19 - Spaces ofYidishkayt: New York in American Yiddish Prose

Summary

America's unparalleled freedom of Yiddish cultural expression attracted even those authors who were averse to the use of Yiddish as a literary instrument to resort to this language as a matter of expediency. While realist writers like Tashrak and Leon Kobrin dominated the Yiddish literary scene during the 1900s, a modernist rebellion was prepared by a small group of young poets and novelists who set themselves apart from the mainstream culture dominated by commercial interests and ideological commitments. Today mostly remembered for their modernist poetry, Di yunge were also interested in creating new artistic prose. The driving force behind the group was Dovid Ignatov, an ambitious writer and enterprising editor. Yidishkayt mutates into forms that are often unrecognizable for traditional East European Jews. It seems that only the imaginary power of Yidishkayt, which unites New York's Henry Street, Warsaw's Iron Street, and the Hasidic shtetl of Kotsk in one quasi-territory, could offer some consolation at the time of the catastrophe.