Warsaw on the Hudson A Missing Chapter in Yiddish Literary History (1935–1945)

This article explores the immigration of a cohort of Yiddish writers from Poland to America in the 1930s: Israel Joshua Singer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Kadya Molodowsky, Nachman Mayzel, Melekh Ravitch, and Aaron Zeitlin. This group was exceptional in two ways: First, unlike most of their American colleagues, they were all established writers before their immigration. Second, they shared a collective ethos regarding the public role of Yiddish literature that was markedly different from the elitist view prevalent in the US literary scene. These two factors, I argue, profoundly affected their literary sensibilities and thematic choices. This article offers a comparative account of their careers between 1935 and 1945. It shows how their gradual internalization of the cultural reality in the United States, and later of the destruction of European Jewry, led to a shift in their perception of the role of Yiddish literature as well as a revision of their literary projects.