After the destruction wrought by Nazi Germany, its allies, and collaborators, Yiddish-speaking communities across Eastern Europe were devastated and dispersed. For many survivors, the region became less a homeland than a place of memory – or a waypoint on journeys to new centers of Jewish life in North America, the Global South, Israel/Palestine.
Yet thousands of Yiddish cultural activists remained. Their efforts to rebuild cultural life, engage politically, and imagine new futures have often been overlooked. Socialist Yiddishlands (Berlin: d | u | p, 2025), edited by Alexander Walther and myself, brings their work into focus, exploring cultural production, political engagement, and language policy in socialist Eastern Europe, alongside transnational exchanges during what can be described as a “Yiddish Cold War.”
Through case studies of Poland, the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, and Romania, this volume reveals a wide range of political projects and cultural reconstruction efforts, as well as complex cross-bloc connections with countries including Great Britain, the United States, Argentina, and Israel.
“Socialist Yiddishlands sets the stage for what could be a shift in how scholars think about the relationships among Yiddish, the Cold War, the effects of the Cold War on Jews around the world, the Soviet Bloc countries, and the lived realities of those who actively participated in the development of state socialism. This edited volume also serves as a model for ways to curate scholarly articles, translations, and interviews together in one source to help develop the argument of a volume. […] Yes, adding an “s” to Yiddishland is a meaningful and thought-provoking effort, especially in the context of the deepened Jewish transnational realities of the postwar world. “