Rabbi Judah Leib Alter of Ger, a famed nineteenth-century Hasidic master, wrote an influential collection of Hebrew homilies. But it seems that R. Judah Leib’s sermons were also transcribed by his students, some of whom recorded their teacher’s words in the original Yiddish rather than Hebrew translation. This monograph is based on a newly-discovered Yiddish manuscript of sixty pages. It presents a synoptic edition of the Yiddish text alongside the Hebrew version, thus enabling comparison of the witnesses and demonstrating the development of the various texts. The introduction uses this manuscript to explore broader historical and theoretical issues such as the relationship between written texts and oral culture, the development of written Yiddish, the nature and boundaries of translation, and the complex pathways of transmission from teachers to their students.

These two collections of Yiddish letters date from the second half of the 17th century and are being published here in full for the first time. The opening five-letter collection was archived together with extensive information about three Jews from Hamburg-Altona, who had been arrested and investigated in Copenhagen in August 1666. The second collection consists of eighteen letters exchanged between Hamburg-Altona and Copenhagen in January 1678. They concern the family and business affairs of a range of people, among them some of Glikl Hamel’s relatives, business associates and acquaintances. Together, the two collections provide a wealth of illuminating new details about the economic, cultural, social, and family life of early modern Ashkenazi Jews in Northern Europe, and also shed light on the practice of Yiddish letter-writing at the time. The English section consists of an introduction followed by a synopsis of each letter, while the Hebrew section comprises a transcription of the original texts as well as their facsimile images.

Smocza is the biography of a street in Warsaw that was completely destroyed in World War II. The book reveals the story of a Jewish microcosm between two world wars. It is based on historical and literary sources that piece together a multicultural mixture of a society in transition, where orthodox Jews, Bundists, Zionists, shoemakers, tailors, poets, actors, prostitutes, and others lived side by side.

The Stage as a Temporary Home : On Dzigan and Shumacher's Theater (1927-1980) has been designated as the winner of the prestigious Shapiro Award for 2019 for the best book in Israel Studies The Stage as a Temporary Home takes us through the fascinating stages in the life and career of the duo Shimen Dzigan and Isroel Shumacher , over the course of half a century - from the beginning of their work at the Ararat avant-garde Yiddish theater in Łodz, Poland, and to their Warsaw theater, where they produced bold, groundbreaking political satire. The book further discusses their wanderings through the Soviet Union during the Second World War and their attempt to revive Jewish culture in Poland after the Holocaust, and finally describes their arrival in Israel, first as guest performers and later as permanent residents. Despite the restrictions on Yiddish actors in Israel, the duo insisted on performing in their own language and succeeded in translating the new Israeli reality into unique and timely satire. In the 1950s, they voiced a political and cultural critique of a kind that was not heard on any of the Hebrew stages. After they parted ways, and following the death of Shumacher in 1961, Dzigan continued to perform on his own and with other Israeli artists until his death in 1980 . The book is based on rare recordings, transcriptions, programs, personal diaries, letters, photographs, oral testimonies, and critical articles, all of which come together to create the first critical portrait of this extraordinary duo. The book also examines their art, the connection between theater and politics, and the complex relationship between majority culture and minority language . The study includes several valuable indexes: of titles of programs and plays, of the artists who participated in them, of writers and the drafts they wrote, of actors and the programs in which they participated, and a general name index. The book also includes a facsimile of the manuscript Der Nayer Dybbuk [The New Dybbuk]. Click here for the English edition, published by De Gruyter in collaboration with Magnes Press

You now have before you this volume which contains an assemblage of popular Yiddish humor: jokes both folksy and racy, proverbs and colloquial curses which originated in the hundreds of towns and cities of Eastern Europe up to the Second World War. In recent decades interest in Yiddish has been growing in Israel and in many other countries. It expresses itself as a longing, a nostalgia, for the language that was spoken in people's parents' home, and that they heard from their grandparents. This volume reveals some of the treasures of Yiddish humor to the many lovers of Yiddish around the world. This sampler does not specify the origin of the jokes it contains, because "An anecdote and a cat have no master, they belong to whoever manages to catch them." (N. Stutchkoff, p. 571, see Bibliography.) In order to select the approximately 400 jokes and sayings appearing in this book, the collector spent many months searching through anthologies, joke books, lexicons etc. The most important sources are listed in the Bibliography. In their world of poverty, pogroms, persecutions and evil decrees, the Jewish masses of Eastern Europe were in dire need of spiritual support and psychological defence. They found this support in humor, which relieves tension and makes life more bearable. This book is organized by theme into 51 sections, each section exhibiting a particular aspect or feature of Jewish life in the cities, towns and townlets of Eastern Europe.

