In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies

12/17/2024

In "Teaching Yiddish to Students with Dyslexia: A Working Document," Jessica Kirzane shares some thoughts and recommendations on teaching students with this learning difficulty. She writes:

"Last year, I was presented with a challenge that was new for me — but one that I know other language instructors have faced before, and that I will face again in years ahead: I had a student in my introductory level class with dyslexia. In teaching this student I felt unprepared, and I scrambled to learn as much as I could in order to better support my student and to understand how language learning works, both in general and for this student in particular...
What follows is a working document of ideas and understandings I have compiled during the past year or so of teaching, and learning from, this student, as well as from resources I have drawn upon and found useful. This is not an exhaustive document...but I wanted to share what I’ve learned with other instructors so that if you find yourself in the position I did you won’t have to start from scratch."

We welcome further contributions to this document. If you would like to expand or cor­rect some­thing in this doc­u­ment, or share further ideas or suggestions, please write to us.

https://buff.ly/4gBZpiP

12/16/2024

Marina Mayorski reviews Ayelet Brinn's A Revolution in Type: Gender and the Making of the American Yiddish Press:

"With exquisite prose and nuanced analysis of a wide array of sources, A Revolution in Type offers a timely and forceful contribution to the study of Jewish history, culture, and gender."

https://buff.ly/3DiHj76

12/16/2024

If you're attending the AJS today, don't forget to check out our list of Yiddish-related panels! We look forward to learning from and with you.

https://buff.ly/3Z4I4ro

12/13/2024

If you are attending the Association for Jewish Studies conference this year, join the Yiddishist Group Chat!

In place of our usual kave-sho this year, we invite you to gather with us on WhatsApp throughout the conference. We have created a WhatsApp group to encourage informal conversation and community building among Yiddish Studies folks throughout the conference. We look forward to reading your hellos and well wishes, your praises for the work you’ve encountered, your questions for one another, and your snarky jokes. All friends of In geveb are welcome!

Click this link to join the chat:

WhatsApp Group Invite

12/12/2024

The stories in this collection are an invitation to reexamine what Israeli literature is: to expand the category of Israeli literature beyond just the Hebrew language and in so doing to disrupt expectations about that literature.

Betzalel Strauss reviews שמים נושקים לים Where the Sky and the Sea Meet: Israeli Yid­dish Sto­ries. ed. Shachar Pinkser.

https://buff.ly/4fvB6lP

12/10/2024

Mariposas Galácticas [Galactic Butterflies] is an eight-piece band from Philadelphia that performs a fusion of kumbia [folk music from Latin America], punk, and klezmer music. Sarah Biskowitz spoke about the band over e‑mail with the accor­dion­ist Jonathan (Joni) Sidharta-Leibovic:

SB: Why did you decide to fuse kumbia, punk, and klezmer music? Where do you take musical and artistic inspiration from?

JSL: On one level, we didn’t “decide” to fuse these musics - that’s just what happened when we started playing together! But we found that they meshed well, and sometimes in unexpected ways. Klezmer and kumbia share several elements in common, including certain scales, instrumentation, and of course they’re both forms of dance music, so they have a similar range of tempos... But on another level, the decision to fuse these musical styles made sense on many levels: aesthetically, culturally, politically. All three of these genres have strong traditions of community, celebration, and revolution. And these are the values that we want to exemplify as a band.

https://buff.ly/41xYbRv

12/05/2024

This essay about Yiddish-speaking artist Nathan Altman, written in French by Pascale Samuel and translated here into English by Jennifer Stern is from the catalogue accompanying the exhibition “The Dybbuk: Phantom of a Vanished World,” on view at Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme [Museum of the Art and History of Judaism] (mahJ) in Paris through January 26, 2025.

https://buff.ly/4fbS8oU

12/04/2024

We’re thrilled to introduce the newest member of our team: our editorial intern, Dinah Meg­i­bow-Tay­lor. We look for­ward to all that she will do to strength­en our pub­li­ca­tion, and to all that we will learn from and with her through this men­tor­ing experience.

https://buff.ly/4giGsBG

12/03/2024

Today is .

We know your feed is inundated with asks and appeals, so we’ll keep it short and sweet:

In geveb’s mission to be the online focal point for discussions of Yiddish literature, language, and culture depends on you–our readers. Our peer-reviewed articles, translations, blog posts, and special issues are available to all without a subscription, and generous contributions from our readers makes it all possible. If In geveb has changed the way you engage with modern Yiddish culture, or deepened your connection to the Yiddish Studies community, online or off, please consider making a donation to support our work.

https://buff.ly/41eUcsA

11/26/2024

Tamara Gleason Friedberg sat down with Sonia Gollance in Summer 2024 to discuss Yiddish theater in London, her translation of Tea Arciszewska’s Miryeml, and what comes next.

https://buff.ly/3Z8wKKV

11/22/2024

We are pleased to once again offer this guide to Yid­dish at AJS, aimed at help­ing you nav­i­gate the con­fer­ence with Yid­dish in mind. Yid­dish has a large pres­ence at the Asso­ci­a­tion for Jew­ish Stud­ies Con­fer­ence and we’re look­ing for­ward to learn­ing about the lat­est devel­op­ments in the field — and (re)connecting with the friends and col­leagues who make our field(s) of study so vibrant.

