My name is Mindl Cohen, I am the academic director of the Yiddish Book Center, a nonprofit organization dedicated to Yiddish literature and culture, and I am thrilled to be guest curating the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative blog for the month of October. Throughout the month I will be sharing posts about newly published and forthcoming translations of Yiddish literature—written by the translators themselves! I will also share about our work at the Yiddish Book Center, which offers many ways to learn more about Yiddish literature and culture. Whether you are a farbrenter yidishist—a passionate Yiddishist—already, or whether this is the first time you are encountering the literature, I hope you will learn about some interesting new titles and be encouraged to explore this “major literature in a minor language.”

For those unfamiliar with Yiddish, below I offer a brief introduction to the literature and a sketch of the current moment for literary translation from Yiddish.

Yiddish Literature

The golden age for Yiddish literature was the first half of the twentieth century. If you’ve heard of any Yiddish writers, they are likely Sholem Aleichem, author of the “Tevye the Dairyman” stories first written in the 1890s (and eventually serving as source material for “Fiddler on the Roof”), and Isaac Bashevis Singer, who won the Nobel Prize in 1978 for novels like The Family Moskat (1950) and Enemies: A Love Story (1966). Most of modern Yiddish literature, certainly its hey-day as a popular and widely read literature, took place between those two bookends.

Yiddish was the language of Ashkenazi Jewry in central and eastern Europe since the Middle Ages, and eventually around the world as Yiddish-speaking Jews emigrated in large numbers to North and South America as well as South Africa, Australia, and Palestine/Israel. So, although Yiddish was almost always the language of a precarious minority group, Yiddish culture was produced and consumed on every continent: Yiddish books, newspapers, and journals were published from Kyiv to Los Angeles, Yiddish theater was staged from Montreal to Buenos Aires, Yiddish songs were sung from Cape Town to Melbourne.

The Yiddish language has a Germanic grammar and vocabulary (a lot like English!), it is written in the Hebrew alphabet and has many words of Hebrew origin, and it contains elements of Slavic vocabulary along with words incorporated from whatever language Yiddish speakers engaged with. Yiddish literature, like the language and culture, is both deeply Jewish and fully a product of exchange and engagement with the non-Jewish languages and cultures among whom Yiddish speakers lived. Alongside Jewish genres like religious commentary and tales of holy teachers, Yiddish literature adopted and adapted every imaginable genre and style of modern Western literature: epic poetry, satiric novels, memoir, short story, drama, and avant-garde modernism, etc. Much of the literature offers fascinating and often poignant accounts of the difficult, violent history of the twentieth century, from experiences of immigration to survival and loss during the Holocaust. Despite the decline of the Yiddish-speaking population after World War Two, writers have continued exploring their experiences in powerful short story, poetry, memoir, and novels up to today.

Translation from Yiddish Today

We are in an exciting and productive moment for literary translation in general—which GLLI is a great example of—and for translation from Yiddish in particular. Later this month I’ll write a post all about the Yiddish Book Center’s Translation Initiative and the work we are doing to support and promote translation from Yiddish. For now, I’ll just make two general observations, which are probably equally true for Yiddish and for literary translation broadly speaking: 1) there are a growing number of talented, dedicated, passionate Yiddish translators bringing great works of Yiddish literature to light and to new audiences. 2) There are structural challenges that Yiddish translators must overcome in order to get their work published and in front of readers.

Over the course of the month, you will have a chance to meet many of the wonderful Yiddish translators active today. They range from native speakers of Yiddish to recent college graduates in their twenties who have learned the language as adults; they are academics, librarians, writers, actors, poets, musicians, and even medical doctors. They live and work in the US, Canada, and the UK. And in each case, their own interests have led them to different corners of Yiddish literature, which means that their translations are diverse in terms of genre, theme, and origin.

Getting published is hard; getting literary translation published in English (with its 3% problem) is hard; getting a 50 or 100 year old work by a previously untranslated author from a small but much-stereotyped language like Yiddish published is—hard. Given all this, much of Yiddish in translation is being published by academic presses or small presses dedicated to Jewish literature or Yiddish specifically, like the Yiddish Book Center’s imprint, White Goat Press. But with every new translation the lens of what Yiddish literature has to offer is widened. I hope our #YiddishLitMonth helps these great works find new readers.

About the Yiddish Book Center

The Yiddish Book Center recovers, preserves, teaches, and celebrates Yiddish literature and culture to advance a fuller understanding of Jewish history and identity. The Center engages diverse, worldwide audiences, generating enthusiasm, knowledge, and commitment to the history and future of Yiddish and Jewish culture. The million-plus books recovered by the Center since its founding in 1980 represent Jews’ first sustained literary and cultural encounter with the modern world. They are a window on the past thousand years of Jewish history, a precursor of modern Jewish writing in English, Hebrew, and other languages, and a springboard for new creativity.

Over the past 43 years the Yiddish Book Center has launched a wide range of bibliographic, educational, and cultural programs to share the treasures it has found with the wider world. In 2014, the organization was awarded a National Medal for Museums and Libraries in a White House ceremony. In 2019, the Yiddish Book Center launched its White Goat Press publishing imprint to bring newly translated works of Yiddish to the widest readership possible. Learn more at yiddishbookcenter.org.