Bücher der Reihe Studies in Yiddish

The integration of women into public Jewish performance (Yiddish-language theater by 1877 and Hebrew-language theater by about 1918) was a revolution in modern Jewish culture. While a great deal of seasoned Yiddish-speaking male talent preexisted theater in the form of cantors, choristers, and tavern singers, East European Jewish women had no experience participating in public Jewish performance. From the theater's first days, women assumed positions of authority, security, and visibility in great numbers. Rapidly, by the 1890s, when the center of the Yiddish theater shifted from cities throughout Romania and the Russian Empire where it first launched in the late 1870s to cities across the globe - including London, Buenos Aires, and New York City by the turn of the century - substantial numbers of female Yiddish actors enjoyed celebrity on par with their male counterparts.Women on the Yiddish Stage presents an array of scholarly essays that challenge the existing historical accounting of the modern Yiddish theater; highlight pioneering artists, creators, and impresarios; and map sources and methodologies of this rich area of forgotten history.

In the midst of the violent conflicts of 1918 ambitious plans for new cultural formations emerged on the territory of the former Russian Empire. The most important Jewish community organization was the Kultur-Lige. Founded to 'organize the Jewish masses and develop Yiddish culture', the association's first meeting took place at the Kyiv apartment of the Yiddish writer David Bergelson. 'Leagues for Yiddish culture' were simultaneously founded in such places as Vilna (Vilnius), Warsaw, Moscow, Berlin, and New York. Scores of Yiddish books came out under the imprints of the Kultur-Lige publishing houses in Kyiv and Warsaw. However, it is less well known that he activity of the Kultur-Lige covered not only literature, journalism, and linguistics, but also the visual arts, music, theatre, and education. The goal of the Kultur-Lige was nothing less than the development and stewardship of Jewish secular national culture in its entirety.

This volume opens the world of Old Yiddish to scholars and students of Yiddish and Jewish Studies alike. It is a further step to broaden awareness that Yiddish, far from starting with the nineteenth century, can claim a history of over a thousand years. Presenting topics such as the oldest traces of Yiddish, bibliographical issues, language interaction, inter­­pretation, contextualization and research history, this vol­ume will contribute greatly to understanding of Western Yiddish literature. Uniting renowned and emerging scholars from various disciplines such as philology, history, literary criticism, comparative literature, bibliographical studies, and musicology, Worlds of Old Yiddish Literature makes Old Yiddish Studies the focus of interdisciplinary dialogue within and between its chapters.The editors are Simon Neuberg of Trier University and Diana Matut of the University Halle-Wittenberg.