White Goat Press
Among the tens of thousands of books published in Yiddish are treasures of literature, scholarship, and reportage that tell the complex story of Jewish life in the modern world. The mission of White Goat Press is to make these works accessible to English readers in beautiful new translations.
White Goat Press Titles
- Sutzkever Essential Prose by Avrom Sutzkever, translated by Zackary Sholem Berger, 2020. Purchase a copy of Sutzkever Essential Prose.
- Seeds in the Desert by Mendel Mann, translated by Heather Valencia, 2019. Purchase a copy of Seeds in the Desert.
- Warsaw Stories by Hersh Dovid Nomberg, translated by Daniel Kennedy, 2019. Purchase a copy of Warsaw Stories.
- In eynem: The New Yiddish Textbook by Asya Vaisman Schulman, Jordan Brown, and Mikhl Yashinsky, 2020. Purchase a copy of In eynem.
Submissions
White Goat Press publishes Yiddish literature newly translated into English. We publish work by both well-known and previously neglected Yiddish writers, and we consider all genres. We are interested in works that resonate across time and place, connecting Yiddish writers and thinkers to contemporary readers.
White Goat Press accepts unsolicited manuscripts during two open submission periods each year: the month of December and the month of June. Manuscripts submitted outside of December and June may not be reviewed. For questions, contact Lisa Newman at [email protected].
Each year the Yiddish Book Center awards a small number of grants to publishers bringing out new works of Yiddish literature in English translation. Find out more about our grants for publishers.
New Yiddish Library
Prior to the founding of White Goat Press, our New Yiddish Library series at Yale University Press published ten critically acclaimed translations of Yiddish works, including fiction, memoir, drama, and journalism. The editor-in-chief of the New Yiddish Library is David Roskies of the Jewish Theological Seminary and Hebrew University.
Titles in the New Yiddish Library (available both in print and as e-books)
• In Those Nightmarish Days By Peretz Opoczynski and Josef Zelkowicz. Translated and edited by David Suchoff, with an introduction by Sam Kassow.
As journalists writing in the wartime Polish ghettos, Peretz Opoczynski and Josef Zelkowicz captured the anxiety and uncertainty of daily life for Jews with breathtaking immediacy.
• The Zelmenyaners By Moyshe Kulbak. Translated by Hillel Halkin.
One of the great comic novels of the twentieth century, The Zelmenyaners describes the travails of a Jewish family in Minsk that is torn asunder by the new Soviet reality.
• The Glatstein Chronicles By Jacob Glatstein. Translated by Maier Deshell and edited by Ruth R. Wisse.
In 1934, with World War II on the horizon, Jacob Glatstein—one of the foremost Yiddish poets of the day— traveled from his home in America to his native Poland to visit his dying mother, a journey that became the basis for these two highly autobiographical novellas, in which he intertwines childhood memories with observations of growing anti-Semitism in Europe.
• The Letters of Menakhem-Mendl and Sheyne-Sheyndl and Motl the Cantor’s Son By Sholem Aleichem. Translated by Hillel Halkin.
Two classic comic novels by the most popular Yiddish writer in history.
• The I. L. Peretz Reader, edited by Ruth R. Wisse.
A new edition of this profound and influential writer’s work, which includes for the first time the expressionistic play A Night in the Old Marketplace.
• The World According to Itzik By Itzik Manger. Translated and edited by Leonard Wolf.
Manger specialized in brilliant mischief—Bible stories rewritten with a heymish anachronism and glimpses of the politics of Paradise. This volume collects his best work.
• The Dybbuk and Other Writings By S. Ansky. Edited by David G. Roskies.
Best known for his remarkable play The Dybbuk, Ansky was also an ethnographer and a keen observer of the Jewish world. This volume includes The Dybbuk, a number of short stories and sketches, and selections from Ansky’s World War I journal The Destruction of Galicia.
• “The Cross” and Other Jewish Stories By Lamed Shapiro. Edited by Leah Garrett.
Shapiro’s spare modernist fiction includes explosive stories of the Eastern European pogroms and critical portraits of life in America.
• Everyday Jews: Scenes From a Vanished Life By Yehoshue Perle. Translated by Maier Deshell.
A coming-of-age story narrated in the first person by Mendl, a twelve-year-old boy.
• The End of Everything By David Bergelson. Translated by Joseph Sherman.
This radically modernist Yiddish novel traces the ambivalence and despair of a refined and sensitive young woman trapped in a disintegrating social order.
The New Yiddish Library is a joint project of the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature and the Yiddish Book Center. Additional support comes from the Kaplen Foundation and the Felix Posen Fund for the Translation of Modern Yiddish Literature.