Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America

Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America presents Yiddish culture as it developed in an area seldom associated with the language. Yet several countries—Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and Uruguay—became centers for Yiddish literature, journalism, political activism, theater, and music. Chapters by historians, linguists, and literary critics explore the flourishing of Yiddish there in the early 20th century, its retraction in the 1960’s, and contemporary endeavors to rescue this marginalized legacy.

Topics discussed in the volume include the literary figures of the “Jewish gaucho” and the peddler, the regional Yiddish press, the communal struggle against trafficking in women, cultural responses to the Holocaust, intra-Jewish conflict during the Cold War, debates on assimilation versus tradition, and emergent postvernacular Yiddish.

"The editors explain the renewed interest in—or 'revival' of—Yiddish in Latin America from the 1980s on as part of a broader global phenomenon. This volume sheds light on that phenomenon, while also being a part of it."

-Amy Kerner, Brown University, Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina 30.1 (2019)

"As a pioneering scholarly anthology in its field, Splendor, Decline, and Rediscovery of Yiddish in Latin America is to be warmly greeted."

-Zachary M. Baker, Stanford University, Journal of Jewish Identities 13.1 (2020)