Description

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In August 1908, a few prominent Jews - socialists, liberals, non-political writers and cultural organizers - worked out a programme for promoting Yiddish as the official language of Ashkenazic Jews. Ninety years later, leading scholars explore the influence of this historic meeting, providing a remarkable panoramic view of Yiddish at the century's end. An annual international gathering provides ongoing analysis of Yiddish language, literature and culture. Published here are papers from the 1998 conference held in Oxford, which include: Between Town and Gown: The institutionalisation of Yiddish at Israeli Universities (Avraham Novershtern); Defining the Yiddish Canon: Meditaions on the teaching of Yiddish Culture (Dafna Clifford); Yiddish studies and the Jewish search for a usable past (David Roskies); Yiddish studies in Germany today (Marion Aptroot); Is there a place for Yiddish in Poland's Jewish Revival? (Mikhail Kruitkov); Yiddish in Contmporary American Culture (Janet Hadda); The Post-1945 Klezmer Revival (Walter Salmen); Has the 'Golden Chain' ended? Problems of Continuity in Jewish writing (Gennady Estraikh); Yiddish in the former Soviet Union since 1989: A statistical-demographic analysis (Mark Tolts).