Contributors

Alexis Aaeng is a graduate of the University of Colorado Boulder, where she received a dual degree in history and Jewish studies and wrote her undergraduate thesis about Yiddish radio. She is also a two-time alumna of the Yiddish Book Center’s Steiner Summer Yiddish Program, and a former Yiddish Book Center Fellow.

Zachary Albert teaches World War II and Holocaust history at The Rashi School in Dedham, MA, and is a Holocaust testimony indexer for the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation.

Sara Barber-Just is the English department chair at Amherst Regional High School in Amherst, Massachusetts. She earned her master’s degree in social justice English education at Goddard College in Vermont, where she developed a curriculum for the nation’s first LGBTQ literature course in a public school. She won the Williams College Olmsted Award for teaching excellence in 2014. 

Naomi Bilmes is an English teacher at Gann Academy in Waltham, MA. She has a master's degree in teaching from Brandeis University’s DeLeT program, and she has also studied at the Pardes Institute in Jerusalem. She loves studying literature, Jewish texts, and the places where they intersect.

Ruth Wang Birnbaum is a master teacher of English and writing and has held numerous department and administrative positions during her career. A word enthusiast and avid reader, Birnbaum is a crackerjack editor who often spends her personal time with her nose in books.

Rena Bonne is the former chair of the English department at the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaways (HAFTR). She holds a PhD in comparative literature from Case Western Reserve University and a BA from Barnard College.

Debra Caplan is an assistant professor of theater at Baruch College, CUNY, and the author of Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy. Caplan is also a dramaturg, director, and theater translator and co-founder of the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project (yiddishstage.org).

Marc Caplan is a native of Louisiana and a graduate of Yale University who has has held teaching and research positions at Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, the University of Michigan, Yale, and Dartmouth, among other institutions. He is the author of How Strange the Change: Language, Temporality, and Narrative Form in Peripheral Modernisms (Stanford, 2011) and Yiddish Writers in Weimar Berlin: A Fugitive Modernism (Indiana, 2021).

Sandra Chiritescu is a PhD candidate in Yiddish studies at Columbia University. She is currently working on a dissertation exploring the connections between Yiddish and Jewish feminist literature in the United States, and she is the pedagogy editor at In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies

Madeleine Cohen has a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California Berkeley. Her research focuses on representations of place and politics in modernist Yiddish literature. Cohen is also the academic director at the Yiddish Book Center.

Max Modiano Daniel is a PhD candidate in Jewish history at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He is currently working on a dissertation exploring the history of Sephardic Jews in twentieth century Los Angeles. 

Michelle Friedman is a high school English teacher at the Germantown Academy outside of Philadelphia. She has a doctorate in English from Bryn Mawr College.

Alan Robert Ginsberg is the author of The Salome Ensemble: Rose Pastor Stokes, Anzia Yezierska, Sonya Levien, and Jetta Goudal. He is the executive director of The Evidence Room Foundation.

Amelia Glaser is a scholar of Russian, Yiddish, and Ukrainian Literature, and she teaches at the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Jews and Ukrainians in Russia’s Literary Borderlands, the editor of Stories of Khmelnytsky: Competing Literary Legacies of the 1648 Ukrainian Cossack Uprising, and the translator of Proletpen: America’s Rebel Yiddish Poets.

Ozzy Gold-Shapiro is one of the assistant editors of the Teach Great Jewish Books website. They are a Yiddishist and klezmer musician and passionate pickler. 

Sonia Gollance is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at The Ohio State University, where she directs the Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies program. Author of It Could Lead to Dancing: Mixed-Sex Dancing and Jewish Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2021), she is managing editor of Plotting Yiddish Drama, the Digital Yiddish Theatre Project's database of English-language Yiddish play synopses.

Meira Gotesdyner teaches at a Jewish day school in California and in summer camps and other youth programs. She is passionate about the field of Jewish education, including texts, literature, culture, history, and Hebrew language.

Philip Graubart is the director of Jewish life and learning at the San Diego Jewish Academy. His latest novel is Silwan

Rachel B. Gross is the John and Marcia Goldman Professor of American Jewish Studies in the department of Jewish studies at San Francisco State University. She is a scholar of religious studies whose work focuses on the lives, spaces, and objects of twentieth-century and contemporary American Jews. She received her PhD in religion from Princeton University.

David Harris-Gershon teaches Jewish texts at Community Day School in Pittsburgh and creative writing at Duquesne University.

Adriana X. Jacobs is an associate professor of modern Hebrew literature at Oxford University and a fellow of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Jacobs is the author of Strange Cocktail: Translation and the Making of Modern Hebrew Poetry, a study on Hebrew poetry and translation.

Isaac Jacobs-Gomes lives in Pacifica, California, and teaches middle school humanities at the Brandeis School of San Francisco. He has been a classroom teacher for 12 years, and he has a master's degree in education from the University of the Pacific. 

