1. In pardes fun moderner yidisher literatur | Lesarten moderner Literatur | Readings in Modern Literature

Lawrence Rosenwald On Itzik Manger ’s “Khave un der eplboym”

A close reading of Itzik Manger's poem, "Khave un der eplboym" ("Eve and the Apple Tree"), in the style of Anglo-American New Criticism, it focuses first on the poem's mode of reading and rewriting the biblical story, second on its elusive and suggestive presentation of voice and person.

Rosenwald: On Itzik Manger's Khave un der eplboym

Efrat Gal-Ed Spur und Differenz: Zu Kadya Molodowskys Sulamith-Gedichten

Was fasziniert moderne jiddische Dichter an biblischen Motiven und Stoffen? Hat ihre Polytextualität ein größeres ›kulturelles Kapital‹? Im Fokus stehen zwei Sulamith-Gedichte Kadya Molodowskys, deren poetisches Verfahren anhand ihres Umgangs mit der biblischen und rabbinischen Figur der Sulamith untersucht wird.

Gal-Ed: Spur und Differenz

Barbara E. Mann Of Madonnas and Magdalenes: Reading Mary in Modernist Hebrew and Yiddish Women’s Poetry

This article explores the possibility of writing a shared literary history for Hebrew and Yiddish poetry by women, drawing on the work of Anna Margolin (1887–1952) and Leah Goldberg (1900–1970).

Mann: Of Madonnas and Magdalenes

Kathryn Hellerstein Against “Girl Songs”: Gender and Sex in a Yiddish Modernist Journal

Sexual themes in poems by women from the miscellany Shriftn, (New York, 1912–1926) reflect ideas of gender in Yiddish literature. Comparing poems by Glazer, Weprinsky, Dropkin, Pevzner, Kling, and Lee with one by Landau, this piece analyzes assumptions about and actualities of women and poetry.

Hellerstein: Against Girl Songs

Jordan Finkin The Consolation of Sadness: The Curious Exile of ­Dovid Hofshteyn’s Troyer

This essay examines Hofshteyn’s 1922 poetic cycle Troyer (Sadness) in terms of its engagement with the literary trope of exile, in both its Jewish inflection and in conversation with other key texts in Western literature, most notably Ovid’s own famous exilic text Tristia.

Finkin: The Consolation of Sadness

Heather Valencia From Der tsirk to Erev mayn farbrenung: The Transformation of Experience in Two Poems by Avrom Sutzkever

This paper compares two poems by Avrom Sutzkever that are both based on an ordeal he suffered in the Vilna ghetto in 1941. It discusses how the differences between the works illuminate Sutzkever’s process of transforming experience into art.

Valencia: From Der tsirk to Erev mayn farbrenung

Jeffrey A. Grossman The Invention of Love? Or How Moyshe Leyb Halpern Read Heinrich Heine

This article explores the relationship of Yiddish poet Moyshe Leyb Halpern to Heinrich Heine and its relevance for Yiddish poetry.

Grossman: The Invention of Love

Harriet Murav Marking Time: Bergelson and Bergson

This paper examines David Bergelson's early Yiddish prose fiction in light of the French philosopher Henri Bergson, who played a crucial role in early twentieth-century theoretical and artistic inquiries about memory, time, and consciousness.

Murav: Marking Time

Ken Frieden Yiddish in Abramovitsh’s Literary Revival of Hebrew

Yiddish played a central role in the emergence of modern Hebrew prose. Following Bialik’s claims regarding “Mendele’s nussāḥ,” however, the Yiddish influence has been neglected. Study of Abramovitsh’s Hebrew versions of Yiddish novels shows the author’s direct borrowing from Yiddish.

Frieden: Yiddish in Abramovitsh’s Literary Revival of Hebrew

Jan Schwarz “Nothing But a Bundle of Paper ”: Isaac Bashevis Singer ’s Literary Career in America

The article synthesizes the current scholarship about Isaac Bashevis Singer’s work by focusing on his re-invention of himself as a Jewish American writer in English post-1945. Singer’s work in Yiddish and English are examined as belonging to one corpus without a priori privileging the Yiddish work.

Schwarz: Nothing But a Bundle of Paper

Sabine Koller Mentshelekh un stsenes: Rahel Szalit-Marcus illustriert Sholem Aleichem

Der Beitrag analysiert die 1922 im Berliner Klal-Verlag erschienenen, ästhetisch anspruchsvollen Illustrationen der polnisch-jüdischen Künstlerin Rahel Szalit-Marcus (1892/94–1942) zu Sholem Aleichems unvollendetem Roman Motl Peyse dem khazns (Motl, Sohn des Kantors Peyse).