Did we miss anything? You can comment below and let us know.

https://buff.ly/3Z4I4ro

11/20/2024

Patrick Chura reviews Ben Gold’s Your Comrade, Avreml Broide, A Worker’s Life Story, translated by Annie Sommer Kaufman:

As translator Annie Sommer Kaufman’s erudite introduction to Avreml Broide notes, Ben Gold’s protagonist is almost unique; he “never falls for the false promise of the materialist American Dream.” Early in his American struggle, Avreml finds the revolutionary way—the way of the Communist Party. A valuable feature of Avreml Broide is the chance it offers to take a deep dive into the world of twentieth century radical left activism to understand essentials of the CPUSA as an American subculture.

https://buff.ly/3Z1ricM

11/18/2024

Joshua Raclaw discusses learning Yiddish as a linguist:

"My background in linguistics has been a tremendous boon to me as a learner because it helps me gain insight—developing what others in my field might call metalinguistic awareness, referring to what speakers know about the languages they use—into the structures of Yiddish."

https://buff.ly/4hMnGUC

11/13/2024

Zackary Sholem Berger reviews Naomi Seidman's Trans­lat­ing the Jew­ish Freud: Psy­cho­analy­sis in Hebrew and Yid­dish:

"The considerable achievements of this book include its wide ranging survey of the relationship between Freud and Judaism, as well as Freud and Jewish languages, and its detailed acquaintance with the secondary literature that addresses this connection...Seidman also makes plain her own personal relationship to the material... Seidman’s book should be the first address for anyone seeking to understand [such] relationships, and also performs a useful theoretical intervention in bringing notions of speech communities and the affective importance of language into the discussion of Freud and Jewishness."

https://buff.ly/3CrHCvR

11/11/2024

Rachel Lichtenstein has been fascinated with Yiddish writer A. N. Stencl since first hearing stories about him as a child from her paternal grandparents, Malka and Gedaliah Lichtenstein, who were members of his literary gatherings of Polish Jewish emigres that would become known as The Friends of Yiddish. In this essay, she writes about her efforts to try and find out more about this poet and his world.

https://buff.ly/3Cl98LH

11/11/2024

New in our translation section: "די מאַלינע" or "The Hideaway", translated by Jake Schneider, is an excerpt from Avrom Nokhem Stencl’s memoirs of urban wandering in Weimar Berlin.

"I already had my little room and, most importantly, an address. On Friday, when I got my wages, I would immediately pay the rent for the whole week. And in those last days, when I couldn’t afford a proper lunch, I did indeed sustain myself on the pea soup at the Hideaway. But I wasn’t actually drawn there by the soup, nor by the atmosphere, which I had adjusted to and come to love. I was driven there by the bugs in my bed and by the whole raucous alley with its “rooms by the hour”—so in my free time and my sleepless nights, I found my refuge at the Hideaway."

https://buff.ly/3UMgqyf

11/04/2024

Maurice Wolfthal translates Ayzik Meir Dik's "The Guests in Duratshishok", a satirical story about the weekend two Jewish professionals (a wonderworker and a cantor) came to stay in the town of Duratshishok.

As Wolfthal writes in his introduction, "Mask­il­ic phi­los­o­phy was a major part of Dik’s life. A minyan of Vil­na mask­il­im met in the 1820s, and their first syn­a­gogue, the Taharat Hakodesh, opened in 1847 over the objec­tions of more con­ser­v­a­tive rab­bis. Dik was a founder, and he served as its shammes. He was pro­found­ly dis­turbed by the grief of women who could not bear chil­dren or were aban­doned by their hus­bands. He scorned the per­sis­tence of Jew­ish belief in demons and in mir­a­cle-work­ing holy men who could van­quish them and cure bar­ren­ness. These con­cerns were com­mon­ly raised by mask­il­im. It is a tes­ta­ment to Dik’s lit­er­ary genius that “The Guests in Durat­shishok” weaves these very seri­ous themes into a delight­ful satire."

https://buff.ly/4fyOaXI

11/01/2024

Sonia Gollance describes the 27th Symposium for Yiddish Studies in Germany which took place Düsseldorf this past September. The Symposium is a unique conference that reflects the possibilities that are available with two linguistically-related languages.

https://buff.ly/3C2k0O7