An abridged version of a collection originally published in 1961, the 42 stories here are written by Jewish writers of the 20th century, including Sholem Aleichem, Abraham Raisin and Joseph Opotashu. They offer a testament to the mother tongue through the trials of Americanization.

The fable has a 3000-year-old tradition in Jewish literature, going back to the Bible and the Talmud. It was not until the advent of the illustrious poet and fabulist Eliezer Shtaynbarg that fable writing in Yiddish was honed to perfection. This text is devoted to Shtaynbarg's work.

By the eve of the Holocaust, Poland was home to the second largest Jewish population in the world. By war's end, its Jews had been decimated and their culture all but destroyed. The authors of this work revisit their roots to research a rumour that Jewish life is being rekindled in modern Poland.

Hayim Nahman Bialik is considered by many to be one of the greatest Hebrew poets of modern times. This volume presents translations of a selection of his work.

The world of Saul Bellow is peopled largely by men - often intellectuals - who manifest Bellow's unique conception of American masculinity. This work analyzes Bellow's oeuvre from a feminist perspective. It incorporates the insights of French feminist theory on Western male philosophers.

Reflects the rise of literature in modern-day Israel and the problematic reception of literature in America and within the American Jewish community. Israeli literature provides a unique lens for viewing the inner dynamics of this small but critically important society. In addition, its leading writers such as S. Y. Agnon, Yehuda Amichai, Amos Oz, and A. B. Yehoshua, among others, are recognized internationally as major world literary figures. Despite this international recognition, the rich literary tradition of Israeli literature has failed to reverberate and find significant readership or...

The first exhaustive treatment of Eastern European Jewish music tracing its roots from biblical times through its zenith in the nineteenth century to its decline in the late twentieth century. Sholom Kalib has taken on the crucial task of collecting, analyzing, and systematically presenting in over 160 examples a magnificent tradition to future generations of cantors, scholars of Jewish music, and music enthusiasts worldwide. Traditionally, this body of music was a source of great strength, stability, and inspiration to Eastern European Jews amid the uncertainties and upheavals of their...

As Zionism took root in Palestine, European Yiddish was employed within a dominant Hebrew context. A complex relationship between cultural politics and Jewish writing ensued that paved the way for modern Israeli culture. This enlightening volume reveals a previously unrecognized, alternative literature that flourished vigorously without legitimacy. Significant examples discussed include ethnically ambiguous fiction of Zalmen Brokhes, minority-oriented works of Avrom Rivess, and culturally pluralistic poetry by Rikuda Potash. The remote locales of these writers, coupled with the exuberant...

A wide-ranging analysis of French Jewish authors born after the Shoah, this book traces the rich development of young Jewish writing from its beginning in the late 1970s, into the 1980s and 1990s, when it gained intense momentum.

Dvora Baron (1887-1956) has been called "the founding mother of Hebrew women's literature." Born in a small town on the outskirts of Minsk to the community rabbi, Baron immigrated from the Jewish Pale of Settlement to Palestine in 1910. Although she was not the only woman writing in Hebrew in the first few decades of the twentieth century, Baron was the only woman to achieve recognition in the canon of Modern Hebrew fiction during that period. As such, her work reflects both the revolutionary and conservative qualities of the Modern Hebrew Renaissance. Rooted in the Jewish tradition and using...