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This dissertation explores the history of the translation of world literature into Yiddish through a series of interconnected case studies, stretching from the “founding” decade of modern Yiddish literature through its interwar acme. It features diachronic studies of single translator-authors (Sh. Y. Abramovitsh; Der Nister; Isaac Bashevis Singer) which consider the relationship between translations and original writing; synchronic views of transformative moments in Yiddish literary (translational) history across its multiple centers (1903; 1910; New York, Warsaw, Moscow); and “distant” readings of periodicals and anthologies with an eye to their particular explicit and implicit translation theories and practices as well as to the role of editors and publishers (Sholem Aleichem; Avrom Reyzen) in shaping both real and imagined literary markets. Throughout, it mobilizes the chronically-neglected genre of homegrown Yiddish literary criticism and theory (I.L. Peretz, Chaim Zhitlowsky, Moyshe Litvakov) in the hopes of understanding the shifting stakes and meanings of translation on the terms of translators, authors, critics, and readers themselves. By attending to the ways in which translations functioned as both sources of livelihood and engines of literary growth, this dissertation examines the desired and intermittently realized modernization and “normalization” of Yiddish literature on the world stage.

Manuscript in Hebrew, on paper; biographical dictionary and catalog of Jewish authors.

Between 1820 and 1850, nearly all major Danish authors (e.g. B.S. Ingemann, C. Hauch, H.C. Andersen, Th. Gyllembourg and St. St. Blicher) chose Jewish characters, mainly “noble Jews”, as protagonists for short stories and novels. This “boom” was on the one hand a direct rejection of the overtly anti-Semitic discussions in the literary jodefejden of 1813 and a reaction to the pogrom like attacks on Jews in Denmark in 1819. It can thus be understood as a favorable contribution to the discussions on Jewish emancipation in Denmark. On the other hand, this article demonstrates how the Jewish literary characters serve as the stereotypical “Other” that has to be assimilated and can prove the integrative and harmonizing abilities of the emerging Danish bourgeois society. A contrasting reading of the Danish-Jewish author M.A. Goldschmidt’s debut novel En Jode ( A Jew , 1845/1852) reveals the inner contradictions of these idealizations and the ensuing irreconcilable and ultimately lethal double-binds a Jewish individual who is willing to integrate.

A literary work – a novel – is the focus of this presentation. My interest of research lies in the psychological aspects of religion and its diverse expressions in literary settings. The novel chosen is written by the Swedish author Susanne Levin. The story is about Lea born in 1950 and brought up in the tradition of Judaism in Uppsala, Sweden. We see anger and compassion at work, we encounter reaction to evil, we sense Lea’s feelings of guilt, her gratitude, love, hatred, grief, and joy: Lea’s story gives a vivid account of life in a Scandinavian Jewish family. One major influence in Lea’s life was the fact that her mother was a survivor from the Nazi death camps and had decided to keep silent about the terrible things in her past. In the novel, the expression is given that religion became an important factor in Lea’s struggle. The theoretical reasoning is developed within the framework of an integrated object relations perspective. The basic view of reality underlying this theoretical perspective holds that human issues are related rather than isolated, and that human conditions cannot be in just any fashion and still support life.

It would now appear that there were at least two artistic breakthroughs in Isaac Bashevis Singer's career, and both were marked by the appearance of cultural manifestos.

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