Koller: Mentshelekh un stsenes

Alyssa Quint Avrom Goldfaden’s Sheygets Theater

This essay explores Avrom Goldfaden’s claim of being “the father of the Yiddish theater” as a disingenuous strategy. By claiming Jewish patrimony, he sought to delegitimize a number of early Yiddish playwrights who had relationships of various kinds to Christianity. Goldfaden’s nuanced ideas on Jewish identity are depicted in his historical operetta Doctor Almasada (1882).

Quint: Avrom Goldfaden’s Sheygets Theater

Nathan Cohen Sherlock Holmes in the Pale of Settlement: Yiddish Crime Stories 1860 – 1914

This article analyzes the phenomenon of "Crime Stories" in Yiddish over a period of more than 50 years. It reviews the various publications that could be included in this category, highlighting their significance on the background of the wider development of Yiddish literature during this period.

Cohen: Sherlock Holmes in the Pale of Settlement

2. Eltere tekstn | Ältere Jiddistik | Early Yiddish

Erika Timm Abraham ibn Ezra und das Maiśebuch

Der Beitrag untersucht einen als Gegengeschichte zu Ritualmordlegenden entstandenen Erzähltyp wahrscheinlich sefardischen Ursprungs, der schon vor 1600 auch auf Jiddisch überliefert ist und bis ins persische Judentum verfolgt werden kann.

Timm: Abraham ibn Ezra und das Maisebuch

Wulf-Otto Dreessen Dovid und Wolfdietrich

Durch Strophenform und Sprachstil gehört das Schmu’elbuch in das Umfeld mittelhochdeutscher Heldendichtung. Aber nicht das wiederholt in Anspruch genommene Nibelungenlied, sondern viel eher der Wolfdietrich kommt als Vorbild des Schmu’elbuchs in Betracht. Hierfür spricht auch ein rezeptionsgeschichtliches Zeugnis von 1595 aus Mantua.

Dreessen: Dovid und Wolfdietrich

Diana Matut What Happened in Hamburg… A Yiddish Document about Polish Jews in Germany during the Early Modern Period

The essay provides an edition and commentary of a Yiddish song about a Polish Jew in Hamburg and Wandsbek (Amsterdam 1675) in the context of the history of Eastern European Jews in the German speaking lands during the Early Modern Period.

Matut: What Happened in Hamburg

Simon Neuberg Di shprakh fun dem bal-ha-Tsenerenes Meylits-Yoysher

The article presents the main features of the language of Jacob ben Isaac Ashkenazi, the author of Tse'enah-uRe'enah, as they appear in and compared with his second book Melits-Yosher. It discusses the (few) occurrences of words of Slavic origin.

Neuberg: Di shprakh fun Meylits-yoysher

3. Lingvistik | Sprachwissenschaft | Linguistics

Roland Gruschka Von Petach Tikwa über Jaffa nach Meknès : Eine jiddische Postkarte aus dem Jahre 1902 als sprachgeschichtliche Quelle

This article presents an edition of a Yiddish postcard sent by Hayim Moshe Slor, one of the founders of Petah Tikvah, to his brother in Morocco in 1902. Features of Slor's Yiddish are documented and interpreted as a result of dialect-and-language contacts in 19th century Yishuv.

Gruschka: Von Petach Tikwa ueber Jaffa nach Meknes

Ewa Geller Die vielfach verkannte Jiddische Grammatik des Ludwik Zamenhof

1909 wurden Fragmente der ersten normativen jiddischen Grammatik veröffentlicht, deren Autor der künftige Esperantobegründer war. Zamenhofs jugendliches (um 1880) Werk wurde damals abgelehnt. Im Folgenden wird die bemerkenswert moderne Grammatik für die heutige Jiddistik neu entdeckt.

Geller: Die Jiddische Grammatik des Ludwik Zamenhof

Jürg Fleischer und Lea Schäfer Der Kasus nach Präposition in westjiddischen Quellen des ( langen) 19. Jahrhunderts

Unlike in German and East and West Slavic, the dative is the only case that can follow prepositions in Eastern Yiddish. This also holds true for Western Yiddish sources, thus indicating potential evidence for the genetic unity of Western and Eastern Yiddish.

Fleischer/Schaefer: Der Kasus nach Praeposition

Alexander Beider Eastern Yiddish Toponyms of German Origin

The essay deals with the etymology of Yiddish place names in Eastern Europe by analyzing Christian sources from the 15th century. It shows that numerous toponyms were borrowed by Jews not from Slavs, but from local Germans and emphasizes the importance of the colonial German for the development of Yiddish.

Beider: Eastern Yiddish Toponyms of German Origin

Moshe Taube On the Relative Marker Vos and Yiddish Post-Modifiers

The paper deals with some aspects of the syntax of Attribution missing from Yiddish grammars. Four types of post-modifiers with vos are introduced: 1. vos + Past Participle; 2. vos + Adverb; 3. vos + Prepositional Phrase; and 4. vos + quotation.

