Yiddish writers have produced all kinds of modern literature, from high modernist poetry to epic novels. Less attention has been paid to more popular literary forms—the romance novels, detective fiction, and adventure tales that made up the daily reading of Yiddish speakers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This event will discuss how writers and editors transformed globally-circulated genres for Jewish reading publics and then reflect on how rereading such texts today might change our understanding of modern Jewish culture.

About the speaker: Saul Noam Zaritt is an associate professor of Yiddish Literature at Harvard University. He studies modern Jewish writing and the politics of translation, examining how writers cross and inhabit boundaries between cultures. His most recent book, A Taytsh Manifesto: Yiddish, Translation, and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture, came out in October 2024 with Fordham University Press.

Copies of A Taytsh Manifesto will be available for purchase and signing.