“Isaac Bashevis Singer Writings on Yiddish and Yiddiskayt: The War Years 1939-1945” with David Stromberg and Lisa Newman 

David Stromberg, editor of the Isaac Bashevis Singer Literary Trust, will be joined in conversation by Lisa Newman, Yiddish Book Center’s Director of Publishing and Public Programs, to discuss Isaac Bashevis Singer Writings on Yiddish and Yiddiskayt: The War Years 1939-1945 (White Goat Press, November 2023) by the late Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer on what would have been his 120^th birthday.  

This collection, the first in a three-volume series, features twenty-five curated essays (selected from over 150) written from just before the start of World War II through to its immediate aftermath. Singer originally published each of these pieces under pseudonyms in the Forverts, the world’s oldest Yiddish newspaper, when he was still relatively unknown. The essays are arranged chronologically, offering readers the unique opportunity to bear witness to the shifts in Singer’s perspective as history unfolded.   

Isaac Bashevis Singer Writings on Yiddish and Yiddiskayt: The War Years 1939-1945 will be available for purchase at shop.mjhnyc.org. 

David Stromberg is a writer, translator, and literary scholar. His work has appeared in The American Scholar, Woven Tale Press, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. In his role as editor of the Isaac Bashevis Singer Literary Trust, he has published Old Truths and New Clichés (Princeton University Press), a collection of Singer’s essays, and a new translation of the canonical story Simple Gimpl: The Definitive Bilingual Edition (Restless Books). Among Stromberg’s recent writing is a series of speculative essays, including “A Short Inquiry into the End of the World” (The Massachusetts Review), “The Eternal Hope of the Wandering Jew” (The Hedgehog Review), and “To Kill an Intellectual” (The Fortnightly Review). He is based in Jerusalem. 

  

Lisa Newman is the Yiddish Book Center’s Director of Publishing and Public Programs. Prior to joining the Center, she managed public relations and publishing projects for a variety of nonprofit and corporate clients. After moving to western Massachusetts to work for New England Monthly, she went on to work with numerous national magazine and book publishers. She has been an instructor at the Radcliffe Publishing Course and the Columbia Publishing Course and a panelist at industry events. 

Co-presented by Yiddish Book Center & White Goat Press

This program is made possible in part by support from the Battery Park City Authority.