Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature

As migration carried Yiddish to several continents during the twentieth century, an increasingly global community of speakers and readers clung to Jewish heritage while striving to help their children make sense of their lives as Jews in the modern world. InModern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature,Miriam Udeltraces how the stories and poems written for these Yiddish-speaking children underpinned new formulations of secular Jewishness. Udel discusses how Yiddish children’s literature espoused various political ideologies and constituted a project of Jewish cultural nationalism before the Holocaust.Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literatureshows how Yiddish authors, educators, and cultural leaders, confronting practical limits on their ability to forge a fully realized nation of their own, focused instead on making a symbolic and conceptual world for Jewish children to inhabit with dignity, justice, and joy.
Join YIVO for a conversationwith Udel about this new book, led byMarjorie Ingall.
Admission:Free
Registration is required.

About the Speakers

Miriam Udelis Associate Professor of German Studies and Jewish Studies at Emory University, focusing on Yiddish language, literature, and culture. Udel’s academic research interests include twentieth-century Yiddish literature and culture, Jewish children’s literature, and American-Jewish literature. She is the author ofNever Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque(University of Michigan Press, 2016), winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience, andModern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature(Princeton University Press, forthcoming 2025). She is also the editor and translator ofHoney on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature(New York University Press, 2020).

Marjorie Ingallis the author ofMamaleh Knows Best: What Jewish Mothers Do to Raise Successful, Creative, Empathetic, Independent ChildrenandSorry Sorry Sorry: The Case for Good Apologies(with New York Times-bestselling author Susan McCarthy), as well as co-creator of the website SorryWatch, which analyzes apologies in the news, in history, and in the arts. She is also the author ofHungry(with Crystal Renn),The Field Guide to North American Males, andSmart Sex (with Jessica Vitkus). She often writes about children’s books for theNew York TimesBook Review. She has been a columnist forTablet MagazineandThe Forward; a contributing writer forGlamourandSelf; and Senior Writer atSassy, where she was also the books editor.

Venue Information

This online event will take place on Zoom at 12:00pm ET.
(What time is that for me?)