Overview

Newly-translated works from modern Yiddish historians that seeks to expand the scholarship about eastern European Jewry. 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, with translations by historian Mark L. Smith. The book also includes a revealing Conversation with Series Editor Michael Berenbaum and an informative foreword by Samuel Kassow.

Full Product Details

Author:   Mark L. Smith ,  Samuel H. Kassow
Publisher:   Academic Studies Press
Imprint:   Academic Studies Press
ISBN:  

9798897831289

Pages:   436
Publication Date:   05 February 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  General/trade ,  Professional & Vocational ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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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

Reviews

“Historian Mark L. Smith has done us a tremendous service by introducing English-language readers to a “lost continent” of scholarship about eastern European Jewry by eastern European Jews themselves and written in their mother tongue. Not only does the book definitively lay to rest myths about Yiddish as a language only for the uneducated. His expert translations of works by seminal historians, linguists, and literary scholars are accompanied by indispensable introductory essays. Together, they convey the fusion of high caliber scholarship and intimacy with its audience that is the hallmark of the best in Yiddish scholarship.”  —Kalman Weiser, York University, Toronto ""This volume's selections provide a roadmap for how to think through today’s political and cultural challenges by rooting them in past experience. Though its focus is on 'the Yiddish historians,' its voices ring prophetic, showing how intellectuals imagined Yiddish futurities. Smith's careful archeology of ideas demonstrates that without Yiddish we miss a great deal."" —Justin Cammy, Professor of Jewish Studies and Comparative Literature, Smith College ""Building and Consoling a Nation is a landmark anthology that highlights one of the most vibrant but neglected chapters of Jewish intellectual history: the modern Yiddish historians. Bringing together forty-nine newly translated works by thirty-six writers, ranging from prewar nation-builders to survivor-scholars of the Holocaust, this volume reveals an extraordinary scholarly tradition that sought to write the Jewish past in the everyday language of the Jewish people. With clarity, elegance, and deep contextual knowledge, Mark L. Smith recovers a body of historical writing that shaped how Jews understood themselves in the twentieth century. These historians documented autonomous communal structures, the texture of Jewish daily life, interethnic relations, literary creativity, and educational ideals across centuries. Their authors include canonical figures such as Dubnow, Mahler, and Ringelblum alongside lesser-known historians whose work, untranslated until now, offers fresh insight into understudied aspects of Jewish history. Roughly half the selections concern the Holocaust and show Yiddish historians grappling with catastrophe through the same methods they brought to earlier periods, insisting on the continuity of Jewish social, cultural, and spiritual life even amid destruction. Collectively, these writings illuminate the distinctive priorities of Yiddish scholarship: an insistence on cultural vitality, communal agency, and the lived experience of ordinary Jews. Building and Consoling a Nation will play a vital role in restoring an entire historiographical tradition to the writing of Jewish history and will serve as an indispensable resource for scholars of Jewish history, Yiddish literature, and Holocaust studies."" —Avinoam J. Patt, Professor of Holocaust Studies, New York University

Author Information

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 University and 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.

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