Yiddish Book Center
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Tsukunft: The Future | Our 50th Anniversary Campaign
On View | Yiddish: A Global Culture
Bronx Bohemians Blog
Performance | Land of My Soul: The Theater of Sholem Asch, with Caraid O’Brien | Thursday, September 19 @ 7:00 p.m. ET at the Museum of Jewish Heritage & streamed online
The Shmooze: The Book of Izzy
Donor Profile: Helen Pollack
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Focus On Exophonic Yiddish Writers
In last week’s Weekly Reader, I noted that the poet Rokhl Korn neither wrote nor spoke Yiddish when she began writing and had to master the language later on. This phenomenon is not unheard of. While most Yiddish writers grew up in Yiddish-speaking environments, some were raised in other languages and made the conscious decision to learn Yiddish, or to learn it better, in order to write in it. This week let’s take a look at a few more of those writers, which include some unexpected luminaries. (I am omitting here contemporary Yiddish writers, but that is perhaps a subject for later on!) While it’s not always clear that the writer in question had no previous knowledge of Yiddish, in all cases it was not their primary language until later in life.
אויסגעקליבן Handpicked Brianna Burdetsky
Each month, the Yiddish Book Center asks a member of our staff or a friend to select favorite stories, books, interviews, or articles from our online collections. This month, we’re excited to share with you picks by Brianna Burdetsky, the development assistant at the Yiddish Book Center.
Vegn altyidishn roman un novele: fertsnṭer-zekhtsnter yorhundert, by Max Erik
This work is notable for being one of the few book-length studies of Old Yiddish literature written in Yiddish. Erik begins with a general overview of Yiddish literature in the 14th to 16th centuries before moving on to discuss specific works. It remains a unique gem of Yiddish-language scholarship.
Elye bokher: poeṭishe shafungen in yidish, by Elia Levita
While much of early Yiddish literature was anonymously authored, Elye Bokher stands out as a famous individual personality in Yiddish history at this period. He was a writer of romance, short poetry, and grammars, and this book contains a facsimile of the original 1541 printing of his most famous work, Bovo d’Antona, also known as the Bovo-bukh.
Social History of the Jews in Medieval Europe
Leonard Glick was a cultural anthropologist and professor at Hampshire College. This lecture on Jewish civilization in medieval Europe was delivered as part of the Center’s summer program in 1999. What is more remarkable to me than its content is the lecture’s place in the history of the Center’s education program. Most educational programs for Yiddish students tend to focus on the 19th century onward, though I would personally love to see more emphasis on the early history of the language and its literature.
“Fir lider in altyidishn loshn,” by Abraham Sutzkever
If I had to pick a favorite modern Yiddish writer, it would be Sutzkever. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that his poetry resonates with me—as a young man, he studied the early history of the Yiddish language under Max Weinreich, and this experience was influential on his early creative work. Today, the only remaining piece of Sutzkever’s engagement with Old Yiddish is his “Fir lider in altyidishn loshn,” a cycle of four short poems in which he experimented with the style and vocabulary of Old Yiddish poetry.
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