“gender”

Article

“An altogether unusual love and understanding”: The Shomer Sisters and the Gender Politics of Shund Theatre

Sonia Gollance

Examining Rose Shomer Bachelis and Miriam Shomer Zunser in the context of their famous shund-writing family, this article argues that their operetta "Der liebes tants" -- a love triangle with an Apache dance motif -- should be read against the grain to emphasize the importance of sisterhood.

Pedagogy

Critical Language Pedagogy: A Report from an AJS Roundtable

Meyer Weinshel, Sara Feldman and Orian Zakai

A report from a roundtable with instructors of Jewish languages on the current role of critical identities in our pedagogies. 

Blog

IkhOykh: Workplace Harassment and Yiddish Literature

Sonia Gollance and Jessica Kirzane

Yiddish literature abounds with #MeToo moments — representations of sexual exploitation and misconduct. If our list here, which is by no means complete or exhaustive, uncovered so many troubling scenes, how many more of these scenes unsettle Yiddish literature as a whole? And what does the proliferation of such scenes tell us about the role these dynamics played in the lives of Yiddish speakers –– what they expected from, feared, or experienced in the workplace?

Pedagogy

Teaching Guide for Leon Kobrin's "Blessed is the True Judge"

Jessica Kirzane

This teaching guide for Leon Kobrin's short story "Blessed is the True Judge" offers brainstorming ideas, discussion questions, and essay prompts for high school and college class rooms. 

Interview

Confessions of a Yiddish Writer and Other Essays: An Interview with Goldie Morgentaler

Matthew Johnson and Corbin Allardice

Matthew Johnson and Corbin Allardice talk with Goldie Morgentaler, Chava Rosenfarb’s daughter and editor and translator of a recently published collection of Rosenfarb's essays. 

Blog

“Tear Up The Harsh Decrees”: Reflections on Tkhines for the High Holidays

Eve Romm

Eve Romm looks to tkhines — Yiddish women’s devotional literature — for High Holidays prayers that "feel earnest, tender, and richly human."

Blog

The Tsene-rene: In Search of a Seventeenth-Century Yiddish Bible in Modern-Day Jerusalem

Avi Blitz

Avi Blitz discusses the popularity and gender-inflected attitude toward the Tsene-rene in Haredi communities in contemporary Israel.

Blog

Making Sense of Squiggles: Teaching and Learning Yiddish Stenography

Elena Hoffenberg

The invisible labor, and liberation, of a shorthand for Yiddish. 

Article

A Poetic Paradox: Gender and Self in Anna Margolin’s Mary Cycle

Melissa Weininger

Weininger analyzes Anna Margolin's cycle of poems entitled "Mary," exploring her use of Christological themes and figures and the expression of identity and self-definition in the poems. 

Blog

Di Fester Shvester review Got fun nekome (God of Vengeance)

Clare Fester and Kate Fester

Just in time for the new spring run, a review of the New Yiddish Rep's production of Sholem Asch's (in)famous play. 

Review

The Marriage Plot

Dory Fox

Naomi Seidman's new book examines the Ashkenazi Jewish experience of modernization through the representation of changing ideas about love and sexuality in literature.