Special Issue

The Milgroym Project

Translation, articles, and commentary

In the inter­war peri­od, Yid­dish writ­ers and cul­tur­al activists pro­duced a num­ber of stun­ning lit­er­ary jour­nals. These jour­nals — often short-lived — are a fas­ci­nat­ing repos­i­to­ry of mod­ernist art, Yid­dish lit­er­a­ture and crit­i­cism, schol­ar­ship, and polit­i­cal polemic. Some were the projects of artis­tic groups, like the Khalyas­tre, while some were large­ly or sole­ly the work of an indi­vid­ual, like Uri Zvi Greenberg’s Alba­tros. Each is an invalu­able snap­shot of Yid­dish cul­ture in a spe­cif­ic time and place, dur­ing a peri­od that saw both incred­i­ble cre­ative pro­duc­tion in Yid­dish and dra­mat­ic changes for Yid­dish, for Jew­ish life in Europe, and for the course of mod­ern Euro­pean history.

In geveb has part­nered with the His­tor­i­cal Jew­ish Press to make some of the most impor­tant Yid­dish lit­er­ary jour­nals of the inter­war peri­od new­ly acces­si­ble. Begin­ning with Mil­groym—arguably the most visu­al­ly stun­ning of the inter­war Yid­dish jour­nals — and its Hebrew lan­guage com­pan­ion, Rimon, we will be pub­lish­ing trans­la­tions of select­ed writ­ing from the jour­nals along with com­men­tary, crit­i­cism, and new schol­ar­ship explor­ing the wealth of mate­r­i­al these jour­nals pub­lished. Full col­or scans of the jour­nals are avail­able through the JPress web­site and will be fea­tured through­out these pages. New trans­la­tions and schol­ar­ship will be added to this spe­cial issue reg­u­lar­ly. And the project will expand to oth­er jour­nals in the future, some of which are already avail­able on JPress. Want to con­tribute to this col­lab­o­ra­tive schol­ar­ly project? We hope so, and invite you to con­tact us.

See full scans of Mil­groym on the JPress site.

Contents

Texts & Translation

וועגן דער מאָהליווער שול: זכרונות

On the Mogilev Shul: Recollections

El Lissitzky

Translation by Madeleine Cohen

Recollections of a visit to a wooden synagogue in Mogilev by the great modernist artist El Lissitzky.

Blog

Milgroym and Rimon, Fraternal Twins

Naomi Brenner

A comparison of the Yiddish journal Milgroym and its Hebrew counterpart Rimon, both published in Berlin in the mid-1920s.

Texts & Translation

דער טױער־מאָטיװ אין דער בוך־קונסט

The Motif of the Porch

Rachel Wischnitzer

Translation by Rachelle Grossman and Saul Noam Zaritt

Milgroym editor Rachel Wischnitzer’s essay on illustrated Hebrew manuscripts

Blog

Avant-garde Journals in geveb: A Manifesto for Yiddish Cybernetics, Part 1

Raphael Koenig and The Editors

Announcing a hybrid avant-garde academic project linking the early 20th century with the early 21st.


Contributors

Naomi Brenner

Ohio State University

Susanne Marten-Finnis

University of Portsmouth and University of Bremen

Saul Noam Zaritt

Harvard University

Rachelle Grossman

Harvard University

Daniel Kennedy

Farlag Press

Sophie Duvernoy

Yale University

Partners