Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport, known by his pseudonym S. Ansky, was a Jewish author, playwright, researcher of Jewish folklore, polemicist, and cultural and political activist. He is best known for his play The Dybbukor Between Two Worlds, written in 1914, and for Di Shvue, the anthem of the Jewish socialist Bund.
Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; naturalist drama; expressionist and modernist plays. At its height, its geographical scope was comparably broad: from the late 19th century until just before World War II, professional Yiddish theatre could be found throughout the heavily Jewish areas of Eastern and East Central Europe, but also in Berlin, London, Paris, Buenos Aires and New York City.
Abraham Sutzkever was an acclaimed Yiddish poet. The New York Times wrote that Sutzkever was "the greatest poet of the Holocaust."
YIVO is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. Established in 1925 in Wilno in the Second Polish Republic as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (ייִדישער װיסנשאַפֿטלעכער אינסטיטוט, pronounced[ˈjidiʃɛrˈvisn.ʃaftlɛχɛrinstiˈtut], Yiddish Scientific Institute.
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.
Alter Kacyzne was a Jewish (Yiddish) writer, poet and photographer, known as one of the most significant contributors to Jewish-Polish cultural life in the first half of the 20th century. Among other things, he is particularly known as a photographer whose work immortalised Jewish life in Poland in the 1920s and 1930s.
Moyshe Kulbak was a Belarusian Jewish writer who wrote in Yiddish.
Chava Rosenfarb was a Holocaust survivor and Jewish-Canadian author of Yiddish poetry and novels, a major contributor to post-World War II Yiddish Literature.
Irena Klepfisz is a Jewish lesbian author, academic and activist.
Beyle (Berta) Friedberg, best known by the pen names Isabella and Isabella Arkadevna Grinevskaya, was a Russian-Jewish novelist, poet, and dramatist. As a translator, she translated into Russian works from Polish, German, French, Italian, Armenian, and Georgian.
Dina Abramowicz was a librarian at YIVO and a Yiddish language expert.
Yente Serdatzky was a Russian-born American Yiddish-language writer of short fiction and plays, active in New York City.
Evelyn Torton Beck has been described as "a scholar, a teacher, a feminist, and an outspoken Jew and lesbian". Until her retirement in 2002 she specialized in women's studies, Jewish women's studies and lesbian studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Devorah Baron was a pioneering Jewish writer, noted for writing in Modern Hebrew and for making a career as a Hebrew author. She has been called the "first Modern Hebrew woman writer". She wrote about 80 short stories, plus a novella titled Exiles. Additionally, she translated stories into Modern Hebrew.
Kadia Molodowsky was a Polish-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.
Rokhl Auerbakh was an Israeli writer, essayist, historian, Holocaust scholar, and Holocaust survivor. She wrote prolifically in both Polish and Yiddish, focusing on prewar Jewish cultural life and postwar Holocaust documentation and witness testimonies. She was one of the three surviving members of the covert Oyneg Shabes group led by Emanuel Ringelblum that chronicled daily life in the Warsaw Ghetto, and she initiated the excavation of the group's buried manuscripts after the war. In Israel, she directed the Department for the Collection of Witness Testimony at Yad Vashem from 1954 to 1968.
Samuel Leib Zitron, also known as S. L. Citron, was a Hebrew and Yiddish writer, historian, and literary critic. He contributed to the Yiddish press and to nearly all the Hebrew periodicals in the Diaspora over 50 years.
Regina Lilientalowa, born Gitla née Eiger; 24 November 1875 Zawichost — 4 December 1924, Warsaw). She was a Polish ethnographer, translator, and journalist of Jewish origin. She is known for her pioneering research on Jewish folk rituals and literature.
Kathryn Ann Hellerstein is an American academic and scholar of Yiddish-language poetry, translation, and Jewish American literature. Specializing in Yiddish, she is currently a professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the Ruth Meltzer Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. She is known for her research focus on Yiddish women writers, notably Kadya Molodowsky, Malka Heifetz Tussman, and Celia Dropkin.
