THE EXHIBIT   ~ Literary Authors ~
04_01 Flowering of Modern Yid..jpg The Flowering of Modern Yiddish Literature. The period ushered in by the klasiker, and lasting roughly until the outbreak of World War II, is commonly referred to as the flowering of modern Yiddish literature. It was a relatively brief period, lasting less than half a century, but teemed with concentrated creativity. The time is eloquently evoked in the Introduction to The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse, ed. Irving Howe, Ruth R. Wisse and Khone Shmeruk (New York: Viking Press, 1987), p. 2.

The main centres of Yiddish literary output were in Poland and the United States, but imprints in the Fishstein Collection include publications from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Belorussia, Brazil, Canada, China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Romania, Russia, South Africa, the Ukraine and Uruguay. Despite the multiplicity of origins and some local variations, however, Yiddish literature forms an organic whole; it is the expression of a single people with a common history, religion and sense of identity. There were frequent contacts among authors, publishers and readers between different settlements, through mail, telegraph, the press and periodical literature, and sometimes by travel.