Taube: Vos and Postmodifiers

Steffen Krogh How Satmarish is Haredi Satmar Yiddish?

This paper describes and discusses two grammatical traits that render Haredi Satmar Yiddish in and around New York City different from its European ancestor in Transylvania and sketches the circumstances under which these traits may have arisen.

Krogh: How Satmarish is Haredi Satmar Yiddish

4. Kultur un politik | Kultur und Politik | Culture and Politics

Gennady Estraikh Zalman Wendroff: The Forverts Man in Moscow

Zalman Wendroff served as the Moscow correspondent of the New York daily Forverts. This article analyzes reportages by Wendroff and his correspondence with two leading figures in the American socialist movement: Abraham Cahan, the Forverts editor, and Baruck Vladeck, the paper’s manager.

Estraikh: Zalman Wendroff

Rebecca Margolis Holocaust and Post-Holocaust Yiddish Theater in Montreal: A Canadian Response to Catastrophe

This study examines wartime and post-war ventures to establish permanent, locally trained Yiddish theater troupes in Montreal by Chayele Grober (1894–1878) and Dora Wasserman (1919–2003). These studios offer responses to the Holocaust that bracket a transitional period in Yiddish life.

Margolis: Holocaust and Post-Holocaust Yiddish Theater

Tamar Lewinsky Un az in Treblinke bin ikh yo geven iz vos? H. Leyvik und die Sheyres-hapleyte

Der jiddische Dichter H. Leyvik war in vielfacher Weise mit den jüdischen Displaced Persons im Nachkriegsdeutschland verbunden. Der Beitrag beleuchtet seine persönlichen, literarischen und publizistischen Begegnungen mit den Überlebenden.

Lewinsky: Leyvik und die Sheyres-hapleyte

Barry Trachtenberg Bridging the “Great and Tragic Mekhitse”: Pre-war European Yiddish Serials and the Transition to Post-Khurbn America

Few European pre-WWII Yiddish-language serials published during and post-war. This essay examines the YIVO Bleter (Vilna, New York, 1931–1980) and Di algemeyne entsiklopedye (Berlin, Paris, New York, 1932–1966) to understand 20th century Jewish history via continuity rather than rupture.

Trachtenberg: Bridging the Great and Tragic Mekhitse

Rachel Rojanski Yiddish Journals for Women in Israel: Immigrant Press and Gender Construction (1948 – 1952)

The connection between written Yiddish and women as readers in modern Yiddish culture is examined through Yiddish journals for women in the State of Israel. This encompasses questions of gender in immigrant and minority societies as well as gender images in the nascent state of Israel.

Rojanski: Yiddish Journals for Women in Israel

Aya Elyada Deutsche Übersetzungen jiddischer Literatur: Fünf Jahrhunderte interkultureller Austausch und Kontakt

Der Aufsatz behandelt die lange und abwechslungsreiche Geschichte deutscher Übersetzungen aus dem Jiddischen von der frühen Neuzeit bis zum heutigen Tag. Die Grundzüge dieser Tradition werden nachgezeichnet, und die Kontinuitäten bzw. Veränderungen ihrer Entwicklung hervorgehoben.

Elyada: Deutsche Uebersetzungen jiddischer Literatur

Shlomo Berger Religion, Culture, Literature: On Yehoyesh’s Preface to His Yiddish Bible Translation

The article analyzes the Yehoyesh’s unfinished preface for his Yiddish Bible translation, published in the 1941 edition. Yehoyesh succinctly tackles questions relating to the role of the Bible for Yiddish letters, the relationship between Hebrew and Yiddish, the type of language to be employed in Yiddish writings, the Jewishness of Yiddish, and his translation strategy.

Berger: Religion Culture Literature

Aleksandra Geller Auseinandersetzung über die jiddische Orthographie in der Kulturzeitschrift Literarishe bleter

Der Beitrag stellt die Diskussion zur Orthographiereform des Jiddischen dar, die in der Warschauer Wochenschrift Literarishe bleter im Jahre 1926 geführt wurde. Insbesondere werden die kontroversen Fragen zur Latinisierung der Schrift und Phonetisierung der hebräischen Wörter angesprochen.

Geller: Die Literarishe bleter und die jiddische Orthographie

Asya Vaisman “A is for the Almighty”: Transmitting Values through Contemporary Hasidic Children’s Literature

This paper examines how contemporary Hasidic children's literature is used as a didactic tool to instill religious values, to solidify traditional roles, and to create a self-contained world that shields against the threat of secular society.

Vaisman: A is for the Almighty