflections compiled by Zackary Sholem Berger and authored by Berger, Sara Feldman, and Anthony Russell, Jewish activists who took part in recent Black Lives Matter protests.
Jun 19, 2020