David Herman
The Yiddish Culture that was Lost: The Writers
Summary
Despite the tumultuous events of the First World War, Russian revolutions, and migrations, Yiddish literature continued to evolve. However, Yiddish culture was destroyed during World War II. What followed was a transformation in Yiddish literature, with a growing focus on emotional attachment to the ruined lands of origin and the struggle to integrate into new homelands.
David Herman
David Herman is a freelance writer based in London. Over the past 20 years he has written almost a thousand articles, essays, and reviews on Jewish history and literature for publications including the Jewish Chronicle, the Jewish Quarterly, Jewish Renaissance, the Guardian, the New Statesman, and Prospect. He has taught courses on Jewish culture for the London Jewish Cultural Centre and JW3. He is a regular contributor to Jewish Book Week, the Association of Jewish Refugees, and the Insiders/Outsiders Festival on the contribution of Jewish refugees to British culture.
New York had a much larger Jewish population and a much larger Yiddish-speaking population. It had a much more vibrant Jewish literary culture, not just in Yiddish. There were Jewish literary agents, reviewers and critics. There just wasn’t the infrastructure, the size of the readership, or an influential enough readership in Great Britain.
I don’t think they did. They did put together a translation for “Passover” but the point was not so much that they could write in Yiddish or read Yiddish, but more that they were interested in Yiddish speakers and in Yiddish writers.
There were in South Africa, in parts of South America and in Australia significant Jewish communities who were either immigrants from the late 19th century or descended from refugees from the 1930s and 1940s.
Yiddish writers came to Israel in the seventies, particularly Soviet writers. Others came immediately after the Second World War and they were well received.