Mikhail Krutikov is the Preston R. Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan and a regular contributor to the Forward. You can reach him at [email protected].
Mikhail Krutikov
By Mikhail Krutikov
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Yiddish World A new look at the Yiddish literature that flourished in Weimar Berlin
Read this article in Yiddish Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism Marc Caplan Indiana University Press, $40, 394 PP The brief but lively and productive Berlin period in the history of modern Yiddish culture is a special source of interest for contemporary researchers. Out of a melting pot of various languages, styles and…
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Books Yiddish culture barely touched upon in ‘The New Jewish Canon’
Read this article in Yiddish What were the most important Jewish texts of the last 40 years? What did the Jewish opinion-makers have to say about the most important issues of Jewish survival? Yehuda Kurtzer and Claire Sufrin attempt to answer these questions in a collection of 70 selected documents called “The New Jewish Canon:…
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Yiddish World David Shneer, professor who led student visits to prewar Yiddishland, dies at 48
Read this article in Yiddish David Shneer, a widely admired history professor and director of the Program in Jewish Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, died November 4 in Denver of brain cancer. He was 48. Shneer was one of the liveliest people I’ve ever known, and his premature passing means that this bright…
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Yiddish World From Hasidic shtetl to Nazi camp
Read this article in Yiddish Rachmil Bryks (1912 – 1974) dedicated his literary oeuvre to one theme: The Holocaust, which he survived in the Lodz Ghetto and German slave labor work camps. A new English translation compiles three of his autobiographical works. Part I — “Those Who Didn’t Survive” — tells the story of the…
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Yiddish World Zalman Shneour’s path between Yiddish and Hebrew
Read this article in Yiddish Among Yiddish literature’s many forgotten names, Zalman Shneour (1887-1959) has ranked among the greatest. During his lifetime, he was well-regarded for both his Hebrew poetry and his Yiddish prose. He studied under the influence of two literary giants, the Hebrew poet Haim Nachman Bialik and the Yiddish fiction writer Y….
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Yiddish World How Socialist Zionists tried to fit into the new Soviet system
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Until recently, scholars considered the history of the Zionist movement in the Soviet Union solely a history of repression. But nearly 2,000 pages of archival documents provide a more multifaceted and even suspenseful picture of relations between Zionist organizations and Soviet authorities during the first decade after…
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Yiddish World Academic Conference on Jewish Ghosts
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. When I teach my course on Eastern-European Jewish culture at the University of Michigan, I always ask my students who graduated from Jewish day schools: “What were you taught about the world to come, ghosts, spirits and demons?” I always receive the same reply: “Jews don’t believe…
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Yiddish World How Elie Wiesel Became A Surrogate Father For Children Of Survivors
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Elie Wiesel’s novel “Night,” the original Yiddish title of which translated to “And the World Remained Silent,” is the single best-known book about the Holocaust. It’s studied today in American schools, and for many readers it’s the only source they have on Holocaust history. But in the…
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