Yiddish Writers in the Americas After the 1905 Russian Insurrection

Abstract

The massive migration movement from the Russian Empire that followed the 1905 Insurrection allowed the emergence in all regions of the Americas of Yiddish-speaking communities that transcended all existing immediate national and linguistic boundaries. Within a few years, with the exception of the United States and New York, there appeared in many countries and cities of the hemisphere large Jewish immigrant populations where almost none existed before. This sudden displacement of vast numbers of Eastern European migrants produced a new diaspora that spread over most parts the Americas and developed its own distinctive identity and set of political aspirations, often based on the shtetl culture of the Jewish Pale of Settlement and the political conditions prevalent in the Old Word. Buttressed by intense forms of Yiddish cultural creativity and a flowering of journalistic writing, and despite strong political disagreements within that world, new forms of Jewish transnationality appeared in the hemisphere that would last until well after World War II. This phenomenon was especially visible in the world of belles-lettres when Yiddish authors, all originating in the Russian Empire but living in very different political regimes and linguistic spheres in the Americas, managed to keep alive for many decades a literary sphere all their own. Through correspondence, successive immigrations and periodic displacements on the continent, writers, journalists and editors maintained solid connections among themselves that provided in large part the basis for a common perception of the world and of a unified Jewish identity in all of the Americas.