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Hello, and welcome to Humanities Matter, brought to you by Braille. I'm Lee Chung-Greco, and this week we'll be looking at key issues in the field of humanities. Today we're speaking with Bart Wellett. He's a professor of early modern and modern Jewish history at the University of Amsterdam, and an editor of the European Journal of Jewish Studies.
And we're talking with Laura Olegor. She's a lecturer in 20th century European history at the University of Sheffield and the book review editor of the EJJS. Their special collection is Yish and Europe. Welcome to you both.
Thank you for having us. Thank you. So first of all, just tell me a bit, how did you come up with the idea for these special collections? Well, we just started as a new editorial team in general of Jewish studies.
And we saw that our journal now exists for 50 years, and there are many excellent articles in it, on a variety of topics. And what we wanted is not only to publish new issues and new scholarship, but as well to scholarship relevant articles that we published before to a broader audience. At the same time, we would want articles from our archives to public for a larger audience, but as well of course, to attract new attention to the journal. We decided to go through the entire list of all the articles we published in these 15 years, and we noted several clusters of scholarship.
And one of these clusters is Yish in Europe. So that's a really interesting concentration Yish in Europe. Can you just elaborate how does Yish intersect with other parts of Jewish studies? Well, Yish, of course, is a diasporic language.
Diasporic in the sense that on the one hand, it's part of the family of Germanic languages. And on the other hand, it's written in Hebrew characters and with a lot of influence from Hebrew, from Aramaic. And in that sense, it's a typical fusion language. Now, while we are any journal for Jewish studies in Europe, Yish is very close to the core of our scholarship and our research.
There are so many resources, archives, materials in Yish. If you want to study any history and culture of European Jews, that's why Yish is a great way into this whole field. By studying Yish, by concentrating on Yish, you're opening up both the early modern and the modern period, until contemporary time. By taking Yish in Europe as our first theme for this special collection, we want to demonstrate as well how very it is and how diverse the field of Jewish studies actually is.
And Yish in Europe in that sense is an excellent way in demonstrating what we have in Newfield. You talk about the challenges you want to pose for readers here, but as researchers, you came across a couple of challenges yourself when I came to analyzing Yish. For example, can you tell us a bit about Bergenland and the challenge of analyzing Yish from that region? We included an article by Leah Schafer on the position of Yish in the Bergenland region.
This is a region presently as part of Austria, but historically used to be part of Hungary in the greater Austro-Hungarian empire. And this is an interesting case, as we didn't know much about Yish, Staupe and Bitten in the Bergenland region. Leah Schafer is the very first to study this. She demonstrates in your article that the Bergenland region is fascinating because it's a region in which the major variants of Yish, the Western Yish, mostly spoken in Western Europe and Eastern Yish, mostly spoken in Central Europe, in some sort of way need each other in the Bergenland region.
He demonstrates by studying the resources that are still there. Yish is no longer spoken in the Bergenland region, so as he had to collect all kinds of sources and materials, and she did a great job in that. And she demonstrates that actually the Bergenland region is a transition zone from one variant of Yish, from Western Yish to Eastern Yish. And this helped us to better conceptualize as well Yish, and prevent to ridges borders between Western Yish on the one hand and Eastern Yish on the other hand.
And the Bergenland region helps us to rethink the whole linguistic legacy of the historic Yish folk in Europe. So in that sense, the article is pioneering and we hope that others will study other regions as well, and the local Yish has spoken there in order to enrich our understanding of Yish in Europe. So there's a Western Yish and an Eastern Yish. How many different dialects are you dealing with here exactly?
Oh, there are many dialects. So in the Western Yish, for instance, there's a difference between the Yish folk and the Alzax region in the border between France and Germany. In Switzerland, the Yish folk in the Netherlands, so even like in Western Yish, which nowadays is mostly finished. We don't have speakers or Western Yish anymore.
We only have a multitude of historical sources and archives documenting Western Yish. So already there we see how rich it is as a language used to be. Now, it is presently still spoken in Princess in Antwerp or in London or in Manchester or in New York or in Israel, mostly Eastern Yish. But with differences between the Liechfak, the Lithuanian Yish, between Polish, Galician and Yish, and the Hungarian Yish.
