Collecting Yiddish Zines

Young Yiddishists today are making their mark on a centuries-old Yiddish literary canon with an innovative, ephemeral, and often radical publishing medium—the zine.

The term “zine” (originally short for “fan magazine”) is used to describe self-published booklets of writing and art. In contrast to traditionally published books, zines have a short life expectancy. Typically, a zine creator (or community of creators) will assemble one original zine, then circulate a limited number of physical and/or digital copies of the zine before retiring it.

Our new permanent exhibition, Yiddish: A Global Culture, puts ten zines by young Yiddishists on display. Seeing the wide-eyed reaction to the zine display, the bibliography team initiated a search for new zines to bring into our permanent physical collection and the Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library. So far, we have amassed a collection of nearly two dozen zines created by Yiddishist artists, students, and activists far and wide—and we’re still collecting!

Zines are a tool for building and bringing together communities. Heymish, a zine edited by Yiddish Book Center alumni Sarah Biskowitz and Cameron Bernstein under the name @Yiddishistke, truly embodies the idea of Yiddish as a global culture. With over two dozen contributors, Heymish offers definitions of “home” from a worldwide Yiddish community. Inside you’ll find everything from poetry—like Yiddish and English versions of “the Space behind the birch tree’s face” from Poland-based singer Maria Ka—to cartoons, like this one from London-based artist Divyam Chaya Bernstein.

The Golem Zine series, edited by Julia Hegele, also celebrates Jewish culture around the world and in oft-overlooked places. Issues #1 and #3 of Golem Zine, featured here, are dedicated to the Jewish community of Glasgow and the Jewish communities of Syria, Turkey, and Kurdistan, respectively.

Other zines explore traditional Jewish themes with their contemporary local communities in mind, like these by Zohar Berman at the Boston Worker’s Circle. Using Yiddish words and phrases, these two zines tell the history of the Arbeter-ring (Workers Circle) and teach about one of the Jewish values it was founded upon: mutual aid.

These four zines from local artist Ezra Rose take inspiration from a different kind of Jewish belief. Dybbuk, Golem, Malachim, and Sheydim explore the storied pasts and forgotten facts about these creatures of Jewish folklore.

Fresh copies of the zines currently on display in the permanent exhibition also made their way into our collections, including Yael Horowitz’s Fleyshik: A Fat Jewish Zine, Ariel Shapiro and Ozzy Irving Gold-Shapiro’s Zingeray (Sing-Along), and Beatrice Adler’s Khave heyst di geviksn (Khave names the plants).

As word spread about our zine-zamling project, surprise zines began arriving at the Yiddish Book Center! On a recent visit, Boston-based artist Kiana Ruth Beckman gifted us two of her own stunning works: Screamsingers Yizkor: An Ecofeminist Lamentation for the Jewish Divine Feminine and Masel tov: A Constellation of Definitions and Uses.

Collecting and engaging with these eclectic works inspired me to design a new zine of my own: Vi azoy makht men a yidishn zin? (How you make a Yiddish zine?). If you also find yourself compelled to make a Yiddish zine after this peek into our collections, this could be a good place to start!

We want to extend a huge thank you to the members of the zine-making community who are helping us build up our collection of Yiddish zines. The search continues! If you are the creator of a Yiddish or Yiddish-inspired zine that you’d like to see become part of the Yiddish Book Center’s zine collection, please reach out to our bibliographer, David Mazower, at [email protected].

—Maya “Zuni” González, Harriett and Seymour Shapiro Fellow