Socialist Yiddishlands

Post-Holocaust Yiddishland was shaken, extremely traumatized, decimated. For most, the old home in the East was a lost, defunct place of longing, and a mere transit point to the new centers in the West: in North America, the Global South, and the young state of Israel. So the story went. But how did Yiddish cultural agents, thousands of whom remained in Eastern Europe, position themselves within socialist narratives of the past, present and future, and in dialogue with the Jewish diasporas? This volume examines the role of Yiddish in the cultures of Socialist states in Eastern and East-Central Europe in their trans-socialist and -national entanglements during the "Yiddish Cold War." Case studies of Poland, the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, and Romania discuss the diverse cross-Bloc interconnections with Western countries such as the United States, Argentina, and Israel. Yiddish, an essential component of the modern Jewish experience before the Holocaust, is particularly suitable for this endeavor because, although the language lost much of its everyday significance post-1945, it remained a central factor of Jewish transnationality, especially due to the flight movements that began before and after the Shoah.