Hannah Kalson, a native of Pittsburgh, lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. She is pursuing a dual master’s degree in Jewish education and Jewish studies at Hebrew College and is especially interested in American Jewish identity and spirituality in Jewish education.

Barnett Kamen has been teaching Bible, Jewish studies, and philosophy at the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy (formerly the Akiba Hebrew Academy) in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, since 1994.

Jessica Kirzane is the lecturer in Yiddish at the University of Chicago and the editor-in-chief of In geveb. She is also a literary translator from Yiddish.

Chaye Kohl has been an administrator at several Jewish day schools in the United States. Currently she is a high school English teacher at Rae Kushner Yeshiva in New Jersey and an adjunct professor of English at Adelphi University in New York. She is also part of the cohort of Heritage Testimonies at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.

Barry Kirzner teaches United States, world, and Jewish history at Kohelet Yeshiva High School in Merion Station, Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. 

Josh Lambert is academic director at the Yiddish Book Center, visiting assistant professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and co-editor of the Teach Great Jewish Books website. His teaching and research focus on American Jewish literature and culture, in English and Yiddish.

Agnieszka Legutko is the lecturer in Yiddish and director of the Yiddish Language Program at Columbia University. She specializes in modern Yiddish literature, language, and culture, women and gender studies, and spirit possession in Judaism. She is the author of a historical guidebook, Krakow’s Kazimierz: Town of Partings and Returns (2004, 2009), and her publications have appeared in several journals and essay collections on Yiddish literature and culture, such as Cwiszn, Bridges, Lilith, Jewish Quarterly, Silent Souls? Women in Yiddish Culture (2010), Dybbuk: Na Pograniczu Dwóch Światów (2017), and Theatermachine: Tadeusz Kantor in Context (2020). She received her Ph.D. in Yiddish studies with distinction from Columbia University and her research focuses on trauma, memory, performance, and the body represented in Jewish literature, theater, and film. She is currently completing a manuscript exploring the trope of dybbuk possession in modern Jewish cultures.

Lital Levy is an interdisciplinary scholar of comparative literature, Jewish studies, and Middle Eastern studies at Princeton University. She researches the culture of Israel/Palestine, the historical and contemporary experiences of Sephardi, Mizrahi, and Arab Jewish communities, and theoretical issues of comparison, representation, and language. 

BJ Love teaches English and creative writing at the Emery/Weiner School in Houston, TX.

Lesley Machon teaches at a Jewish day school in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She is committed to fostering greater inclusivity and deeper understanding, both cross-culturally and trans-culturally, and she finds herself at home in the intersections between people and place.

Barbara Mann is professor of cultural studies and Hebrew literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She is the author of Space and Place in Jewish Studies and A Place in History: Modernism, Tel Aviv and the Creation of Jewish Urban Space.

Sammy Meckler is a humanities teacher at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School. He is a proud graduate of the Yiddish Book Center's Great Jewish Books Teacher Summer Seminar.

Rachel Meytin is a life-long Jewish educator who focuses on service learning and social justice education, professional development, and working with middle and high school students. She lives in the Washington, DC, area and teaches middle school rabbinics at Charles E Smith Jewish Day School. 

Amy Montoni is the editor of the Charlotte Jewish News and a teacher in two religious schools and at Hebrew High School. She is a relentless supporter of Israel. She has been a “hobby jogger” for more than thirty years and loves to go to hear live music.

Josh Moss teaches rabbinics at American Hebrew Academy, a Jewish boarding school in Greensboro, North Carolina. He received his PhD in Midrash from Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, and his dissertation, Midrash and Legend, was published by Gorgias Press. Moss was the founding director of the Cincinnati Klezmer Project.

Kenneth Moss teaches modern Jewish history at the Johns Hopkins University and studies Jewish culture and politics in the twentieth century. He is the author of Jewish Renaissance in the Russian Revolution

Anita Norich is collegiate professor emerita of English and Judaic studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of, among other books, Writing in Tongues: Yiddish Translation in the 20th Century. She translates Yiddish literature and teaches, lectures, and publishes on a range of topics concerning modern Jewish cultures, Yiddish language and literature, Jewish American literature, and Holocaust literature.

Tahneer Oksman is an assistant professor at Marymount Manhattan College, the author of “How Come Boys Get to Keep Their Noses?”: Women and Jewish American Identity in Contemporary Graphic Memoirs, and the co-editor of the anthology The Comics of Julie Doucet and Gabrielle Bell: A Place Inside Yourself

Ranen Omer-Sherman is the Jewish Heritage Fund for Excellence chair of Jewish studies at the University of Louisville. He is the author or editor of five books including, most recently, Imagining Kibbutz: Visions of Utopia in Literature and Film (2015) as well as numerous essays on Jewish writers from Israel and North America. He was a founder of a desert kibbutz.

