An Introduction to the 2022 Decade of Discovery

The Decade of Discovery is an initiative launched by the Yiddish Book Center to mark our 40th anniversary in 2020. Its aim is to foster a deeper understanding of Yiddish and modern Jewish culture. For each of the ensuing years, the Center will select an annual theme around which we will curate and share content and collaborate with other organizations. 

Our focus for 2022 is Women in Yiddish, and we invite you to join us for the wide range of virtual public programs and curated content we will be offering around this theme in the year ahead. 

Yiddish women writers wrote poetry, short stories, novels, essays, literary and cultural criticism, and autobiography, among other genres, exploring a wide range of topics—from domesticity, to desire and the body, to politics, the environment, and the ravages of war, and more. Their contributions—some famous, others forgotten, still others never fully appreciated—touch every corner and every moment of Yiddish creativity - literature, the arts, and activism. 

In 2022 as the Decade of Discovery focuses on Women in Yiddish, we’ll draw from our diverse collections as we consider the contributions of women in Yiddish. These women writers, artists, actors, and activists were brilliant and daring, complicated and compassionate, exuberant and quiet, and endlessly fascinating. Their work has much to tell us about the conditions and possibilities for women in the times in which they lived but also about Yiddish language and culture and modern Jewish culture, writing and publishing, immigration, and a multitude of other topics.