Talk:Yiddish literature/Archive 1

[Untitled]
Is that all there is?? This page is so THIN! Yiddish literature was/is so rich! Can't someone do better than this rough outline? I don't have the necessary academic background to do this subject justice or I'd tackle it myself. There must be someone who can give a fuller portrait of this literary tradition. richards1052

Expanded article
The rather grumpy message above prompted me to prepare a full length article. I suppose I spent too long fiddling with it and Wikipedia logged me out, so all you can see is my IP address. I thought I'd better let you know who wrote it.Nomi Jones 02:21, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Neutral POV requested
Hello all who have been adding to this article

Thank you for your work on this important article. Please try to keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list of all Yiddish writers, but a summary of major trends in Yiddish literature. Since there seems to have been most activity in the area of living writers, this leads to the suspicion that we are adding our friends, relations, and perhaps even ourselves. Please remember Wikipedia policy on neutrality. For example, the addition of Dovid Katz is justified by his book publications; the addition of a link to his personal home page, not. The links further down to other web pages are only there because of the intrinsic difficulties for non-native Yiddish speakers to find these pages on their own. And some of the other additions seem a bit of a stretch. Some of the authors mentioned have had a few (some even many) periodical publications, but no book. Are they really among the major trends in Yiddish literature? Please rethink and edit as you see fit; I'll leave it a while before making further changes. You may wish to check out Wikipedia policy on biographies of living people for guidelines on when to include or exclude an individual.

Also, I made a number of small edits for grammar. When an English sentence gets very long, the grammar becomes quite complex. If you're writing in your second language, starting a new sentence is easier than trying to add to an existing one. Nomi Jones 16:24, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

--- Thanks for your very helpful comments and for style editing. Yiddish authors belonging to the postwar generation who have published one or more books include: Alexander Belousov, Sholem Berger, Leybl Botwinik, Velvl Chernin, Gennadi Estaikh, Mikhoel Felzenbaum, Daniel Galay, Moyshe Lemster, Yitskhok Niborski, Boris Karloff (pen name of Dov-Ber Kerler), Heershadovid Menkes (pen name of Dovid Katz), Boris Sandler, Dmitry Yakirevich. Please note, however, that not all of them were included in the recently suggested revision.

As for the even younger authors, Yisroel Nekrasov is widely published in literary periodicals in Israel, USA and Russia and his first book collection is scheduled to appear within next few weeks in Moscow (selections of his original poetry can be read in the online magazine "Der Bavebter Yid" and on . Boris Kotlerman's original prose was published in two major Yiddish literary periodicals in Israel (at least twice in each one of them). Haike Beruriah Wiegand's poetry appeared in "Bavebter Yid" and soon in "Yerusholaimer Almanakh" in Jerusalem (see a small selection of her highly sophisticated verse at ). Perhaps a special case could be made for retaining their names in this entry for it is not all that easy for a contemporary Yiddish author to publish her or his work in a separate book no matter how well known and well received that work might be among contemporary Yiddish readers. A case in point is Alexander Belousov whose work was extremely well known and widely acclaimed, but whose first and so far the only collection of works appeared posthumously in 2006.

Finally, and for the record, there are also two Yiddish poets (and Yiddish scholars), Gilles Rosier in Paris and Thomas Soxberger in Vienna who are also accomplished and well published novelistsin in French and German respectively.

Once again, many, many thanks for your very helpful and constructive comments. May 9, 2007

Hasidic Literuture - Yiddish?
This article on Yiddish literature has an entire section on Hasidic literature, but little mention is made of Hasidic literature being related to Yiddish. The fact is, that the Hasidic literature was almost always written in Hebrew, and not in Yiddish. The book "In Praise of the Besht", for example, was written in Hebrew, and only later translated into Yiddish. This article doesn't give any original examples of Hasidic literature written in Yiddish - and the fact is, that there wasn't any. The only exception is perhaps the Tales of Rabbi Nachman, which was published almost simultaneously in Yiddish and Hebrew. I propose to get rid of the "Hasidic Literature" section (since this is not a genre of Yiddish literature - if it is, where are the original examples?), and instead create a "Religious literature" section. This section could include original religious literature that was written in Yiddish, two prominent examples being the Tales of Rabbi Nachman, and the popular Yiddish book of commentaries on the Humash, "Zeyna u-Reynah".Jimhoward72 (talk) 05:17, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

Transliteration for Yiddish Names?
משה is translated according to YIVO transiteration to "Moyshe"

משה is translated according to US Library of Congress to "Moishe"

Wikipedia seems to follow YIVO transliteration (which makes sense!). Comik (talk) 20:24, 7 November 2011 (UTC)


 * The YIVO transliteration rules are not applied to words of Semitic origin, which his first name unequivocally is. Since it is written without any vowels there are none there to transliterate; the diphthong under contention is interpolated in context and transcribed according to Hebrew practice. The article on Yiddish orthography goes into this in some detail. --Futhark|Talk 21:03, 7 November 2011 (UTC)