Feygi Zylberman Phillips is an educator who grew up in a Yiddish-speaking household in Melbourne, Australia. She holds a bachelor's degree in education, and a master's in modern Jewish studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

Hannah Pollin-Galay is assistant professor (senior lecturer) in the department of literature at Tel Aviv University, where she researches and teaches on Holocaust studies, Yiddish literature, and all the ways that these two fields intersect. Her first book Ecologies of Witnessing: Language, Place and Holocaust Testimony came out in 2018. 

Lillian Rappaport serves as educational director of Temple Ohev Sholom in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and as Jewish education director at the Jewish Federation of Greater Harrisburg. She holds a master's in education from New York University and a master's in religious education from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Julie Rezmovic-Tonti teaches middle school Judaics at Gesher Jewish Day School in Fairfax, VA. She holds a master's in Jewish education from Siegal College of Judaic Studies, and she received a certificate in Jewish philosophy and pedagogy from the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. 

Barbara Ellison Rosenblit directs the mentoring program and teaches humanities and Jewish studies at The Weber School in Atlanta. She studied at Brandeis, Columbia, and Emory universities and has wide-ranging interests, which makes her an unrepentant advocate of interdisciplinary curricula. In 2004 Barbara received a Covenant Award, which honors outstanding Jewish educators.

Rachel Rothstein teaches modern Jewish history, is the social studies content dean, and is the director of the Israel Poland Experience at the Weber School in Atlanta, Georgia. She received her PhD in history from the University of Florida in 2015.

Sasha Senderovich is an assistant professor of Russian, Jewish, and international studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. His academic work, public scholarship, and teaching focus on Russian and Soviet Jewish experience, comparative Jewish literatures, and Russian cinema and culture. He is the author of How the Soviet Jew Was Made (Harvard University Press, forthcoming in 2022). He has been on the faculty of the Great Jewish Books program at the Yiddish Book Center since 2014.

Maeera Shreiber is associate professor of English and director of the religious studies program at the University of Utah. She is the author of Singing in a Strange Land: Jewish American Poetry and Poetics, and she has also published numerous journal articles on poetry, religion, and Jewish thought. 

Corinne Skott is an English teacher at The Weber School, teaching courses including grammar, composition, American literature, British literature, feminist perspectives in literature and film, and world literature. She graduated from the University of Georgia with high honors and received a master’s in English from the University of New Orleans.

Leslie Smith-Rosen has been a Jewish educator for more than 35 years, both as a teacher and an administrator. She currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is the middle school principal at the Epstein School.

Claire Solomon is associate professor of Hispanic studies and comparative literature at Oberlin College. She is the author of Fictions of the Bad Life, as well as fiction and non-fiction about bad musicals, anarcho-feminist theater, translation theory, birds, manic pixie dream girls, and contemporary music.

Neta Stahl is associate professor in the Hebrew program at Johns Hopkins University. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of literature, religion, and culture.

Rabbi Robert Sternberg is a professor of Holocaust literature at Westfield State University in Westfield, Massachusetts, a professor of English composition and literature at American International College in Springfield, and a part-time rabbi at Temple Israel in Athol, Massachusetts. 

Sharon Tash is the curriculum specialist at Temple Beth Ami in Rockville, Maryland. Previously, she worked as an historian on the ID Card Project at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and as a history teacher at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville.

Miriam Taub was born in Moisés Ville, a Jewish shtetl in Argentina. She grew up speaking Yiddish, Spanish, German, and Hebrew, and she has taught Yiddish and Hebrew in Argentina, Israel, and the U.S. 

Anna Elena Torres is an assistant professor of comparative literature at the University of Chicago. Torres' book Any Minute Now the World Streams Over Its Border!: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature is forthcoming from Yale University Press.

Joshua Logan Wall has a PhD in English and Judaic studies from the University of Michigan. He teaches and writes about modern American and Jewish poetry.

Melissa Weininger is Anna Smith Fine Lecturer in Jewish Studies and associate director of the Program in Jewish Studies at Rice University. Her research centers on modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature, gender, and nationalism.

Charlotte F. Werbe is an assistant professor of French at Gettysburg College. Her work on Holocaust testimony has been published in The Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies and the volume Shoah et bande dessinée: L’image au service de la mémoire.

Lesley Yalen is education program manager at the Yiddish Book Center, editor of the Teach Great Jewish Books website, and managing editor of the Center's White Goat Press.

Mikhl Yashinsky is a playwright, actor-director, and Yiddishist living in Manhattan. He studied modern European history and literature at Harvard, and has since directed operas at the Detroit Opera House, starred in the Yiddish Fiddler on the Roof and played the title role in The Sorceress with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, collaborated in the writing of the Yiddish Book Center's textbook In eynem, and taught Yiddish at the University of Michigan.

Itay Zutra received his PhD in modern Yiddish literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and is currently teaching Yiddish, Hebrew, and modern Jewish literature and culture at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada where he is the I. L. Peretz teaching fellow. He specializes in the modernist poetics of Inzikh and its attitude towards Jewish tradition and mindset.