Yiddish Book Center

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Help Save Our Most Rare and Fragile Yiddish Books–A Glimpse of Collections Items in Need of Repair

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A new translation from White Goat Press–Seeds in the Desert by Mendel Mann, translated by Heather Valencia

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"The Brown Dragon Has Flown" and "Once Upon a Time There Was a King," poems by Leyzer Wolf, translated by Sarah Ponichtera

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Supporting a New Generation in Honor of the Old

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New on The Shmooze: At the Forefront of Yiddish Translation

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An interview with the late, legendary, literary scholar recorded shortly before his death.

מכּוח

A Focus On Life Writing

In honor of November being National Life Writing Month, in which people write about their own life and experience, we’re featuring items from our collections that showcase Yiddish life writing. These include a speech by the famed Yiddish poet Rokhl Korn about where her poetic impulse comes from, a podcast interview about growing up in New York’s Jewish labor movement, and an oral history interview about one of the oldest known Yiddish memoirs—which was written by a woman.

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Oral History: How I Came To Re-Translate "Glikl of Hameln" into Hebrew: Prof. Chava Turniansky Reflects on Her Magnum Opus

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"Destined to Create," Speech by Rokhl Korn, translated by Michael Yashinsky

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The Shmooze: Marvin Zuckerman on Translation and Growing up in New York’s Jewish Labor Movement

אויסגעקליבן

Handpicked Sophia Shoulson

Sophia Shoulson, second year and senior fellow at the Yiddish Book Center and the Richard S. Herman Fellow for the 2019-2020 year, graduated from Wesleyan University in 2018 and is an alumna of the Center’s 2017 Steiner Summer Yiddish Program. At Wesleyan, she double majored in German studies and Wesleyan’s interdisciplinary College of Letters, and she completed a senior thesis on the Yiddish folklore collected by Y .L. Cahan and Shmuel Lehman.

Kadia Molodowsky—a conversation with Abraham Tabachnik

The whole conversation is worth a listen—it’s Kadia Molodowsky!—but if you only listen to one section, listen to the fourth clip. Molodowsky’s reading of her poem "El Khanun" ("God of Mercy") is simple, emotional, and breathtaking.

Pakn Treger article—"Young, Gifted, and Yiddish"

Though the photographs are fascinating in their own right, what I like most about these images and the corresponding stories is the reminder that the fate of Yiddish has always been, and continues to be, in the hands of the younger generations.

Wexler Oral History Project—Moshe Kraus: Life as a "Wunderkind"

‘Moyshele Kraus,’ as he refers to himself, has led quite a life, and this excerpt from his oral history gives us a mere taste. I worked on this recording as an intern when I participated in the Steiner Summer Yiddish Program in 2017. Listening to it again takes me back to that summer, and to the excitement of hearing his story for the first time.