“German”

Review

Review of Annegret Oehme's The Knight without Boundaries: Yiddish and German Arthurian Wingalois Adaptations

Ossnat Sharon-Pinto

Tracing the retellings of the Wigalois/Viduvilt tradition in Yiddish works across three centuries, Annegret Oehme's recent work offers an example of the value of adaptation theory for Jewish literature and Jewish history.

Review

Review of Samuel J. Spinner's Jewish Primitivism

Jeffrey A. Grossman

With his elegant new study, Jewish Primitivism, Samuel J. Spinner offers a new approach to the relationship between German and East European Jewish culture while also considering to what degree and in which ways differences among Jewish cultures reflect differences and interactions with the non-Jewish culture(s) around them.

Blog

Beyond the Theater of Memory: Reflections on Yiddish Singing in the German-Speaking World

Isabel Frey

Isabel Frey reflects on the challenges and possibilities of performing Yiddish music as a Jewish performer in Germany and Austria beyond the insulated Berlin klezmer scene.

Review

The Place of German in the History of Jewish Nationalism: Review of German as a Jewish Problem by Marc Volovici

Lea Greenberg

German as a Jewish Language challenges the distinctions made between “Jewish” and “non-Jewish” languages and concurrently emphasizes the permeability between disciplinary boundaries.

Pedagogy

Using Yiddish to Teach About German Antisemitism

Sonia Gollance

Nineteenth-century German attitudes toward Jewish speech are a powerful way to understand the pervasiveness and normalization of antisemitism in German society even at a time when genocide was unthinkable. 

Review

Die Geometrie des Verzichts: Deborah Vogel's poetry, essays, and letters in a new German translation and compilation

Anastasiya Lyubas

This volume, edited and translated by Anna Maja Misiak, is the first edition of Debora Vogel’s work in any language to include all of her prose and poetry.

Review

“Falsche Juden”: A Study of Performative Identities in German Literature

Joela Jacobs

Nike Thurn's recent book explores how Jewishness is performed in German literature. 

Review

Strangers in Berlin by Rachel Seelig

Sunny Yudkoff

Seelig's new book explores the city of Berlin during the Weimar period as a "transit station" for Jewish literature written in German, Yiddish, and Hebrew.

Review

Niemandssprache: A Biography of Itzik Manger

Jenna Ingalls

A review of Efrat Gal-Ed's new biography of Itzik Manger. 

Interview

"We Should Not Create Enemies": Europe's Refugee Crisis and Yiddish Song

Sonia Gollance

Austrian shepherd Hans Breuer on driving refugees across the border, and getting famous for singing Yiddish songs.