Yiddish is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages. Yiddish is primarily written in the Hebrew alphabet.
The Haskalah, often termed Jewish Enlightenment, was an intellectual movement among the Jews of Central and Eastern Europe, with a certain influence on those in Western Europe and the Muslim world. It arose as a defined ideological worldview during the 1770s, and its last stage ended around 1881, with the rise of Jewish nationalism.
Canadian citizens who follow Judaism as their religion and/or are ethnically Jewish are a part of the greater Jewish diaspora and form the third largest Jewish community in the world, exceeded only by those in Israel and in the United States. As of 2021, Statistics Canada listed 335,295 adherents to the Jewish religion in Canada. This total would account for approximately 1.4% of the Canadian population.
Isaac Leib Peretz, also sometimes written Yitskhok Leybush Peretz was a Polish Jewish writer and playwright writing in Yiddish. Payson R. Stevens, Charles M. Levine, and Sol Steinmetz count him with Mendele Mokher Seforim and Sholem Aleichem as one of the three great classical Yiddish writers. Sol Liptzin wrote: "Yitzkhok Leibush Peretz was the great awakener of Yiddish-speaking Jewry and Sholom Aleichem its comforter.... Peretz aroused in his readers the will for self-emancipation, the will for resistance against the many humiliations to which they were being subjected."
Yankev Shternberg was a Yiddish theater director, teacher of theater, playwright, avant-garde poet and short-story writer, best known for his theater work in Romania between the two world wars.
Joseph Green, born Yoysef Grinberg, a.k.a. Josef Grünberg, Joseph Greenberg and Joseph Greene, a Polish-born Jew who emigrated to the United States in 1924, was an actor in Yiddish theater and one of the few directors of Yiddish-language films. He made four Yiddish films that he shot on location in Poland, beginning in 1935: Yidl mitn fidl, Der Purimspiler, Mamele, and A brivele der mamen. He also wrote the screenplays for the films, except for Mamele.
Morris Winchevsky, also known as Ben Netz, was a prominent Jewish socialist leader in London and the United States in the late 19th century.
Yosef Tunkel was a Jewish–Belarusian–American writer of poetry and humorous prose in Yiddish commonly known by the pen name Der Tunkeler or 'The dark one' in Yiddish.
Abraham Jacob Paperna was a Russian Jewish educator and author.
Solomon Simon was a Jewish author and educator. He published over thirty books, in Yiddish and English, notably his children's books The Wandering Beggar,The Wise Men of Helm, and More Wise Men of Helm. He was also a leading figure of the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute, a Jewish cultural organization that operated Yiddish secular schools for children.
The Folkstsaytung was a Yiddish language daily newspaper which served as the official organ of the General Jewish Labour Bund in Poland. Folkstsaytung was published in Warsaw, Second Polish Republic. It began publication in 1921 and officially lasted until the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. Thereafter it continued on as an illegal underground newspaper until 1943. Its first editors were Victor Alter and Henrik Erlich. In 1927 it was renamed Naye Folkstsaytung. When Ehrlich and Alter became preoccupied with their leadership responsibilities in the Bund, Leyvik Hodes took over editorial responsibility. <Leyvik Hodes: Biografye un shrift. Ed. Sofia Dubnov-Erlich. New York: Farlag undzer tsayt, 1962> It began to be published again after World War II but in 1948 it was taken over by Communist authorities and disbanded.
Joel Baer Falkovich was an early Yiddish Theatre dramatist, literary figure, and supporter of the Haskalah from the Russian Empire.
Saul M. Ginsburg was a Jewish-Belarusian American author, editor, and historian of Russian Jewry.
Kadia Molodowsky was an American poet and writer in the Yiddish language, and a teacher of Yiddish and Hebrew. She published six collections of poetry during her lifetime, and was a widely recognized figure in Yiddish poetry during the twentieth century.
Rokhl Brokhes was a Yiddish-language writer from Minsk. She was the author of stories, plays, and children's stories.
Pincus Goodman, who published as P. Goodman, was an American Yiddish-language poet active from the 1920s to the 1940s. Because he worked as a silk weaver his whole life, he was known as the "weaver poet."
Chaim Leib Fox, was a Yiddish poet, writer and a journalist associated with literary life of Łódź after World War I. After emigrating to the U.S. in 1953, Fox worked on encyclopaedic projects, contributing over 3,000 articles for the Leksikon fun der Nayer Yidisher Literatur and publishing Hundert yor yidishe un hebreyishe literatur in Kanade on Canadian-Jewish diaspora.
Kasrilevka or Kasrilevke is a fictional shtetl introduced by a Yiddish author Sholem Aleichem. Located "exactly in the middle of that blessed Pale", it is an idealized town of "little Jews", who met their misfortunes with humor and the ultimate belief in justice. It has become an archetype shtetl. Other famous imaginary places of Sholem Aleichem are Yehupetz and Boiberik.
Vivian Felsen is a Canadian translator from French and Yiddish into English, and a visual artist of Jewish origin. She is the recipient of the Canadian Jewish Book Award (2001) and J. I. Segal Award for her translations dealing with Canadian Jewish history and Holocaust memoirs.
Abraham Jacob Bruck was a Russian educator, journalist, and author of works in Hebrew and in Russian.
