Modern Yiddish Literature
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Lecture
Yiddish Civilization 101 Series Admission: Free |
In celebration of YIVO's 101st year, join us for our Yiddish Civilization 101 series. Each program will highlight key topics in Ashkenazi history and culture, including shtetl life, film, and Ashkenazi foodways, amongst others. Guided by expert scholars, each lecture will provide a greater understanding of Jewish life in Eastern Europe and its diasporas.
When does modern Yiddish literature begin? What does "modern" even mean? Which works belong to the Yiddish literary canon—and why were women so often left out? Why are the works of Mendele Moykher-Sforim, Sholem Aleichem, and Y.L. Peretz revered as the "classics" of Yiddish literature? Why was the Yiddish literary world so famously divided into competing literary, political, and ideological movements? How has the multilingualism of virtually every Yiddish writer—and reader—shaped the literature they created? And what role has translation played in the creation, dissemination, and reception of Yiddish literature?
Readers and writers have debated these issues ever since the Haskole, the Jewish Enlightenment. This talk by Anita Norich will trace the development of Yiddish literature from the early nineteenth century onward, examining its major writers, movements, and cultural contexts.
About the Speaker
Anita Norich is Collegiate Professor Emerita of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the translator of Desires by Tsilye Dropkin (2024), Fear and Other Stories by Chana Blankshteyn (2022), A Jewish Refugee in New York by Kadya Molodovsky (2019), numerous short stories, among them the previously untranslated stories of Israel Joshua Singer and Esther Kreitman, and, with Ellen Cassedy, Hand to Hand by Rashel Veprinski (2025). She is also the author of Writing in Tongues: Yiddish Translation in the 20th Century; Discovering Exile: Yiddish and Jewish American Literature in America During the Holocaust; and The Homeless Imagination in the Fiction of Israel Joshua Singer.