Ruth Wisse

Ruth R. Wisse ( born May 13, 1936 in Czernowitz, Romania ) is a literary scholar and socially critical journalist with a focus on Jewish literature and culture. Born in Romania, she grew up in Canada and studied, taught and currently lives in the United States. She is Professor of Yiddish Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature (Professor of Comparative Literature) at Harvard University.

Biography

Ruth R. Wisse was born on 13 May 1936 in Czernowitz, Romania,. Ruth, her older brother Benjamin and their parents Masha and Leo Roskies emigrated in 1940 via Budapest, Athens, Lisbon and New York to Canada. The House of Roskies in Montreal became a salon for Yiddish writers, actors and artists, which among other Isaac B. Singer, melekh Ravitch, Itzik Manger, Avrom Sutzkever and Rachel were grain as a guest. All four children (two were born in the New World ) received a rigorous education in Hebrew and Yiddish. Her youngest brother, David G. Roskies is Professor of Jewish Literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and her younger sister Eva Raby is a professional storyteller and was for 17 years director of the Norman Berman Children's Library of the Jewish Public Library in Montreal.

In Montreal, she studied at McGill University under Louis Dudek, who was also a mentor Leonard Cohen, and received her BA 1957th However, it was the Yiddish poet Abraham Sutzkever who steered her career out of studying Yiddish at Columbia University, the only place in North America at the time, who offered Yiddish as a graduate degree program. Following her marriage to Leonard Wisse, she studied both at Max Weinreich and his son, Uriel Weinreich, and received her MA at Columbia University with an award-winning work on Sutzkevers Prosapoem Green Aquarium. Upon her return to Montreal she received her doctorate at Dudek. Her dissertation, published as The schlemiel as Modern Hero (1971 ), examined the transformation of the schlemiel from Yiddish into the modern American Jewish fiction.

Fields of work

Academic contributed Know pioneering work. From 1968 she taught Yiddish literature at McGill University and built the program, later the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University on. In 1993, she was professor of Yiddish at Harvard University. Intellectually, however, found Wisse their home in the political culture of the 1970s - magazine Commentary. Here they measured the Jewish-American fiction to the giants of Yiddish culture of the twentieth century such as Moyshe - Leyb Halpern, Chaim Grade, Isaac B. Singer and Abraham Sutzkever. In addition to their commitment to the Yiddish culture Wisse wrote articles on modern Jewish politics and the reality of a Jewish state.

Wisse is primarily known for their anthologies in literary circles, they come with Irving Howe published together: The Best of Sholom Aleichem (1979) and The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse (1987, together with Khone Shmeruk ). Your most sustainable for the literary history works are A Little Love in Big Manhattan: Two Yiddish Poets (1988) and their monographic study IL Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (1991). She was also the first chief editor of the Library of Yiddish Classics. In addition to her political essays that appear regularly in publications such as Commentary, The New Republic, and The Jerusalem Report, published Know a Zionist critique of American Jewish political climate: If I Am Not for Myself ...: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (1992).

In their subsequent work Wisse employed two basic questions of Jewish literature: "What is a great Jewish book " And, "What makes a book primarily Jewish" in which she books in Yiddish, German, Russian, Hebrew and English by style linguistically and culturally diverse authors such as Sholem Aleichem, Franz Kafka, Samuel Agnon and Cynthia Ozick einbezog, Wisse tried the phenomenon of a multilingual Jewish literature in The Modern Jewish Canon ( 2000 ) by a discussion of some of the greatest works of the twentieth century to the track to come. For The Modern Jewish Canon Know the National Jewish Book Award for Scholarship / Criticism and the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award Award Scholarship.

Bibliography (selection)

  • The Best of Sholom Aleichem, edited by Irving Howe (1979 )
  • The Penguin Book of Modern Yiddish Verse edited by Irving Howe and Khone Shmeruk (1987 )
  • A Little Love in Big Manhattan: Two Yiddish Poets (1988 )
  • I.L. Peretz Reader ( 1990)
  • I.L. Peretz and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture (1991 )
  • If I Am Not for Myself ...: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (1992 )
  • The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey through Language and Culture (2000)
  • Jews and Power ( 2005)

Journal articles (selection)

  • " Hura! ! Hura " moment ( December 1975): pp. 21-23
  • "A Golus Education. " Moment ( January 1977): pp. 26ff
  • "The Most Beautiful Woman in Vilna. " Commentary ( June 1981)
  • "What My Father Knew. " Commentary ( April 1995 ): pp. 44-49.
  • "My Life Without Leonard Cohen. " Commentary ( October 1995): pp. 27-33

Sources and References

Source: Roskies, David G.: article " Ruth R. Wisse. " In Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. Jewish Women 's Archive. March 2009, accessed 19 January 2010

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