By Miriam Udel, Rifkind Fellow 2024-2025 & Member of the CJH Academic Advisory Council What Shall We Tell the Children? As I demonstrate in my critical study Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature, the Yiddish children’s literary canon that burgeoned on the secularist left during the first half of the twentieth century forms a rich archive for revisiting the anxieties and ideas that…
By Alona Bach, Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Short-Term Graduate Public History Fellow Electrical Engineering in Yiddish: The Vilna Technicum (and Beyond) “Up to this point, there has not been a single book about electricity in Yiddish, aside from a few small pamphlets,” declared the engineer Israel Okun in January 1922. It was a bold, frank introduction to his new Yiddish translation of a German textbook about…
By Cassia Kisshauer, Senior Reference Services Librarian Seize Der Tog!: The Yiddish Press in America The Yiddish press in America got its start in the late 19th century. By the 1910s, publications were flourishing and represented a wide variety of Jewish religious and political perspectives. Newspapers served as critical sites of information, entertainment, and learning. They provided access to local and national news in…
Yiddish Wall Newspapers “Wall newspapers”—large, hand-lettered or typed newsletters posted in a shared communal space—have their roots in Soviet propaganda. Among the rich historical resources available through the Center for Jewish History’s digital collections are wall newspapers that form a portion of YIVO’s Displaced Persons Camps and Centers Poster Collection, RG 294.6. Created in the aftermath of World War II, these fragile documents provide…
Look Who’s Coming to Dinner! Karikatūrah Mipaām ⚫ קָרִיקָטוּרָה מִפַּעַם Today’s cartoon in Yiddish appeared 1906 in New York in דיא ווארהייט. This newspaper in particular and others are made available online by the National Library of Israel on the website Historical Jewish Press – עיתונות יהודית היסטורית Microfilmed and print copies of newspapers and other material are available at the Center for Jewish…