The book Habima in Berlin delineates the net of interconnections between Habima, a Hebrew theater troupe, and the German Jewish cultural and economical elite, that were woven together in the years 1926-1931. It analyzes how Berlin Jews, among them renowned theater artists, Zionist activists, intellectuals, wealthy businessmen, industrialists and bankers, formed a coalition to support Habima and how they shaped its Hebrew-Zionist artistic profile.

An exorcism which took place in 1696 in Nikolsburg, Moravia (today Mikulov, Czech Republic) is the focus of this book. The description of this grandiose magic event reached us in two different versions: one well-known, in Hebrew became a model for this folk-genre in the 18th century; the other in Yiddish, remained unknown until now and is published here in full for the first time .The analysis includes a thorough comparison between these two competing descriptions, the identification of the participants – with special emphasis on their Sabbatean background and connections, as well as an identification of the specific ‘manual for exorcism’ used in this event (also published here in full, along other esoteric manuals of its kind). Through a thorough examination of the paradigmatic exorcism which took place in Moravia in 1696 and of its deep influence on the exorcism tales of the following generations, this book sheds new light on the central role magic in general and exorcism in particular played in the rich and multi-faceted cultural life of Ashkenazic Jews in the early modern period.

Among the masses of immigrants that turned New York into the largest Jewish city in the world in the early twentieth century , grew a spectacular Yiddish culture - journalism, theater and literature. Dozens of artists designed varied life experiences linking the Old World to their new country. It was a one-time, one of a kind fusion between 'East' - Jewish Eastern Europe - and the 'West' - the vastness of the United States, and especially the dizzying life of a big city. The chapters in "Here Dwells the Jewish People: A Century of American Yiddish Literature" are connected to each other. They describe a rich and complex array that functioned for three generations and more, and went through major changes: from poetry brimming with emotion and pathos and the melodramatic plays written by the first generation immigrants, literature ascended to the modernist writings of Moshe Leib Halpern, A. Liles, Jacob Glatstein, Anna Margolin and the dazzlingly rich prose of Yitzhak Bashevis.

This book focuses on a perspective that relatively has been neglected from of study on the history of Polish Jewry: The aspect of coexistence between Jews and Poles, their common history and multicultural influences. The articles in this collection present the complexity of the Polish-Jewish encounter throughout the ages. They examine the various directions that have developed in the study of Polish-Jewish relations since the renewed dialogue between Polish researchers and scholars from the West restarted in the 1990's.

This book highlights a specific feature characterizing some of the short stories of IL Peretz: His transparent and extensive reliance on popular and Hasidic sources. This is the rational for a comparative study of source and its adaptation , adding a critical dimension to the understanding of these stories. This book concentrates on three short stories of IL Peretz belonging to the genre of Hasidic tales: 'If Not Higher', 'Between Two Mountains', and 'The Birds and the Parchments'

This dictionary contains mainly idioms, which are combinations of words of an idiomatic nature and have an adopted, metaphorical meaning. Some are commonly used expressions, and are not necessarily idiomatic or metaphorical. These second kind of expressions which are termed "collocations" in linguistic parlance have been included only in cases where they do not appear in existing dictionaries of Yiddish. This dictionary offers four options for the user to find the required expressions: 1. By alphabetic order; 2. By alphabetized lists of the equivalent expressions in Hebrew, English and Russian; 3. By a list of the nouns and numerals that appear in the Yiddish expressions; 4. By a subject index. The alphabetized lists of equivalent expressions in Hebrew, English and Russian enable the dictionary to be used in two directions – Yiddish to Other Languages and Other Languages of Yiddish. The expressions in the dictionary are of three types: 1. Expressions which reflect the everyday life of the Jews of Eastern Europe (food, occupations, etc.): 2. Expressions associated with Jewish customs and religious life: 3. Loan translations (literal translations of expressions from other languages):

This periodical has been permanently discontinued. This is the last volume. This issue is focused on the productive collaboration of East European and German Jews who have been known to have a very long standing and documented hostile relationship.