Building and Consoling a Nation: The Yiddish Historians in Their Own Words. Selected Writings Newly Translated into English
In the early twentieth century, when the dream of Jewish cultural nationalism in the Diaspora was growing among champions for Yiddish, its leading intellectuals included the “Yiddish historians” who helped to uncover the history of East-European Jews. Before the Holocaust, their mission was to discover and present the formative history of a living people for an audience of educated lay leaders, drawing where possible on Jewish sources of information, in order to help build and fortify a Yiddish-speaking nation. After the Holocaust, their mission became to console its surviving remnant with information about the struggle to survive under German occupation. This book makes Yiddish writings by these historians available in English for the first time.

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Building and Consoling a Nation: The Yiddish Historians in Their Own Words. Selected Writings Newly Translated into English
In the early twentieth century, when the dream of Jewish cultural nationalism in the Diaspora was growing among champions for Yiddish, its leading intellectuals included the “Yiddish historians” who helped to uncover the history of East-European Jews. Before the Holocaust, their mission was to discover and present the formative history of a living people for an audience of educated lay leaders, drawing where possible on Jewish sources of information, in order to help build and fortify a Yiddish-speaking nation. After the Holocaust, their mission became to console its surviving remnant with information about the struggle to survive under German occupation. This book makes Yiddish writings by these historians available in English for the first time.

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Building and Consoling a Nation: The Yiddish Historians in Their Own Words. Selected Writings Newly Translated into English

Building and Consoling a Nation: The Yiddish Historians in Their Own Words. Selected Writings Newly Translated into English

Building and Consoling a Nation: The Yiddish Historians in Their Own Words. Selected Writings Newly Translated into English

Building and Consoling a Nation: The Yiddish Historians in Their Own Words. Selected Writings Newly Translated into English

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Overview

In the early twentieth century, when the dream of Jewish cultural nationalism in the Diaspora was growing among champions for Yiddish, its leading intellectuals included the “Yiddish historians” who helped to uncover the history of East-European Jews. Before the Holocaust, their mission was to discover and present the formative history of a living people for an audience of educated lay leaders, drawing where possible on Jewish sources of information, in order to help build and fortify a Yiddish-speaking nation. After the Holocaust, their mission became to console its surviving remnant with information about the struggle to survive under German occupation. This book makes Yiddish writings by these historians available in English for the first time.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9798897831289
Publisher: Academic Studies Press
Publication date: 12/23/2025
Product dimensions: 6.50(w) x 1.50(h) x 9.50(d)

About the Author

Mark L. Smith is the author of The Yiddish Historians and the Struggle for a Jewish History of the Holocaust (2019, National Jewish Book Award finalist). He is Resident Scholar at American Jewish Universityand has taught Jewish history at UCLA, his alma mater. He writes and lectures on Eastern European Jewish history, with emphasis on Holocaust historiography and Yiddish scholarly writing.

Table of Contents

Note on Languages and Usage 

Foreword

Samuel H. Kassow

Introduction to the Yiddish Historians and Their Work

Mark L. Smith

Part One

Jewish Autonomy

1 Autonomy in Jewish History

by Simon Dubnow, 1934 

2 The Jewish Parliament in Lithuania and Belorussia in Its Legislative Activity, 1623–1721 

by Israel Sosis, 1928

3 A Budget of the Council of the Four Lands in 1726

by Raphael Mahler, 1940 

4 The Financial Collapse of the Central and Provincial Autonomy of the Jews in Old-Time Poland, 1650–1764

by Ignacy Schiper, 1932

5 The Central Representative Bodies of the Jews in the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, 1807–1816

by Artur Eisenbach, 1938

6 The Warsaw Kehila under the Leadership of Dr. Ludwik Natanson, 1871–1896

by Jacob Shatzky, 1953

7 Jewish “Autonomy”: The Nazi-Imposed Jewish Councils

by Isaiah Trunk, 1949

Part Two

On the Jewish Street

8 Yiddish Theater in the German and Slavic Ghettos during the Sixteenth Century

by Ignacy Schiper, 1927

9 The Structure of the Jewish Guilds in Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries 

by Mark Wischnitzer, 1928

10 Two Communities in One City: The Jews of Lemberg from Medieval to Modern Times

by Meir Balaban, 1930

11 The Young Historians Circle in Warsaw, 1923–1939 

by Raphael Mahler, 1967

12 Varied Were the Ways (of Jewish Resistance against the Nazis)

by Mark Dworzecki, 1946

13 The Wooden Synagogues in Poland before the Holocaust 

by Rachel Wischnitzer, 1962

14 The Soup Kitchen and the Yiddish Theater in the Warsaw Ghetto 

by Rachel Auerbach, 1977

Part Three

In the Non-Jewish World

15 Jewish-Christian Relations in Płock in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 

by Isaiah Trunk, 1938

16 What Types of Taxes Did the Jews of Lublin Pay in the Former Independent Poland?

by Bela Mandelsberg, 1930

17 Jewish Home Industry in Old-Time Poland 

by Emanuel Ringelblum, 1935

18 The “New Settlements” in 1808: How Belorussian Jews Responded to the First Order to Settle in Agricultural Colonies in Russian Ukraine 

