Yiddish and Hebrew in the American Midwest

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

In his introduction to the literary anthology In nebl (1909) published by the Yunger shrayber farayn of Chicago, Kalman Marmor explains the significance of this volume: “The Yiddish settlement in Chicago is still young and Yiddish literature has not yet found a home here. Yiddish newspapers in Chicago import their literature from elsewhere, and there are many who believe that the soil at the banks of Lake Michigan is not fertile ground for Yiddish poetry.” Over a century later, this impression remains largely true. Yiddish and Hebrew writing and cultural production in the American Midwest remain largely unstudied, contributing to a general impression that the Midwest was not a generative place for Jewish languages and their cultural production. This round table brings together scholars working on aspects of Yiddish and Hebrew in the Midwest, and representations of the Midwest in Yiddish and Hebrew literature, who are recovering and examining these neglected sources.

Some questions participants will consider include:

- In what ways did Yiddish and Hebrew writers express themselves as connected to the Midwest in particular?
- What Midwestern landscapes, literary traditions, political or ideological currents made their way into Yiddish and Hebrew writing?
- How did the Midwest function as a region within national networks of traveling theatrical productions, lecture circuits, and print culture in Hebrew and Yiddish?
- Were there particular Midwestern Yiddish literary movements, theatrical performance traditions or typographical innovations?
- What relationship did Yiddish and Hebrew have to one another in the Midwest?
- What relationship did Midwestern Yiddish and Hebrew writers and cultural activists have to one another?
- How might we consider Yiddish and/or Hebrew publications alongside the work of other linguistic minorities in the American Midwest?

Jessica Kirzane (moderator) is the assistant instructional professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago and the editor-in-chief of In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. She has developed a course on Chicago Jewish history, and is in the early stages of a project to research and translate Chicago Yiddish poetry.

Mark Louden is the Alfred L. Shoemaker, J. William Frey, and Don Yoder Professor of Germanic Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. His research and public outreach center on Germanic minority languages in North America, including Pennsylvania Dutch and Yiddish. He has a special interest in how these varieties were represented in historic newspapers, including the Milvoker Vokhenblat, which was published in Milwaukee from 1915 to 1959.

Noam Sienna is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto, contributing to the Mellon-funded interdisciplinary project “Hidden Stories: New Approaches to the Local and Global History of the Book.” He has worked previously on Jewish book culture in the medieval and early modern Mediterranean, and is currently developing a project on Hebrew and Yiddish printing in Minneapolis (MN) and Hamilton (ON). His first book, Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds, is forthcoming with Indiana University Press.

Anna Elena Torres is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago in the departments of Comparative Literature and Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity. Torres’ work on Yiddish literature in Chicago includes studies of Malka Heifetz Tussman’s early prose and the post-Haymarket Generation of poets. Torres is the author of Horizons Blossom, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature (Yale University Press) and co-editor of With Freedom in Our Ears: Histories of Jewish Anarchism (University of Illinois Press).

Shachar Pinsker is a professor of Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan. Pinsker works on Hebrew and multilingual literature and culture in Palestine/Israel, Europe, and North America. He is the author and editor of 5 books, including Women's Hebrew Poetry on American Shores (Wayne State University Press), a bilingual edition of the poetry of Annabelle Farmelant and Anne Kleiman, which he introduced in the context of Hebrew literature in NYC and the Midwest.

Zachary M. Baker is the Reinhard Family Curator Emeritus of Judaica and Hebraica Collections in the Stanford University Libraries. He publishes regularly in the fields of Yiddish Studies, Judaica librarianship and bibliography. He edited the exhibition catalog Ira Nowinski: The Photographer As Witness, and the essay collection Judaica in the Slavic Realm, Slavica in the Judaic Realm. He is a member of the core research team of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project and is on the Board of In geveb: a journal of Yiddish Studies.

Sub Unit

• Modern Jewish Literature and Culture

Moderator

• Jessica Kirzane, The University of Chicago

Discussants

• Noam Sienna

• Shachar Pinsker, The University of Michigan

• Anna Torres, University of Chicago

• Zachary Baker, Stanford University

• Mark Louden, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Zoom Host

• Zoom Host 08