I have always been inter­est­ed in writ­ing poet­ry about my family’s Jew­ish tra­di­tions. In 2018, I start­ed inter­view­ing my grand­pa (“Papa”) for what would become my new book, Laugh­ing in Yid­dish. He told me so many sto­ries about fam­i­ly mem­bers who emi­grat­ed to the US from Russia’s Pale of Set­tle­ment, seek­ing safe­ty from per­se­cu­tion and hop­ing for eco­nom­ic opportunities. 

From these con­ver­sa­tions, my book blos­somed into a series of poems chron­i­cling my family’s roots in Chica­go. Papa told me about his Bubbe Annie who made greasy chick­en for Shab­bat din­ner every Fri­day night at her apart­ment on the north­side of Chica­go. He described to me his grand­fa­ther Mey­er who worked as a ped­dler in the infa­mous Maxwell Street Market. 

While lis­ten­ing to these sto­ries about my family’s Chica­go roots, I start­ed to won­der more and more about my ances­tors’ expe­ri­ences in Rus­sia before emi­grat­ing. Papa often told me that he didn’t know much about their lives then. Those great-great-grand­par­ents of mine spoke Yid­dish and chose not to teach their lan­guage to the next gen­er­a­tion, leav­ing so much of their sto­ries lost to history. 

I immersed myself in online genealog­i­cal pur­suits and my curios­i­ty led me to many books about the Pale of Set­tle­ment and the pogroms that occurred there. I want­ed to under­stand why so many Jews left the land they had been liv­ing on for gen­er­a­tions and I became fas­ci­nat­ed with learn­ing about the Pale of Set­tle­ment. Many of my poems in Laugh­ing in Yid­dish were influ­enced by my research and inspired by this bygone, half-for­got­ten world. Here’s a list of some of the books that informed my work. 

Pho­tograph­ing the Jew­ish Nation: Pic­tures from S. An-Sky’s Ethno­graph­ic Expe­di­tions by Eugene M. Avrutin, et al.

I can’t give enough praise for this book. Read­ing the crit­i­cal essays in Pho­tograph­ing the Jew­ish Nation—which pre­view and explain dozens of pho­tographs by Solomon Iudovin from his uncle S. An-Sky’s ethno­graph­ic expe­di­tion between 1912 – 1914 — pro­vides a rare win­dow into dai­ly expe­ri­ences, cul­ture, and folk­lore of Jews in the Pale of Set­tle­ment. S. An-Sky urgent­ly want­ed to pre­serve their cus­toms before their way of life began to van­ish. The pho­tographs in this book are stun­ning and range from for­mal por­traits of Jew­ish school­child­ren and skilled work­ers to pho­tographs of his­tor­i­cal build­ings, syn­a­gogues, and homes. Many of the pho­tographs in this book inspired sev­er­al per­sona poems in Laugh­ing in Yid­dish

Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of His­to­ry by Steven J. Zipperstein

For so many, the 1903 Kishinev pogrom has fad­ed from Jew­ish mem­o­ry. How­ev­er, Steven J. Zip­per­stein aimed to change that with his his­tor­i­cal analy­sis, Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of His­to­ry. Zip­per­stein describes what life was like for Jews in Kishinev, Rus­sia, before the pogrom and then pro­vides a detailed account of the mul­ti-day mas­sacre and ram­page that upend­ed Jew­ish life in Europe. Jour­nal­ist and poet Hay­im Nah­man Bia­lik sur­veyed the dam­age and inter­viewed wit­ness­es and sur­vivors from Kishinev. What I found to be most inter­est­ing is Zipperstein’s reflec­tion on the impor­tance of Bialik’s explo­sive” poem, In the City of Killing.” Bialik’s poet­ic cadences, bib­li­cal syn­tax, and jour­nal­is­tic tone cap­tured the hor­rors of the pogrom while call­ing for a Jew­ish home­land and self-defense as opposed to the cow­ardice that he reported. 