So there are many, in essence, many dialects with brown characteristics. And this article helps us to put the Würgenlands variants. So I'm curious, were there any articles in particular that really stood out to you here, Bart? What really struck me was the article by Afat Galette on a very well-known Yish poet, Sigmanger.
There is an element in his poetry that, at least to some, is a bit confusing. As he has written a whole series of poems on Christ, on Jesus Christ. And of course in Judaism and in Jewish culture, this is a bit problematic. And still, Munger is doing this.
And Afat Galette tries to understand why he was doing it and what exactly he is projecting on the Christ figure. And he sees in the Christ figure his own helplessness, for instance, reflected. But she also demonstrates that throughout his career, another historical person, the Baal Shemfak, the founding father of Hasidism, assumes this role for him. So he moves in a way from this, more or less Christian orientation to a Hasidic, authentic Jewish location for his self-image as well, and in his self-fashioning as well.
So the Baal Shemf talk for like the best, as he has also called, assumes this role. And she demonstrates that certain aspects of this metaphor of Christ is now taken over by the best. And that this new cycle of poems we encounter is Sigmanger that is so familiar to many of us. So Laura, looking forward, what plans do you have for reviews and essays?
Thank you, Lee. So the one thing to start off with is to very happily say that for the editorial team as a whole, the review section is a very important and integral part of the journal. And since we agree on the importance of this section, that is obviously a really great starting point moving forward. And in reshaping the section as a whole, I think there's both elements of continuity and change in the way I and we as an editorial team see this part of the journal.
And so in terms of the continuity, there will be traditional book reviews, which have great merit, which are very important for the field and also to create the platform for discussion of new titles in the field of European Jewish studies. So this element of more traditional single authored mono book focus book reviews will be retained. But at the same time, equally importantly, and with that I come to the element of change, are, or is increased focus on what we call review essays, in which one author, one specialist in a particular field will discuss several titles side by side. And with that exceed the traditional idea of reviewing a book for its merits, but really also focusing on larger trends in the field of European Jewish studies.
And by offering this option, this project of the review essay, I think we open up the opportunity for in the review section as well. Now review essays are on the one hand better for the author, the author can really use the opportunity to reflect on the field or subfield as a whole. At the same time, I also think that review essays that include more book titles and more and wider reflections on the field are better for the scholarly community. It really creates scholarly pieces that are very helpful, especially for scholars entering into a new subfield within Jewish studies wanting to acquaint themselves with the state of the art or the new trends in a particular direction.
And, and here I also speak, this also speaks to my own experiences as an educator. Review essays are often a very good starting point for teaching on a certain subject. So hopefully these articles will also be useful in an educational sense. And then finally it's also really good for book authors if their book is not only discussed in the more traditional review format but is also placed side by side alongside other titles and is really embedded in a larger analysis of fields of trends of discourses etc.
So this is this about the review essay, personally find very important a focus a focal point that I would like to include is to very consciously choose female authors to be discussed in the review section and also female reviewers to have their place. This is not to say that this hasn't happened in the past, but I think it's a very important thing to be very conscious about diversity and equality both in terms of the works that are discussed and those that are invited to discuss them. And finally, in terms of the kinds of topics and that brings me back to the review essays. Just to give you two examples, one will focus on Jewish internationalism or Jewish history and internationalism, which I think is a very exciting, recently developed field in many ways where a lot of younger scholars are working are exploring a bunch of interesting recent publications that can and will be discussed within the scope of this article.
And another topic that is currently in the pipeline of the intersection between Jewish studies and Romani studies in the context of Holocaust studies, but I think also much more beyond just purely Holocaust studies, but really critically reflecting on where we are in terms of the intersections, the conversations that are very productive happening between Jewish studies and Romani studies. So that just as a taster of what is to come and hopefully that will also interest listeners. Well, looking forward to reading all of that and seeing what's next to come. That's Laura Almagur and Bart Wolllett.
Their special collection is Yiddish in Europe. Thank you then to both. Thank you. Thank you.
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