SOURCE: Madison, Charles A. “Yiddish in Israel.” In Yiddish Literature: Its Scope and Major Writers, pp. 500-21. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1968.

In the following essay, Madison provides an overview of Yiddish writers and poets from Israel.

Yiddish was the speech of East European Jews from the time of their settlement there in the late Middle Ages, and was developed by them into a modern literary language during the second half of the 19th century. The pogroms and activated anti-Semitism of the early 1880's started an exodus of these Jews to nearly every part of the inhabited earth. For years it was a mere trickle, with most migrants going to the United States, but some settled in Western Europe and a few went to Canada, South Africa, and South America. A handful of dedicated Zionists departed for Palestine (hereafter referred to as Israel). After the widespread massacres...