Lingering Bilingualism: Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literatures in Contact

This book questions the clear-cut division between modern Yiddish and Hebrew literatures, arguing that they maintained multifaceted cultural contacts across linguistic boundaries.? The Yiddish Forward

By detailing the perspectives of the main writers and publishers on each side of the debate and illustrating the ideologies of bilingualism that characterized both Yiddishists and Hebraists, the author shows how these years saw the development of diverse paradigms in which, at least for a time, Yiddish and Hebrew cultures coexisted and were even seen as nurturing each other. Brenner thus tells the poignant story of how Jewish writers and intellectuals strove through bilingualism to move toward a new and forward-looking Jewish linguistic and literary culture. Choice

The author analyzes several examples of poetry and prose in minute detail. She discusses the debates and theories about translation between the languages throughout the twentieth century. In addition to her own meticulous investigation of the particular bilingualism and translingualism of these Jewish languages, she synthesizes all the modern research on this subject. This is an academic work that presupposes familiarity with the languages and writers under discussion. Highly recommended for academic collections on language, literature, and translation studies. AJL Review

Brenner’s meticulously researched and elegantly written work reveals a unique set of cultural and linguistic conditions during a time when the majority of Jewish people were linguistically and culturally bound to two Jewish languages. Brenner convincingly demonstrates that Hebrew and Yiddish constantly altered each other and presents a solid case for the idea that Jewish culture was truly 'bilingual' for most of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that such a persistently bilingual quality—even to this day—profoundly shaped modern Jewish literary culture. Colorado Review

A rewarding learning experience in Hebrew-Yiddish cultural-linguistics. Newsletter of the National Association of Professors of Hebrew