Yiddish is a High-German-derived language historically spoken by the Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a High-German-based vernacular fused with elements taken from Hebrew and Aramaic as well as Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages. Yiddish writing uses the Hebrew alphabet. As of the 1990s, there were around 1.5–2 million speakers of Yiddish, mostly Haredi Jews.
Shlomo Carlebach, known as Reb Shlomo to his followers, was a Jewish rabbi, religious teacher, spiritual leader, composer, and singer dubbed "the singing rabbi" during his lifetime.
Mordecai Mokiach (Eisenstadt) was a Jewish Sabbatean "prophet" and false Messiah.
Tkhines or teḥinot may refer to Yiddish prayers and devotions, usually personal and from a female viewpoint, or collections of such prayers. They were written for Ashkenazi Jewish women who, unlike the men of the time, typically could not read Hebrew, the language of the established synagogue prayer book. They were most popular from the 1600s to the early 1800s, with the first major collection of tkhines, the Seyder Tkhines, being printed in 1648. Unlike Hebrew prayers, tkhines dealt with issues specific to women. Despite being for women, it is thought that many tkhines were written by men and the authorship of most tkhines is often difficult to establish, due to multiple publications of the same tkhine and the use of pseudonyms.
Yiddish literature encompasses all those belles-lettres written in Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazic Jewry which is related to Middle High German. The history of Yiddish, with its roots in central Europe and locus for centuries in Eastern Europe, is evident in its literature.
Jewish literature includes works written by Jews on Jewish themes, literary works written in Jewish languages on various themes, and literary works in any language written by Jewish writers. Ancient Jewish literature includes Biblical literature and rabbinic literature. Medieval Jewish literature includes not only rabbinic literature but also ethical literature, philosophical literature, mystical literature, various other forms of prose including history and fiction, and various forms of poetry of both religious and secular varieties. The production of Jewish literature has flowered with the modern emergence of secular Jewish culture. Modern Jewish literature has included Yiddish literature, Ladino literature, Hebrew literature, and Jewish American literature.
Johann Andreas Eisenmenger was a German Orientalist from the Electorate of the Palatinate, now best known as the author of Entdecktes Judenthum.
Ezriel Carlebach was a leading journalist and editorial writer during the period of Jewish settlement in Palestine and during the early days of the state of Israel. He was the first editor-in-chief of Israel's two largest newspapers, Yediot Ahronot, and then Ma'ariv.
Johann Christoph Wagenseil was a German historian, Orientalist, jurist and Christian Hebraist.
Elisheva Carlebach Jofen is an American scholar of early modern Jewish history.
Shlomo Carlebach is an American Haredi rabbi and scholar.
For the purposes of this article, “contemporary” refers to the period from 1967 to the present day, “Jewish” refers to the various streams and traits of Judaism practiced. Many Orthodox Jews use the term “religious” to refer to a strict adherence to Jewish law. For the purposes of this article, “religious” refers to the content and context of the music itself: liturgical or implicit references to the divine.
Rebecca bat Meir Tiktiner, was a Yiddish writer, whose works include a treatise on Jewish ethics in the style of musar literature as well as a poem about Simchat Torah.
Beer Shmuel Issachar Leyb ben Judah Moses Eybeschuetz Perlhefter was a Jewish scholar and rabbi. His educated wife Bella bat R. Jakob Perlhefter, corresponded in Hebrew and wrote the preface on the Yiddish book “Beer Sheva”. Perlhefter taught the German Christian Hebraist Johann Christoph Wagenseil Hebrew and Jewish literature. Beer Perlhefter is consider an important figure of the Sabbatian movement. After the death of the pseudo-Messiah Sabbatai Zevi (1626-1676), he restored the Sabbatian theology at the school of Abraham Rovigo and called the Pseudomessiah Mordecai Mokiach to Italy.
The Nabratein synagogue is an ancient synagogue and archaeological site in the upper Galilee, in a pine forest northeast of Safed.
A schulklopfer is the person who calls a Jewish community to prayer in the local synagogue. The Yiddish term "schulklopfer" literally means "synagogue knocker". In modern times, the custom has more or less died out, but it was historically common.
Dovid Katz is an American-born, Vilnius-based scholar, author and educator, specializing in Yiddish language and literature, Lithuanian Jewish culture, and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. In recent years, he has been known for combating the so-called "Double Genocide" revision of Holocaust history which asserts a moral equivalence between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He is editor of the web journal DefendingHistory.com, which he founded in 2009; it has brought together a modest cluster of otherwise little heard-from East European voices. He is known to spend part of each year at his home in North Wales. His website include a list of his books, of some articles by topic, a record of recent work, and a more comprehensive bibliography.
Mark. H. Gelber is an American-Israeli scholar of comparative literature and German-Jewish literature and culture. He received his B.A. magna cum laude and with high honors in Letters and German. He also studied at the University of Bonn, the University of Grenoble, and Tel Aviv University. He was accepted for graduate studies as a Lewis Farmington Fellow at Yale University and he received his M.A. (1974), M.Phil. with high honors (1979), and Ph.D. from Yale University (1980). In the same year he accepted an appointment as post-doctoral lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, in the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics. Except for guest professorships and research fellowships abroad, he has been affiliated with BGU since that time. His research topics include: German-Jewish literature and culture, comparative literature, exile theory and the literature of exile, cultural Zionism, early Zionist literature and journalism, literary anti-Semitism, autobiography and biography, and literary reception. He lectures frequently at international meetings and conferences in Israel, Europe, China, and the United States.
Paul Wexler is an American-born Israeli linguist, and Professor Emeritus of linguistics at Tel Aviv University. His research fields include historical linguistics, bilingualism, Slavic linguistics, creole linguistics, Romani (Gypsy) and Jewish languages.
Elisheva Bikhovski — was a Russian-Israeli poet, writer, literary critic and translator, often known simply by her adopted Biblical Hebrew name Elishéva. Her Russian Orthodox father, Ivan Zhirkov, was a village teacher who later became a bookseller and textbook publisher; her mother was descended from Irish Catholics who had settled in Russia after the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). Elisheva wrote most of her works in Hebrew, and also translated English and Hebrew poetry into Russian.
