Jiddistik. Edition und Forschung / Yiddish. Editions and Research / ייִדיש. אויסגאַבעס און פֿאָרשונג

One of the essential pillars of Yiddish literature since its beginnings in the 13th century has been translation. In the 20th century, the desire to belong to world literature stimulated Yiddish intellectuals to translate works of foreign literature into Yiddish – in a brilliant display of literary force. With a focus on Yiddish cultural spaces in the Soviet Union and Poland, the present volume is devoted to the transnational and ‘translational’ state of Yiddish literature in various places and periods. Alongside reflections on the craft of translation, the volume includes accounts of literary translations and the practices of self-translation and collective, intermedial and cultural translation. Twelve scholarly contributions illuminate the function and meaning of translation for this minority language as a Jewish national language and for Yiddish literature as world literature.

After the khurbn (destruction) perpetrated by Nazi Germany, its allies, and collaborators, the Yiddish communities in Eastern Europe were shattered and largely decimated. For most survivors, the old homeland in the East was a lost place of longing and a place of mere transit to the centers of the reconfiguring ‘West’: in North America, the global South, and the young state of Israel. Research has for the most part ignored the cultural activities, the political engagement, and the diverse visions of those cultural activists who remained in Eastern Europe in their thousands. This volume examines their activities as well as the role of and language policy regarding Yiddish in various socialist states, as well as trans-socialist and cross-bloc dialogues during the "Yiddish Cold War." How did the actors position themselves within socialist narratives of the past, present, and future and vis-à-vis the Jewish diasporas? What were their visions for Yiddishlands in the new world of really-existing socialism and how did they attempt to implement them? In this volume, case studies on Poland, the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, and Romania uncover diverse cultural reconstruction initiatives and cross-bloc entanglements with ‘Western’ countries, such as Great Britain, the United States, Argentina, and Israel.

Elye Falkovitsh’s grammar, first published in Moscow in 1940, is one of the most important reference works of Yiddish linguistics. The new edition makes this rare work available for the first time since its publication. The work includes a theoretical description of phonetics, graphemics, lexis, and grammar and provides a comprehensive account of modern Yiddish. A formalist and synchronic description of the language system is supplemented by passages on the history of Yiddish and the development of individual forms. A central focus is on presenting Yiddish in the context of general linguistics.
For this new edition, the Soviet orthography of the original text has been adjusted to conform to the now standard YIVO orthography. The edition includes a commentary that serves as a reference work for the various grammatical themes considered and sets out Falkovitsh’s approach in the context of contemporary Yiddish linguistics.
Our edition sheds light on an important aspect of Soviet Yiddish linguistics that has been largely overlooked due to ideological prejudice. Four essays contextualize Falkovitsh’s life and work both linguistically and historically, situating his grammar in relation to Yiddish language projects inside and outside the Soviet Union.

Volume 6 presents a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive collection of essays by Yiddish artists and intellectuals from the interwar period, including Perets Markish, Nakhmen Mayzel, Shmuel Niger, Melekh Ravitsh, Fradl Shtok, and Debora Vogel. The focus is on manifestos by writers and artists, on the perspectives of modern authors, in particular on their positions vis à vis world literature, including their opinions regarding the so-called language war between Hebrew and Yiddish. The volume also documents the debate that accompanied the plan to organize a Yiddish literary congress in 1927, intended to strengthen the fragmented Yiddish cultural community. A separate chapter is devoted to essays by the poetess and fiction writer Kadya Molodowsky. A longtime editor of the literary periodical Svive (Surroundings), she was an exception in a field largely dominated by men.
The volume contains some 60 Yiddish essays, printed in Hebrew letters, accompanied by a foreword in English and German.

This first comprehensive edition of Yiddish essays presents central voices and discourses of Jewish and Yiddish artists and intellectuals of the interwar period.

This book offers annotated editions of four distinct sixteenth-century Yiddish epic poems, all preserved in single copies. Two of them retell the narrative found in the book of Joshua, and two relate the events described in the book of Judges. As typical specimens of the once popular literary genre, the Old Yiddish biblical epic, the content of the works is based on Jewish sources, while their style and form were influenced by German epic and chivalric literature. The epics often elaborate on the biblical narrative, with rich passages that echo the cultural setting in which they were composed, presumably German and Italian lands. The four epics are presented here for the first time in modern academic editions. They are studied and compared with one another, and footnotes provide information concerning the sources of additions and changes, translation methods, historical details, obscure words and idiomatic expressions, and more. As these epics represent some of the earliest examples of biblical epics in Yiddish, the discussion also touches upon the origins of the genre, tracing its path from orality to written text. The annotated edition presents the original Old Yiddish texts together with an English introduction.

This comprehensive and multifaceted collection of modern Yiddish short stories marks the fourth volume in the series "Yiddish Editions & Research." A unique collection that includes works in standardized orthography by more than thirty authors, it sheds light on Yiddish life in Europe, the Americas, Soviet Union, and Israel, both before and after the Shoah. Some of the short stories are made accessible here for the first time in book form.

The third volume in the series Yiddish: Edition & Research presents the Railroad Stories of Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916) in their entirety, for the first time in a bilingual Yiddish-German edition. We encounter in this work one of the three classic writers of Yiddish literature in the genre he excelled in: the short story.
Sholem Aleichem’s evocative portrayals of characters and ordinary situations in powerfully expressive monologues have made him famous in the world of Yiddish literature and beyond.
Dan Miron’s impressive essay Journey to the Twilight Zone, the afterword to the present edition, offers a comprehensive account of the work’s genesis and a multifocal interpretation of its meanings.

The third volume in the series Yiddish: Edition & Research presents the Railroad Stories of Sholem Aleichem (1859–1916) in their entirety, for the first time in a bilingual Yiddish-German edition. We encounter in this work one of the three classic writers of Yiddish literature in the genre he excelled in: the short story.
Sholem Aleichem’s evocative portrayals of characters and ordinary situations in powerfully expressive monologues have made him famous in the world of Yiddish literature and beyond.
Dan Miron’s impressive essay Journey to the Twilight Zone, the afterword to the present edition, offers a comprehensive account of the work’s genesis and a multifocal interpretation of its meanings.

The second volume of the series Yiddish Editions & Research, presents the poetry of Avrom Sutzkever (1913–2010), one of the greatest Yiddish writers of the 20th century. The themes of his work span his early childhood in Siberia, youth in Vilna, Lithuania, the catastrophe of the Holocaust, and a new life in Israel. Sutzkever is a modernist poet of great originality whose work is rooted in the cultural heritage of the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe.This ist the first bilingual edition of Sutzkever’s work to present a substantial selection of poetry from all periods of his creative life. A previously unpublished lecture by the poet sheds light on his poetic credo and an literary-biographical essay by the translator, Heather Valencia, together with notes on the poems, make this literary oeuvre accessible to a wide readership.

This volume comprises studies on Yiddish literature, language and culture and documents the thematic and methodological breadth of contemporary, international research on Yiddish. Four central areas are: Readings in Modern Yiddish Literature, Older Yiddish, Linguistics, Culture and Politics.

Bestsellers and highlights of Yiddish literature in one set. We are presenting 10 volumes on the richness of Yiddish language and culture, including poems by Avrom Sutzkever, the original "Railway Stories" by Scholem Alejchem and their translation, Yiddish anthologies, academic reflections on current topics, and a new edition of a standard volume on Yiddish grammar. This is a multifaceted collection about Yiddish life and literature.