« Back

2005-10-02
New Yiddish Anthology by Professor Jerold Frakes

In November 2004 , veteran Summer Program faculty member Professor Jerold Frakes added yet another distinguished book publication to his scholarly record: Early Yiddish Texts 1100-1750 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press).  With Professor Frakes's introduction and commentary, this is the first comprehensive anthology of early Yiddish literature in more than a century. Its 130 texts, printed in Hebrew characters, span a wide range of genres: Arthurian romance, biblical/midrashic epic, devotional literature, biblical translations, medicine, magic, legal texts, legends, travelogue, fables, riddles, and still more. All have been edited anew from the earliest preserved sources, with detailed introductory headnotes on author, literary provenance, the research literature, and the place of the text in the early Yiddish literary tradition. With this book, Professor Frakes has opened broad new possibilites for university courses and advanced scholarship in the field of Yiddish. We congratulate him and look forward to his return to the Vilnius Summer Program in Yiddish in 2006.