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Yiddish is a High German–derived language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a High German-based vernacular fused with many elements taken from Hebrew and to some extent Aramaic; most varieties also have substantial influence from Slavic languages, and the vocabulary contains traces of influence from Romance languages. Yiddish writing uses the Hebrew alphabet. In the 1990s, there were around 1.5–2 million speakers of Yiddish, mostly Hasidic and Haredi Jews. In 2012, the Center for Applied Linguistics estimated the number of speakers to have had a worldwide peak at 11 million, with the number of speakers in the United States and Canada then totaling 150,000. An estimate from Rutgers University gives 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of the world.
Israeli literature is literature written in the State of Israel by Israelis. Most works classed as Israeli literature are written in the Hebrew language, although some Israeli authors write in Yiddish, English, Arabic and Russian.
Abraham Sutzkever was an acclaimed Yiddish poet. The New York Times wrote that Sutzkever was "the greatest poet of the Holocaust."
Uri Zvi Greenberg was an acclaimed Israeli poet, journalist and politician who wrote in Yiddish and Hebrew. Widely regarded among the greatest poets in the country's history, he was awarded the Israel Prize in 1957 and the Bialik Prize in 1947, 1954 and 1977, all for his contributions to fine literature. Following Israeli indepdence in 1948, he also served in the first Knesset as a member of Menachem Begin's Herut Party. Greenberg's Revisionist orientation had an important influence on both his writings and his politics.
Avraham Shlonsky was a significant and dynamic Israeli poet and editor born in the Russian Empire.
Yocheved Bat-Miriam was an Israeli poet. Bat-Miriam was Born in Belorussia to a hasidic family. She studied pedagogy in Kharkov and at the universities of Odessa and Moscow. During this period, she participated in the revolutionary literary activities of the “Hebrew Octoberists”, a Communist literary group, and one of her earliest poem-cycles, a paean to revolutionary Russia entitled Erez (Land) was published in the group's anthology in 1926. She is unusual among Hebrew poets in expressing nostalgia for the landscapes of the country of her birth. Yocheved migrated to British Palestine, later to be called Israel, in 1928. Her first book of poetry, Merahok was published in 1929. In 1948, her son Nahum (Zuzik) Hazaz from the writer Haim Hazaz died in the 1948 war of independence. Since then she never wrote a poem again.
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. Rosenfarb began writing poetry at the age of eight.
Miriam Akavia also Matylda Weinfeld was a Polish-born Israeli writer and translator, a Holocaust survivor, and the president of the Platform for Jewish-Polish Dialogue.
Dan Miron is an Israeli-born American literary critic and author.
David Vogel was a Ukrainian-born Jewish poet, novelist, and diarist.
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 Defending History which he founded in 2009. He is known to spend part of each year at his home in North Wales. His website includes a list of his books, of some articles by topic, a record of recent work, and a more comprehensive bibliography.
Cemach Feldstein ([t͡ʃɛɱɑħ fɛldstajn]; sometimes spelled Tzemach; Hebrew: צמח פלדשטיין; Yiddish: פעלדשטיין; Lithuanian: Feldsteinas; Russian: Семён Григорович Фельдштейн, Semyon Grigorovitch; December 30, 1884 - December 29, 1944 was a Lithuanian educator, author, an education reformist, a culture Zionist activist. As an educator he was served as the director of several Jewish gymnasiums, the most notable of which was the Hebrew Real-Gymnasium in Kaunas, Lithuania, where most of the subjects were taught in Modern Hebrew.
Alexander Bogen was a Polish-Israeli visual artist, a decorated leader of partisans during World War II, a key player in 20th century Yiddish culture, and one of the trailblazers for art education and Artists' associations in the emerging state of Israel.
Ziva Ben-Porat is a literary theorist, writer, and editor who lives in Israel and is a professor at Tel Aviv University.
Miriam Zohar is an Israeli actress. She is part of the Beit Lessin Theater in Tel Aviv.
Hana Wirth-Nesher is an American-Israeli literary scholar and university professor. She is Professor of English and American Studies at Tel Aviv University, where she is also the Samuel L. and Perry Haber Chair on the Study of the Jewish Experience in the United States, and director of the Goldreich Family Institute for Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture. Specializing in the role of language, especially Yiddish, in expressing personal identity in Jewish American literature, she has written two books and many essays on American, English, and Jewish American writers. She is the editor of The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature (2015) and the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature (2003). She is the co-creator and academic co-director of the annual Yiddish summer program at Tel Aviv University.
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.
Nachman Blumental was a Polish-Jewish and Israeli historian who served as the head of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw between 1947 and 1949.
Nechama Lifshitz was a Yiddish language and later Hebrew language soprano and art song performer who came to be a key representative of Soviet Jewish culture in the 1950s and 1960s.Her seemingly innocent concerts were the heart and soul of Lipshitz’s contribution to keeping Jewish culture and identity alive in the Communist bloc
Benjamin Harshav, born Hrushovski ; June 26, 1928 – April 23, 2015 was a literary theorist specialising in comparative literature, a Yiddish and Hebrew poet, and an Israeli translator and editor. He served as professor of literature at the University of Tel Aviv and as a professor of comparative literature, Hebrew language and literature, and Slavic languages and literature at Yale University. He was the founding editor of the Duke University Press publication Poetics Today. He received the EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture in 2005 and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
References
- Miriam Hoffman. Columbia University. Accessed 2011-01-12.
- Who Knew Rejection Could Be So Inspiring?. Los Angeles Times, 2000-12-10. Accessed 2011-01-12.
- The Vilnius Yiddish Institute Newsletter, No. 4, February, 2003. The Vilnius Yiddish Institute. Accessed 2011-01-12.