by Simon Dubnow, 1932

19 Jewish Cantonists—Young Boys Recruited for Military Service in Tsarist Russia, 1828–1956

by Saul Ginsburg, 1933

20 Antisemitism and Pogroms in Ukraine, 1917–1918: On the History of Ukrainian-Jewish Relations 

by Elias Tcherikower, 1923

21 On the Causes of Jewish Defenselessness against the Nazis and the Strength of Jewish Resistance 

by Isaiah Trunk, 1953

Part Four

Yiddish Literature

22 The Brantshpigl (Burning Mirror), 1596—The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Woman in the Seventeenth Century 

by Maks Erik, 1926

23 On the Sources of the Mayse-bukh (Book of Stories), 1602

by Israel Zinberg, 1926

24 Three Hundred Years of the Tsene-rene (Bible Stories for Women), 1616

by Jacob Shatzky, 1928

25 The Tales of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav (1815): Hasidism and Yiddish Literary Creativity 

by Shmuel Niger, 1932 

26 On the History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century: Haskalah Period 

by Meir Wiener, 1939

27 Four Unknown Yiddish Plays from the Mid-Nineteenth Century 

by Max Weinreich, 1930

28 Yiddish Literature under Nazi Occupation 

by Nachman Blumental, 1946

Part Five

Press, Post, Communications

29 Life and Language as Reflected by Yiddish Testimony in the Responsa Literature from the Beginning of the Fifteenth to the End of the Seventeenth Century 

by Zalman Rubashov, 1929 

30 The Jewish Postal Service in Tsarist Russia during the Early Nineteenth Century 

by Saul Ginsburg, 1932

31 The First Yiddish Newspaper in the Russian Empire, Kol mevaser, and Its Time, 1862–72

by Israel Zinberg, 1913

32 The Attitude toward Yiddish of the Russian Authorities in Vilna during the 1860s: On the History of Yiddish Bookselling in Vilna 

by Pinchas Kon, 1929

33. Ghettos and Concentration Camps Seeking Contacts: A Chapter of Jewish Resistance 

by Mark Dworzecki, 1949 

34 Unknown Letters by Zelig Kalmanovich in the Vilna Ghetto to Isaac Giterman in the Warsaw Ghetto 

by Joseph Kermish, 1983

35 Inscriptions on Walls, Sacred Texts, and Other Books during the Holocaust 

by Nachman Blumental, 1966

Part Six

Education

36 Joseph Perl as a Pedagogical Leader and His School in Tarnopol 125 Years after Its Founding 

by Philip Friedman, 1940

37 Yehuda-Leib Gordon as a Fighter for the Haskalah in Jewish Schools in Lithuania in the Mid-Nineteenth Century 

by Nadzieja Jaffe, 1938 

38 The Rise of Yiddish Secular Schools in Poland during World War I

by Chaim-Solomon Kazdan, 1947 

39 Jewish Schools in the Vilna Ghetto as Spiritual Resistance 

by Mark Dworzecki, 1948

40 The Jewish Vocational and Higher School System in the Warsaw Ghetto, 1940–42

by Esther Goldhar-Mark, 1949

41 The School System and Education for Holocaust Survivors in the Displaced Persons Camps in Germany 

by Philip Friedman, 1948 

42 Four Years of the Chair for Holocaust Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel 

by Mark Dworzecki, 1963

Part Seven

Book Reviews

43 The History of the Jews in Russia (1914) 

Reviewed by Zelig Kalmanovich

44 Saul Ginsburg. Historical Works (1937)

Reviewed by Moyshe Shalit 

45 Isaiah Trunk. The History of the Jews in Płock (1939) 

Reviewed by A. Valdman 

46 Jacob Shatzky. In the Shadow of the Past (1947) 

Reviewed by Samuel Rollansky

47 Philip Friedman. Auschwitz (1950)

Reviewed by Julien Hirshaut

48 Mark Dworzecki. White Nights and Black Days: Jewish Camps in Estonia (1970)

Reviewed by Israel Kaplan 

49 Nachman Blumental. Words and Sayings from the Holocaust Period (1981)

Reviewed by David Shtokfish

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