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Poetics, negotiation, and tradaptation are highlighted in this issue as concepts of translation that open up a text’s performative dimension and potential (via and with actors, media, “word material”, enactment). They showcase and scrutinize at the same time the moment of “experience”--the moment when originals, translations, translators, and other actors meet in public and in private, while negotiating between different forms of expectations.

Is there a more extraordinary and self-lacerating letter in all of Yiddish literature than this airmail from its most beloved poet to its most celebrated novelist?

David Mazower is chief curator and writer of Yiddish: A Global Culture, the major new permanent exhibition at the Yiddish Book Center, where he is Research Bibliographer and Editorial Director.