Yiddish Literature

I

Introduction

Yiddish Literature, writings by Jews in the Yiddish language, produced mainly in Eastern Europe and the United States. Yiddish literature may be divided into three periods: the period of preparation, the classical age, and the postclassical period.

II

The Period of Preparation

As early as the 12th century, Jewish minstrels wandered through Germany reciting Yiddish translations of contemporary Gentile verse romances. Aside from these, Yiddish literature before the 19th century consisted mainly of devotional works designed to make the Jewish religion intelligible to everyone. The best known of these writings is the Tz'enah ur'enah, a free reworking of stories from the Pentateuch, composed by Jacob ben Isaac Ashkenazi. Other notable examples of devotional literature are the Maaseh Buch (Story Book, 16th century), a collection of moralistic tales, and the Tehinnot, devotional prayers for women. The only noteworthy nondevotional works written before the 19th century are the memoirs (first pub. 1896; trans. 1932) of Glueckel of Hameln, which abound in perceptive descriptions of contemporary German Jewish family life; and the diary of the first Swedish Jew, Aaron Isaac.

Yiddish literature flourished under three main influences, Haskalah, Hasidism, and anti-Semitism. Haskalah (Hebrew, “enlightenment”), an 18th- and 19th-century movement to familiarize Jews with Western culture, was initiated by the German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. The leaders of the Haskalah, regarding Yiddish merely as a jargon, preferred Hebrew or the languages of their countries of citizenship. Nevertheless, they were compelled to write in Yiddish, for it was the language of the masses. Hasidism, a popular religious movement opposing official Judaism, helped to give dignity to the Yiddish language and literature. Anti-Semitism intensified the self-consciousness of the Jews and their appreciation of Jewish culture. As a result of such experiences as the series of Russian pogroms (see Pogrom) launched by the tsarist government in 1881, many Jews of Eastern Europe lost all hope of ever participating in general European culture.

III

The Classical Age

The brief classical age of Yiddish literature, from the late 19th to the early 20th century, is epitomized in three great writers of fiction: Shalom Jacob Abramowitz, better known as Mendele Mokher Sefarim (Mendele the Itinerant Bookseller); Shalom Aleichem; and Isaac Leib Peretz. All wrote about everyday life in the Jewish Pale of western Russia and particularly about life in the shtetl, the Jewish village. Their work represents a balancing of folk and literary influences and shows an awareness of life outside their ghettos.

---

---

Mendele Mokher Sefarim was the first to use Yiddish as a vehicle of literary creation. In his stories he combined a compassionate love for his people with a rejection of the degradations of ghetto life and of the stultifying influence of antiquated Jewish traditions. Shalom Aleichem, the most loved of all Yiddish writers, depicted with humor, sadness, and tenderness the characters in the ghetto. Peretz, who had assimilated the influences of the great Russian authors of his time and of the classic literature of Western Europe, was the most intellectual and the most cosmopolitan of the three writers. His stories and novelettes display a remarkable psychological subtlety.

IV

The Postclassical Period

After 1914 the traditional Jewish life of Eastern Europe began to disintegrate under the impact of wars, migrations, revolutions, and persecutions. Many Yiddish writers who survived the succession of catastrophes fled to the United States and settled in New York City, which soon became a Yiddish literary center second only to Warsaw in importance; some migrated to the countries of Western Europe or to Palestine. Others, living in Russia, were affected greatly by the turmoil of the Bolshevik revolution. Among the most outstanding Yiddish authors of this period were Abraham Reisen, who wrote poetry and evocative short stories based on his poverty-stricken childhood; Sholem Asch, who is known to non-Jewish readers for his novels about the beginnings of Christianity; Israel Joshua Singer, author of The Brothers Ashkenazi (1936; trans. 1936), who, along with Asch, helped to perfect the full-length Yiddish novel; and Zalman Schneour, who introduced erotic themes into Jewish writing. The social realists Moshe Kulbak, a poet, novelist, and dramatist, and David Bergelson, a novelist and journalist, were among the many Soviet Yiddish writers liquidated in the purges that were carried out during Stalin's dictatorship.

A group of gifted American Yiddish writers known as the Young Ones, including Leivick Halpern, known under the pen name H. Leivick, and Joseph Opatoshu, rebelled against the emphasis on social problems in many Yiddish works of the period; instead, they stressed individual creativity and pure art. Another group of immigrant poets and writers, including Jacob Glatstein and Aaron Glanz, treated various cosmopolitan themes. The stories of Nobel laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer often deal with lofty and tragic themes of the Jewish faith, and they are frequently tinged with fantasy.

	More from Encarta
	•  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain