“Sutzkever”

Mel Konner’s compelling translation of Helfandn bay Nakht (1950) takes the reader through Sutzkever’s Nesiye iber Afrika, evoking stories of wise African kings, masked hunters, shape-shifting prey, lovers divided by crocodile rivers, and the creation of man beginning with elephant tusks.

Mar 03, 2025

A new, dynamic translation of Abraham Sutzkever's poem about the burial and regeneration of "the Jewish word." 

Jan 06, 2025

Annabel Cohen translates Abraham Sutzkever's poem, "Paris."

Dec 06, 2022

Rojanski’s work provides a comprehensive picture of the events and personalities that chart the history of Yiddish in Israel.

Oct 20, 2021

Abraham Sutzkever's poetry is often read within the confines of "Holocaust literature". This essays reads a selection of Sutzkever’s poetry against the Holocaust, against the apocalypse, and against the horizons of meaning that the label of "Holocaust literature" might impose.

Jun 30, 2020

May 16, 2019

New research and translation of Avrom Sutzkever's work leads to a multilingual, multinational convening of Yiddishists in Copenhagen, Denmark and in Lund, Sweden. 

Jun 28, 2018

A playlisticle of Yiddish speech acts available in digital formats.

Jun 25, 2018

Not a translation! An original English-language Yiddish poem. 

Apr 18, 2018

Three poems from Abraham Sutzkever’s collection Poems from My Diary.

Dec 05, 2016

New translations of six poems from Sutzkever's 1960 collection Oasis.

Dec 20, 2015

Daniel Kahn talks about his musical influences, how all of his languages interact with each other in his songs, and what it means to “tradapt” a song across languages and time.

Oct 01, 2015

Sutzkever's cycle of poems about his childhood years spent in Siberia: "In the light-dark snowed-under / village of my childhood in Siberia / blossoms bloom from shadows’ eyes— / countless quicksilver blossoms..."

Sep 08, 2015

An essay on the late Benjamin Harshav, one of the most important literary scholars of the last decades, and how in his work Yiddish served as a bridge between Europe, Israel, and North America, between poetry, translation, and scholarship. 

Aug 26, 2015

A prose poem from Abraham Sutzkever's 1975 volume Green Aquarium. "A man with a heavy bag on his back approaches a dark city in a rainstorm..." 

Aug 12, 2015

A review of Avraham Novershtern's new book on a century of American Yiddish literature. Our reviewer asks: was Yiddish literature in America a cultural enterprise that was doomed from the start or one that generated multiple beginnings? 

Aug 12, 2015