Yiddish literature

Yiddish literature, body of written works that developed in the late 1200s and remained strongly connected to Jewish religious tradition until the 1800s, when modern Jewish literature had its beginnings through a cultural literary movement called the Haskalah (Enlightenment). The humorist Solomon Rabinowitz, who wrote under the name Sholom Aleichem, Shalom Jacob Abramovich, whose pen name was Mendele the Bookseller, and Isaac Leibush Peretz stand out as major exponents of Yiddish literature during much of the 1800s and 1900s. Some of the common themes underlying most works of this time include the hardships involved with living in a non-Jewish world and the social conflicts within the Jewish community.

The flowering of Yiddish literature took place during the period of 1914–18 in Poland, the Soviet Union, and the United States. During this period, Sholem Asch in Poland, David Bergelson in the Soviet Union, and Moishe Leib Halpern in the United States ranked as the most important figures in Yiddish literature. During World War II (1939–45), many notable Yiddish writers perished along with the 6 million Jews that were exterminated by the Nazis. Isaac Bashevis Singer, a Polish-born U.S. author, became the first Yiddish writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature (1978).