“History”

What might Yiddish studies stand to gain from recent books seeking to contextualize how the meaning and uses of term "ghetto" have changed over centuries?

Jun 13, 2023

Created out of necessity as a response to Tsarist repression, Hillis argues that circles of Russian emigre groups, or “colonies,” represented a crucial space in the development of Russian politics.

Oct 12, 2022

May 15, 2022

Estraikh paints a vibrant picture of Yiddish socialism’s fluidity and its many tendencies as it responded to the tensions and traumas of the twentieth century.

Oct 12, 2021

The history of Smocza, a Jewish Street in Warsaw, is not the story of the world-renowned figures, but rather of every person who ever lived or died there, including those who are lost to our collective memory.

Jun 07, 2020

The Jewish Labor Bund was a major force in Russian Jewish life, expanding the political arena to be more democratic in nature and driving the creation of a new political and economic discourse in Yiddish. So I was shocked to learn that in 1910, the Bund had a mere 609 members—down from approximately 35,000 five years earlier. The speed with which the Bund and other Jewish political parties in the Russian Empire could rise, fall, and rise again reflects the pressures the community was under, resulting in both sober caution and daring, desperate dreams.

May 06, 2020

Amye Rubinschneider interviews her mother and aunt in response to Josie Naron's blog post about a letter from their mother, Rubinschneider's grandmother, a teacher fired during the Red Scare.

Mar 03, 2020

Elena Hoffernberg interviews Gerben Zaagsma about his path to studying Yiddish in the Spanish Civil War; the potency and the frustrations of digital research; and the future of digital studies and Yiddish.

Feb 25, 2020

Sarah Zarrow discusses and reflects on her course "Representing Jewish Eastern Europe in Film" in which she asks students to think historically about the images of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, using films as primary sources that speak not only to a historical reality of their subject matter, but that also to the ideology and historical circumstances of the filmmaker and of Jewish life in the time and place the film was made.

Nov 20, 2019

Jul 08, 2019

POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was decades in the making and now tells the thousand year history of Polish Jews in the old heart of Jewish Warsaw. 

Jan 16, 2019

A translation of the introduction of Miriam Schulz's recent book, Der Beginn des Untergangs: Die Zerstörung der jüdischen Gemeinden in Polen und das Vermächtnis des Wilnaer Komitees ("Before the bow that was drawn": The Vilna Komitet and its documentation of the destruction of Polish Jewry).

May 14, 2018

A bulletin produced by the Vilna Komitet in 1939, included in Miriam Schulz's recent book, Der Beginn des Untergangs: Die Zerstörung der jüdischen Gemeinden in Polen und das Vermächtnis des Wilnaer Komitees ("Before the bow that was drawn": The Vilna Komitet and its documentation of the destruction of Polish Jewry), presented here in a new translation. 

May 14, 2018

Tova Benjamin on seeking authenticity at the theater.

Aug 01, 2017

Bernard Weinstein's memoir recounting the history of Jewish labor unions in the United States.

Jun 29, 2017

Excepts from Nokhem Shtif's accounts of pogroms in Ukraine during the Russian Civil War. 

Sep 15, 2016