Volume 6 presents a first-of-its-kind comprehensive collection of essays by Yiddish artists
and intellectuals from the interwar period including Perets Markish Nakhmen Mayzel Shmuel
Niger Melekh Ravitsh Fradl Shtok and Debora Vogel. The focus is on manifestos by writers and
artists on the perspectives of modern authors in particular on their positions vis à vis
world literature including their opinions regarding the so-called language war between Hebrew
and Yiddish. The volume also documents the debate that accompanied the plan to organize a
Yiddish literary congress in 1927 intended to strengthen the fragmented Yiddish cultural
community. A separate chapter is devoted to essays by the poetess and fiction writer Kadya
Molodowsky. A longtime editor of the literary periodical Svive (Surroundings) she was an
exception in a field largely dominated by men.The volume contains some 60 Yiddish essays
printed in Hebrew letters accompanied by a foreword in English and German. This first
comprehensive edition of Yiddish essays presents central voices and discourses of Jewish and
Yiddish artists and intellectuals of the interwar period.
