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Yiddish Book Center

Regenerating Jewish Culture

Celebrating forty years of book rescue, digitization, translation,
educational programs, oral histories, exhibitions

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Yiddish Book Center Receives Literary Translation Award from London Book Fair

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"In the Bedroom" ("In shloftsimer")—A Short Story by Yehudis, Translated by Jordan Finkin, Published in a 1908 Passover Collection Edited by Hersh Dovid Nomberg

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Yiddish OCR is Live!

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Donor Profile: Eugene and Elaine Driker

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Announcing the Launch of the Yiddish Book Center's Decade of Discovery

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A New Translation from White Goat Press—Warsaw Stories by Hersh Dovid Nomberg, Translated by Daniel Kennedy

Decade of Discovery National Poetry Month

In honor of National Poetry Month and the Yiddish Book Center's Decade of Discovery theme for this year, "Yiddish in America: Cultural Encounters," we're featuring a podcast with Faith Jones about her work translating the experimental Yiddish poet Celia Dropkin, a Dadaist sound poem about Coney Island from the late 1930s, and an article about 'Detroit's soulful Yiddish poet,' Ezra Korman.

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The Shmooze visits with Faith Jones to learn about her work translating "The Acrobat: The Selected Poems of Celia Dropkin."

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"Coney Island": A Dadaist Sound Poem by Victor Packer, translated by Henry Sapoznik

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The Signs and Symbols of Ezra Korman, Detroit's Soulful Yiddish Poet

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Handpicked Abigail Weaver

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A 2019–2020 Yiddish Book Center Fellow working in translation, Abigail is always uncovering new finds in our collections. Here are a few of her favorites.

"The Cleaver's Daughter" By Avrom Sutzkever, translated by Zackary Sholem Berger

Avrom Sutzkever is remembered as one of the greatest Yiddish poets of the twentieth century, and the poetic voice of the world-altering events he lived through, but his prose is sometimes overlooked. This story, from the collection Messiah’s Diary, is, like all of his work, both antirealist and transcendent. The sensory delight of the language, the supersaturated descriptions of nature, and the bloody twist at the end all point to a Pagan sort of influence, a story deeply rooted in the Lithuanian landscape of Sutzkever’s youth.

Four Theses on Translating Yiddish Literature

I work in the translation department of the Yiddish Book Center, and my earliest exposure to Yiddish literature was in translation, so I find Larry Rosenwald’s arguments on what makes a good translation very interesting. If you are not someone who has ever really thought about the translation before, this is a great introduction to some of the debates and difficult choices that are constant companions to the craft of translation.

Peysekh Yiddish Worksheet

Peysekh is coming up this month. If you are learning Yiddish, you can practice with this seasonally appropriate resource.