Joseph Sherman – författare

In this book, the authors explore Peretz Markish's entire career from his famous early modernist poetry to his post-war Yiddish literature that responded to Nazi and Soviet state-sponsored violence, and everything in between.

This book seeks to challenge conventionally accepted views of David Bergelson's achievement by examining his entire oeuvre. It offers a full-length biography, the first comprehensive bibliography of Bergelson's work, and translations of two of his most influential programmatic essays.

Bergelson’s 1920 novella describes thecomplex Jewish life of Russia and Ukrainethrough the turbulent period leading up to theOctober Revolution of 1917.

To what extent do Yiddish language and literature derive from the dominant values of mainstream European culture? How far did this culture shape the self-perception of Yiddish-speaking Jews of Central and Eastern Europe? How far did the ambivalent, antagonistic attitude adopted towards Jews over many centuries in Christian Europe shape modern Jewish identity and culture? Sherman deals with such questions in his close examination of the recurring treatment of the myth of the Jewish Pope in four Yiddish literary texts dating from between 1602 and 1943. The roots of this myth - that one day a Jewish apostate might come to rule the world as Pope - lie deep in the Biblical story of the assimilation of Joseph (Genesis 37-50), from which it branches out into numerous Messianic fantasies informing Jewish existence through two thousand years of exile. Concerned with broader questions of cultural identity, this study should be of interest to a general readership.

This book is a collection of papers, examining some of the fruitful interactions between Yiddish and the European literary tradition, ranging from the early nineteenth century to the present, from France to Lithuania, and from classic modernist writers such as Kafka to Imre Kertesz.

This book seeks to challenge conventionally accepted views of David Bergelson's achievement by examining his entire oeuvre. It offers a full-length biography, the first comprehensive bibliography of Bergelson's work, and translations of two of his most influential programmatic essays.