The Yiddish Book Center's

Wexler Oral History Project

A growing collection of in-depth interviews with people of all ages and backgrounds, whose stories about the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture offer a rich and complex chronicle of Jewish identity.

Mendele and the Explosion of the Yiddish Literature

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Ted Steinberg, Distinguished Teaching Professor at SUNY Fredonia, speaks about his interest in Mendele Mocher Sforim (Sholem Yankev Abramovich) and the similarities between the rise of Yiddish literature in the nineteenth century and the rise of the English novel in the eighteenth.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Theodore (Ted) Steinberg.

This excerpt is in English.

Theodore (Ted) Steinberg was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1947.

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This interview is part of the Yiddish in the Academy: scholars, language instructors, and students series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

An Auspicious Friendship

1 min 55 sec

Yiddish For Secrets?

1 min 4 sec

Yiddish Literature Excluded From Anthologies

1 min 29 sec

Teaching, Delighting, and Doing the Right Thing: On Literature

2 min 41 sec

Yiddish LIterature as Part of Larger Western Tradition

1 min 33 sec

"Whatever Yiddish You Can Learn, Learn It"

1 min 20 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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