A conversation between Justin Cammy, Associate Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Jewish Studies and of Comparative Literature (Smith College) and Miriam Udel, Associate Professor of Yiddish Literature and Director of the Tam Institute of Jewish Studies (Emory University).

“What is Jewish Literature? “Is it any text written by someone who identifies as Jewish; any work written about the Jewish experience; any volume that somehow engages with the fate of the Jewish people? What does a writer like Kafka, who wrote in German, have in common with a Yiddish master like Sholem Aleichem? Is there even such a thing as Jewish literature, or are the histories of Yiddish literature, Hebrew literature, and Jewish literatures written in non-Jewish languages distinct?

In this wide-ranging conversation, Professors Cammy and Udel will lean on their own expertise in Yiddish literature to explore what we can learn from the past, and how the boom in translation might offer creative inspiration to contemporary readers.

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JUSTIN CAMMY is the co-editor of the forthcoming Cambridge History of Yiddish Literature (2028)

MIRIAM UDEL is the author of Modern Jewish Worldmaking through Yiddish Children’s Literature (2025)