“review”

Review

Review of Lea Schäfer's Syntax and Morphology of Yiddish Dialects

Rachel Steindel Burdin

Lea Schäfer demonstrates what can be learned about variations in pre-Holocaust Yiddish from the materials of the Language and Cultural Archive of Ashkenazic Jewry.

Review

Review of Polish Jewish Culture Beyond the Capital, edited by Halina Goldberg and Nancy Sinkoff with Natalia Aleksiun

Elena Hoffenberg

Warsaw casts a long shadow on other cities and the provinces in this account of Jewish culture throughout the Polish lands.

Texts & Translation

פֿראַדל שטאָק

Fradl Shtok

Rokhl Auerbach

Translation by Anita Norich, David Mazower and Faith Jones

A translation of Rokhl Auerbach's review of Fradl Shtok's short story collection. 

Review

Treating Emotions in a Tempest: Review of Amy Simon’s Emotions in Yiddish Ghetto Diaries

Julie Dawson

Amy Simon deploys empathic reading to interpret the range of emotions contained in Yiddish diaries written in the ghettos of Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna.

Review

Back to the Ghetto

William Pimlott

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?

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 Rebecca Margolis's Yiddish Lives On: Strategies of Language Transmission

Miriam Borden

Rebecca Margolis' Yidish Lebt: Yiddish Lives On: Strategies of Language Transmission explores how a diverse range of native, heritage, and new speakers have ensured not only the continuity of a minority language widely thought to be endangered, but evolved Yiddish into a site of creative renewal in the Jewish world.

Review

Review of Marina Mogilner’s A Race for the Future: Scientific Visions of Modern Russian Jewishness

James Nadel

With a focus on Russian Jewish race scientists, Mogilner traces how biology informed notions of Jewish difference mobilized by communal organizations and political activists in imperial Russia and the early Soviet period.

Blog

Review: Once Upon a Time the Fire Burned Brighter: Ballads From the Yiddish Gothic

Zeke Levine

On their album Once Upon a Time the Fire Burned Brighter: Ballads From the Yiddish Gothic, Jeremiah Lockwood and Ricky Gordon, performing as the duo Gordon Lockwood, conjure a bygone world.

Blog

Songs to Make It Better: A Review of the Third and Fourth Unternationals by Daniel Kahn and Psoy Korolenko

Uri Schreter

Uri Schreter reviews two new albums from Daniel Kahn and Psoy Korolenko.

Blog

“Fragmented Narratives”: A Story of One Yiddish Word

Ekaterina Kuznetsova

Ekaterina Kuznetsova reviews Elianna Renner’s new exhibit in Berlin, “Pitshipoy,” open through November 6, 2020, which incorporates Yiddish into contemporary art and discussions about the politics of collective memory.

Review

A Double Dose of Early Twentieth-Century Yiddish Talush-hood: Two New Translations by Daniel Kennedy

Ri J. Turner

In new translations by Daniel Kennedy, Hersh Dovid Nomberg’s Warsaw Stories (White Goat Press) and Zalman Shneour’s A Death: Notes of a Suicide (Wakefield Press) can rightfully be labeled “classic”; they reach across time and space to name an eternal — and unromantic — facet of human experience.

Review

Labor, Love, and Life in Immigrant London

David Slucki

In this groundbreaking study, Lachs draws upon often ignored documents of popular culture (conventionally written off as shund by her predecessors) in order to paint a vivid picture of working class immigrant London at the turn of the 20th century.

Review

Review of A Rainbow Thread: An Anthology of Queer Jewish Texts From the First Century to 1969

Gregg Drinkwater

Sienna’s book attempts to set the record straight (as it were) by bringing together and deeply annotating 120 diverse Jewish texts that each shed some light on Jewish LGBTQ lives, Jewish histories of same-sex eroticism, and Jewish experiences of gender transgression.

Blog

Jewish Victims, Jewish Virtue, but Not Much Jewish History: A Review of The Argentinian Prostitute Play

Tova Benjamin

Tova Benjamin reviews The Argentinian Prostitute Play, a new play by Reuven Glezer staged as part of the 2019 Broadway Bound Theatre Festival. 

Blog

Northern Voices: New Yiddish Song in Sweden

Jewlia Eisenberg

Eisenberg reviews Shtoltse Lider, a multimedia stage show, with songs in Yiddish and English, and explanations and evocations in Swedish, from Swedish duo Ida and Louise. 

Review

Charlie, [gesturing to Fascist General Franco on screen] fucking swine isn’t he?

William Pimlott

William Pimlott reviews Gill Tofell's Jews, Cinema and Public Life in Interwar Britain and Alan Dein's Music is the most beautiful language in the World: Yiddisher Jazz in London’s East End 1920s-1950s.

Review

What Does Justice Mean, Decades Later?: Review of Ida Fink’s Der tish in Paris

Ri J. Turner

Ri Turner reviews the World Premiere of Ida Fink’s Der tish in Paris.

Review

Review of A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture by Shachar M. Pinsker

Jeffrey Yoskowitz

Shachar M. Pinsker’s latest work is a lively examination of the role of cafés as meeting grounds for Jewish writers and thinkers in the modern period of transnational migration, from 1848-1939.

Review

How to be Both: Officials and Artists Vying for the Limelight

Iaroslava Strikha

Mayhill Fowler's book shines light on the blind spots of national cultural histories of turn of the century Ukraine, following the often uneasy interface between authorities and art institutions.