The Dyb­buk and Oth­er Writ­ings by S. Ansky

Ansky is per­haps best known for his play The Dyb­buk, which was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in Russ­ian around 1916, trans­lat­ed into Yid­dish soon after, and became a canon­i­cal work of the Yid­dish the­ater. The play cen­ters around the wed­ding of Leah, daugh­ter of a wealthy man named Sender, who becomes pos­sessed with a dyb­buk on her wed­ding night. Leah’s dyb­buk is a venge­ful spir­it, upset and angry about a dis­card­ed promise. S. An-Sky’s inter­est in the dyb­buk most like­ly stemmed from this ethno­graph­ic study between 1912 and 1914 when he col­lect­ed folk­lore, songs, inter­views, and more in the Pale of Set­tle­ment. As I was writ­ing poems about the Pale, I found the dyb­buk and golem to be mys­te­ri­ous fig­ures but also sources of com­fort and reli­a­bil­i­ty. The Dyb­buk inspired me to write poems weav­ing in ele­ments of Jew­ish mag­ic. Like humor, mag­ic has helped Jews make sense of bewil­der­ing sit­u­a­tions both with­in their com­mu­ni­ty and from out­side forces.

Pio­neers: The First Breach by S. An-sky, trans­lat­ed from the Yid­dish by Rose Waldman

This book was rec­om­mend­ed to me by anoth­er Jew­ish poet who found out I was inter­est­ed in S. An-Sky. In this com­pelling nov­el, a Jew­ish Russ­ian tutor, Zal­men Itzkowitz, comes to a small, insu­lar, nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry town to teach sec­u­lar stud­ies, despite hav­ing no back­ground in the con­tent he was attempt­ing to teach. Inspired by the Haskalah, or Jew­ish Enlight­en­ment, he hopes to spark free think­ing in his stu­dents with­out arous­ing sus­pi­cion from the rab­bis. Pio­neers is both a trag­ic yet humor­ous por­tray­al of a com­mu­ni­ty on the cusp of per­ma­nent change and pro­vides a win­dow into the social con­flicts inside Jew­ish shtetl communities.

The Lost Shtetl by Max Gross

Amidst all of the non­fic­tion and his­to­ry books that I read to research the Pale of Set­tle­ment, I also read The Lost Shtetl by Max Gross, which fits into the cat­e­go­ry of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion. The nov­el starts off in a Pol­ish shtetl that has remained iso­lat­ed from the out­side world for decades. Sud­den­ly, the dis­ap­pear­ance of some Jew­ish towns­peo­ple caus­es the pro­tag­o­nist, Yankel Lewinkopf, to ven­ture out of the shtetl and into soci­ety only to be stunned by the pace, tech­nol­o­gy, and cur­rent events of the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry. This book is extreme­ly cre­ative, hilar­i­ous, and full of Yid­dishisms and unex­pect­ed turns. While not an his­tor­i­cal nov­el, it pro­vides a fic­tion­al descrip­tion of shtetl life and com­mu­ni­ty val­ues and cus­toms that is intrigu­ing to those of us inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Euro­pean Jew­ish culture. 

Laugh­ing in Yid­dish by Jamie Wendt

Note: Shloyme Rapa­port was known by his pen-name S. An-Sky, whose spelling and cap­i­tal­iza­tion varies from S. Ansky, S. An-sky, and S. An-Sky.

Jamie Wendt is the author of the poet­ry col­lec­tion Laugh­ing in Yid­dish (Broad­stone Books, 2025), which was a final­ist for the 2022 Philip Levine Prize in Poet­ry. Her first book, Fruit of the Earth (Main Street Rag, 2018), won the 2019 Nation­al Fed­er­a­tion of Press Women Book Award in Poet­ry. Her poems and essays have been pub­lished in var­i­ous lit­er­ary jour­nals and antholo­gies, includ­ing Fem­i­nine Ris­ing, Cata­ma­ran, Lilith, Jet Fuel Review, the For­ward, Minyan Mag­a­zine, and oth­ers. She con­tributes book reviews to the Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She won third prize in the 2024 Reuben Rose Poet­ry Com­pe­ti­tion and won sec­ond prize for the 2024 Hol­loway Free Verse Award through the Illi­nois State Poet­ry Soci­ety. Wendt holds an MFA in Cre­ative Writ­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Nebras­ka Oma­ha. She lives in Chica­go with her hus­band and two kids. Fol­low her online at https://​jamie​-wendt​.com/ or on Insta­gram @jamiewendtpoet.