Miriam Borden / Joshua, King David, and the Flying Nun: Doodles and Reader Annotations in Post-Holocaust Yiddish Primers for Children (original) (raw)
Related papers
"The Passionate Few": Youth and Yiddishism in American Jewish Culture, 1964 to Present
Jewish Social Studies, 2021
In the last two decades, journalists have chronicled a contemporary "Yiddish Revival," focusing in particular on the language's popularity among a subculture of young Jews. But, while the Holocaust and other circumstances threatened Yiddish on a global scale by the mid-twentieth century, youthful pursuits of, in, and for Yiddish are by no means new. Indeed, each American-born generation has produced a group of young activists who continued to produce, perform, and engage with Yiddish language and culture, adapting the ideals of the Yiddishist movement to new cultural, linguistic, and historical conditions. Chronicling this generational project through the lens of the Yiddishist youth movement Yugntruf and the Yiddish-speaking farm that grew out of it, this article demonstrates how Yiddishism has evolved to mirror the needs, desires, and visions of each North American cohort at its helm, taking on new forms through the lived experiences and relationships of its activists.
Yiddish Returns: Language, Intergenerational Gifts, and Jewish Devotion.
A medium as brief as this hardly provides ample room to thank my committee. Andrew Shryock guided me through the multiple iterations of this project, often by way of long conversations that always pushed me to think more expansively about my work. Much of what is best about this dissertation bears his imprint, and I'm grateful to have benefitted from such a creative advisor. Deborah Dash Moore offered a model of academic mentorship and intellectual engagement that has profoundly shaped my conception of what it means to produce scholarship. In addition to her impact on this project, the environment of collegiality and intellectual exchange she fostered as director of the Frankel Center over the past decade has been a true gift to scholars in Jewish studies. Webb Keane always struck directly at what was most theoretically at stake in my work. Alaina Lemon was a source of new ideas and productive critique. Finally, before I even enrolled at Michigan, Jonathan Boyarin served as a generous mentor and interlocutor. He has shaped my approach to theory and ethnography at all stages of this project.
Yiddish Literature and Culture in America Syllabus - University of Wisconsin 2016
Course Overview: At the turn of the 20 th century millions of Yiddish-speaking East European Jews arrived in America. Through study of the Yiddish literature and culture they produced, this course will give students insight into these immigrants' experience and their efforts to find a comfortable perch in the American landscape. The course will be subdivided into four sections covering different aspects of these Yiddish-speaking immigrants' experience and efforts: The immigration process and arrival in America; immigrant entry into the workplace; encounter with urban modernity and America's racial and ethnic diversity; the tension between assimilatory pressures and the desire for a transnational identity. Although turn-of-the-century Jewish immigrants produced an unprecedented Yiddish cultural blossoming worthy of concentrated study, this course, which fulfills the Undergraduate Studies Ethnic Studies General Education Requirement, strives to employ this rich culture as a jumping-off point to help you achieve greater understanding and appreciation of the experience of contemporary ethnic/racial minorities with origins abroad who have become a growing element of American society since the expansion of immigration to the United States in the 1960s. Learning Goals: 1) Students will achieve greater understanding and appreciation of diversity and thereby help improve campus climate and better prepare themselves for life and careers in an increasingly multicultural U. S. environment. 2) Through study of American Yiddish culture students will attain knowledge of the immigration process and the challenges faced by ethnically and racially divergent immigrant groups as they work to find their desired place in America. 3) Students will achieve grounding in American Yiddish Culture through encounter with works created by fifteen of its leading authors, poets, and directors. 4) Students will learn strategies for analyzing literary, filmic, and poetic texts intended to improve their critical thinking.
American Jewish History, 2019
Camp Boiberik, founded in 1923, and Camp Hemshekh, founded in 1959, both had goals of creating Yiddish atmospheres, employing the language throughout the lived experience of camp. Pushing against challenging sociolinguistic trends, their efforts did not come without challenges. However, their attendees’ struggles with and negotiations surrounding Yiddish and Yiddishism led to new understandings of what the language and its associated movement could mean for new generations of American Jews raised in increased comfort, social mobility, and affluence. Considering changing engagements with Yiddish at two Yiddish-focused summer camps, this article describes how these camps came to reimagine and repurposed Yiddishism as a tool towards the transformation and identity-building of American Jewish youth. Considering these camps within the wider history of Jewish camping and the Yiddishist movement from its foundation onward, the author also shows how these camps’ renewed visions of Yiddishism remained pertinent and influential in the decades after these camps closed in 1979 and 1980. Rather than conforming to narratives of death or revival, Hemshekh and Boiberik help depict a more complex story of Yiddish and Yiddishism in postwar America.
Journal of Modern Jewish Studies, 2023
The Yiddish historians and the struggle for a Jewish history of the Holocaust. by Mark Smith, Detroit, Michigan, US, Wayne State University Press, 2019, 463 pp., £73.50 (Hardback), ISBN 9780814346129 (pp. 607-608). 2023. Journal of Modern Jewish Studies Volume 22, 2023 - Issue 4
The paper seeks to expand the area of modern Yiddish culture beyond literary fiction. It explores the rise of modern Yiddish theatre, press, poetry, and political literature in Imperial Russia in the 1880s. The essay argues that these forms of Yiddish cultural expression first became significant and widespread phenomena in the 1880s. It also highlights the emergence of a diverse Yiddish readership and audience, with different levels of Jewish and European cultural background, in order to counter the common dichotomy that Yiddish was for the masses, whereas Hebrew and Russian were used by the Jewish elites. Finally, the article places the rise of Modern Yiddish culture within the context of major social and economic transformations in East European Jewry: urbanization, population growth, and downward economic mobility. Overall, the article refines and revises certain conclusions offered in the author's book The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture (2005).