Translation

We’re therefore seeking your help to open up the long-lost books we’ve found and, by translating them, to share their contents with the world.

The New Yiddish Library. The National Yiddish Book Center has joined forces with the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature and Yale University Press to launch the New Yiddish Library – a pioneering initiative to identify and translate the most important works of modern Yiddish literature. We’ve already published works by Itzik Manger, Sholem Aleichem, I.L. Peretz, and S. Ansky, and we are now working on “lost” masterpieces such as Warshawski’s Smugglers, Kulbak’s Zelmenyaners, and Perle’s Ordinary Jews. With your support, we will continue to unearth little-known literary treasures, publishing two to three newly translated books every year for decades to come.

Still, younger people often lack the time, and older folks the eyesight, to read full-length works of literature. So, inspired by the runaway success of our NPR radio series, we want to release two series of recordings:

Talking Yiddish Books – Redndike bikher – is a partnership with the Jewish Public Library of Montreal. Together we will release more than 100 novels and other unabridged Yiddish books, read aloud in the original Yiddish. We want to digitally remaster old recordings made by native Yiddish speakers and add new titles of our own, so that future generations will be able to experience Yiddish literature in its authentic idioms and rhythms.

Recorded Jewish Books will produce lively, unabridged recordings of our new translations and other great Jewish books in English. Professional readers – including leading actors of stage and screen – will help us bring Jewish literature to a wider audience than ever before.

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