Yiddish literature

Yiddish literature is the literature written down with Hebrew letters of the Yiddish language.

Periods of Yiddish literature

Works of literature altjiddischen

The previously oldest known altjiddische verse is found in a manuscript of Worms Maḥzor from the year 1272nd While the Hebrew language was a sacred language mainly reserved for the religious life, the rabbinical studies and official documents that Yiddish was the language of everyday life. So the altjiddische literature since the 13th century has a popular character, and the on the machined by Jewish minstrels heroic legends and romances of chivalry founded (eg Dukus Horant ) on the spiritual Volksepik (which draws its materials from the Bible, Talmud and Midrash ).

With the invention of printing, the dissemination of works of literature altjiddischen increased. Important printing sites were located in Augsburg, Prague, Basel, Krakow, Lublin, Amsterdam etc. Important works of literature altjiddischen include the koie book, published in 1595 by Abraham ben Matitjah Bat Sheva in Verona, the Sefer Meschalim of Moshe Eliezer b'r Wallich from Worms, the Ajn published in Basel in 1602 schojn maasebuh (short Ma'assebuch ), and the Ze'enah u - Re'enah, a Bible paraphrase of Jacob ben Isaac Ashkenazi.

Works of modern Yiddish literature

In the 19th century flourished ostjiddische literature with the narrators Mendele Moicher Sforim, Itzhok Leib Perez, Israel Aksenfeld and Sholem Aleichem, while Abraham Goldfaden and Salomon to ski to founders of the Yiddish theater were. In the western -speaking world it was due to the assimilation of Western Yiddish to the German high not to a comparable formation of a linguistically independent literature, but is found in the forms of dialect poetry as in the Palatine- Yiddish works by Christian Heinrich Gilardone.

With the dispersal of the whole world ( Diaspora ) in the 20th century - for example, in Russia Josef Opatoschu and Aleksandr Abramovic Bejderman, Poland Isaac Kazenelson, in the United States Morris Rosenfeld, Shalom Asch and Isaac Bashevis Singer ( Nobel Prize for Literature ) - opened the Yiddish literature the literary trends of their environment, but declined thus the cleavage and the decline, especially since the Second world War.