The Friends of Yiddish Publishing

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

The twenty-first century has seen the proliferation of self-published books. This roundtable looks back a century to consider a related model of book production that financed the publication of Yiddish volumes: the book KOMITET. Whether on the occasion of a “jubilee” (the so-called YOYVL-BUKH) or with the work of several friends (AROYSGEGEBN FUN KOLEGN UN FRAYNT), Yiddish books entered the cultural marketplace with the support of an engaged readership. This roundtable discussion seeks to articulate the histories, economics, social networks, editorial interventions, and aesthetics of these publication circumstances—and to expand our understanding of how Yiddish books came to be.

Moderator Jacqueline Krass will pose four main questions: 1) What financial and cultural pressures lead to the formation of book committees, specifically in North America? 2) What publishing models did book committees seek to emulate and/or reject? 3) How were publication efforts shaped by interpersonal networks, including authors’ family and friends? 4) How do book committees’ histories appear in the aesthetics of Yiddish books as material objects?

To answer these questions, historian Cecile Kuznitz will draw on her research into KHESHBN HANEFESH (Novia Scotia, 1981) by Nechemia Lipschutz. The book was designed to look like a SEYFER and funded by the same Orthodox Jewish community that supported the publication of the Pinsk YIZKER BUKH. Literature graduate student Corbin Allardice will draw on their research into the role male poets’ wives played in mediating their husband’s work, focusing on Hasye Cooperman (married to N.B. Minkoff) and Etta Blum (married to Eliezer Blum). Literature scholar Sunny Yudkoff will draw on her research into the publishing networks of H. Leyvik to examine Shmuel Charney’s study H. LEYVIK, 1888-1948, published on the occasion of Leyvik’s sixtieth birthday. And historian Eric Goldstein will anchor the discussion with reference to his research into the comparative practices of the mass market Hebrew Publishing Company.

Despite book committees’ influence on Yiddish literature as we know it, very little has been written about them. This panel offers a starting point for an important and much under-researched topic.

Sub Unit

• Yiddish Studies

Moderator

• Jacqueline Krass, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Discussants

• Sunny Yudkoff, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Eric L. Goldstein, Emory University

• Cecile Kuznitz, Bard College

• Corbin Allardice, Johns Hopkins University

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 13