This book examines representations of modernity in Yiddish literature between the Russian revolution of 1905 and the beginning of the First World War. Within Jewish society, and particularly Eastern European Jewish society, modernity was often experienced as a series of incursions and threats to traditional Jewish life. Writers explored these perceived crises in their work, in the process reconsidering the role and function of Yiddish literature itself. The orientation of nineteenth-century Yiddish fiction toward the shtetl came into conflict with the sense of reality of young writers, who...
This book examines representations of modernity in Yiddish literature between the Russian revolution of 1905 and the beginning of the First World War....
For over a century Yiddish served as a major vehicle for expressing left-wing ideas and sensitivities. A language without country, an 'ugly jargon' despised by the assimilationist Jewish bourgeoisie and nationalist Zionists alike, it was embraced as a genuine folk idiom by Jewish adherents of socialism and communism worldwide. On the eve of the Holocaust, Yiddish was the primary language of education, culture and propaganda for millions of people on five continents. The present volume examines the rich diversity of relationships between Yiddish and the Left, from the attitude of Yiddish...
For over a century Yiddish served as a major vehicle for expressing left-wing ideas and sensitivities. A language without country, an 'ugly jargon' de...
Berlin emerged from the First World War as a multicultural European capital of immigration from the former Russian Empire, and while many Russian emigrEs moved to France and other countries in the 1920s, a thriving east European Jewish community remained. Yiddish-speaking intellectuals and activists participated vigorously in German cultural and political debate. Multilingual Jewish journalists, writers, actors and artists, invigorated by the creative atmosphere of the city, formed an environment which facilitated exchange between the main centres of Yiddish culture: eastern Europe, North...
Berlin emerged from the First World War as a multicultural European capital of immigration from the former Russian Empire, and while many Russian emig...
From Kabbalah to Class Struggle is an intellectual biography of Meir Wiener (1893-1941), an Austrian Jewish intellectual and a student of Jewish mysticism who emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1926 and reinvented himself as a Marxist scholar and Yiddish writer. His dramatic life story offers a fascinating glimpse into the complexities and controversies of Jewish intellectual and cultural history of pre-war Europe. Wiener made a remarkable career as a Yiddish scholar and writer in the Stalinist Soviet Union and left an unfinished novel about Jewish intellectual bohemia of Weimar Berlin....
From Kabbalah to Class Struggle is an intellectual biography of Meir Wiener (1893-1941), an Austrian Jewish intellectual and a student of Jewis...
At the turn of the twentieth century East European Jews underwent a radical cultural transformation, which turned a traditional religious community into a modern nation, struggling to find its place in the world. An important figure in this 'Jewish Renaissance' was the American-Yiddish writer and activist Joseph Opatoshu (1886-1954). Born into a Hassidic family, he spent his early childhood in a forest in Central Poland, was educated in Russia and studied engineering in France and America. In New York, where he emigrated in 1907, he joined the revitalizing modernist group Di yunge -- The...
At the turn of the twentieth century East European Jews underwent a radical cultural transformation, which turned a traditional religious community in...
Der Nister (Pinkhes Kahanovitsh, 1884-1950) is widely regarded as the most enigmatic author in modern Yiddish literature. His pseudonym, which translates as 'The Hidden One', is as puzzling as his diverse body of works, which range from mystical symbolist poetry and dark expressionist tales to realist historical epic. Although part of the Kiev Group of Yiddish writers, which also included David Bergelson and Peretz Markish, Der Nister remained at the margins of the Yiddish literary world throughout his life, mainstream success eluding him both in- and outside the Soviet Union. Yet, to judge...
Der Nister (Pinkhes Kahanovitsh, 1884-1950) is widely regarded as the most enigmatic author in modern Yiddish literature. His pseudonym, which transla...
Children have occupied a prominent place in Yiddish literature since early modern times, but children s literature as a genre has its beginnings in the early 20th century. Its emergence reflected the desire of Jewish intellectuals to introduce modern forms of education, and promote ideological agendas, both in Eastern Europe and in immigrant communities elsewhere. Before the Second World War, a number of publishing houses and periodicals in Europe and the Americas specialized in stories, novels and poems for various age groups. Prominent authors such as Yankev Glatshteyn, Der Nister,...
Children have occupied a prominent place in Yiddish literature since early modern times, but children s literature as a genre has its beginnings in...
This volume borrows its title from the first international Yiddish bestseller, Sholem Asch's epic trilogy Three Cities. Whereas Asch portrayed Jewish life in St Petersburg, Warsaw and Moscow at the crucial historical moment of the collapse of the Russian Empire, this volume examines the variety of Yiddish publishing, educational, literary, academic, and theatrical activities in the former imperial metropolises from the late nineteenth through to the late twentieth century, and explores the representations of those cities in Yiddish literature.
Gennady Estraikh is Associate...
This volume borrows its title from the first international Yiddish bestseller, Sholem Asch's epic trilogy Three Cities. Whereas Asch portr...
