Yiddish Children’s Literature

This is a seminar course and enrollment will be capped at around 25 students.

Instructor: Miriam Udel

One of the most exciting projects to emerge from 20th-century Yiddish culture was the creation of a literature for children. A corpus of nearly a thousand free-standing books and several periodicals burgeoned between the wars and continued to flourish into the 1970s. In this course, Miriam Udel, editor and translator of the new anthology Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature, will examine the artistic and political prerogatives of this literature—opening a new window onto the Jewish confrontation with modernity. What was distinctive about Jewish children’s literature in both Yiddish and Hebrew, and which preoccupations and tendencies were unique to Yiddish? Can any lines of continuity be drawn between these stories and the English-language children’s books most of us grew up on? How could authors with radical political agendas ground their work in an ancient religious civilization? Which values were most worthy of transmission to future generations? And how could children’s stories be used to engender an abiding love for and commitment to Yiddish itself?

Course Materials:
It is strongly suggested that students purchase this book before the first day of class:

• Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children's Literature (Purchase)

Miriam Udel is associate professor of German Studies and Jewish Studies at Emory University, where her teaching focuses on Yiddish language, literature, and culture. She holds an AB in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University, as well as a PhD in Comparative Literature from the same institution. She was ordained in 2019 as part of the first cohort of the Executive Ordination Track at Yeshivat Maharat, a program designed to bring qualified mid-career women into the Orthodox rabbinate. Udel’s academic research interests include 20th-century Yiddish literature and culture, Jewish children’s literature, and American-Jewish literature. She is the author of Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque (University of Michigan Press), winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature appears on October 6 with New York University Press.

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