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1 results

  • 10 - Yiddish Theater in America

  • from Drama
  • Edited by Hana Wirth-Nesher, Tel-Aviv University
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature
    Published online:
    05 December 2015
    Print publication:
    09 December 2015, pp 224-241

  • Summary

    For Jewish authors in America who did not write in English, their encounter with English words has tended to emphasize the untranslatability of certain American concepts into their language and culture. This chapter offers diverse illustrations of language encounters that often intersect. In Call It Sleep, Henry Roth celebrates English as a medium for modernist experimentation as it intersects with Yiddish and Hebrew. The nature of the encounter with English in Jewish American writing depends on which language coexists alongside it, even if that other language is only a trace, an echo, an accent, or, a cipher. The chapter focuses on Hebrew and Yiddish, as they have tended to play a major role in the linguistic awareness of authors and characters. English engagement with other languages enriches Jewish American literature as well. Always more than just a language, English has served as promise, challenge, obstacle, riddle, and inspiration for Jewish American writers.