German Jewish Cultures

1 total work

The Emergence of Early Yiddish Literature

by Suny Distinguished Professor Jerold C Frakes

Published 26 June 2017

While much early Yiddish literature belonged to pious genres, quasi-secular genres-epic, drama, and lyric-also developed. Jerold Frakes contends that the historical context of the emergence of Yiddish literature is an essential factor in any understanding of its cultural relevance in a time and place where Jewish life was defined by expulsions, massacres, and discriminatory legislation that profoundly altered European Judaism and shook the very foundations of traditional Jewish society.