Jan 2019
This special issue of In geveb, edited by Ariel Evan Mayse, Naomi Seidman, Marc Caplan, and Daniel Reiser, explores a range of theological, philosophical, and other religious themes as presented in a wide variety of Yiddish writings. These articles are meant to be suggestive and initiatory, rather than exhaustive, and we aim to introduce our readers to a wealth of important religious texts expressed in Yiddish over some three and a half centuries. Such Yiddish works have regrettably often gone unnoticed by scholars of religious thought and theology, who, in failing to take these sources seriously, may fall prey to old stereotypes about Yiddish as an impoverished language of women and uneducated masses. In presenting these works, it is the goal of this special issue to demonstrate the ways in which the various subfields of Yiddish Studies — from intellectual history to philology to literary theory — are significantly enriched by an account of the variegated world of religious thought written in Yiddish.
