Yiddish Renaissance

The Yiddish Renaissance was a cultural and artistic movement which began among Jews in Eastern Europe during the latter part of the 19th Century. [cite book|title=Class Struggle in the Pale: The Formative Years of the Jewish Workers' Movement in Tsarist Russia|page=118|last=Mendelsohn|first=Ezra|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=SDE9AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA118|publisher=CUP Archive|year=1970|isbn=0521077303|accessdate=2008-10-08] Some of the leading founders of this movement were Mendele Moykher-Sforim (1836- 1917) [cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Sq1lAAAAMAAJ|title=Handbook of American-Jewish Literature|author=Fried, Lewis; Brown, Gene; Chametzky, Jules; Harap, Louis|year=1988|publisher=Genewood Press|isbn=0313245932|page=155|accessdate=2008-10-08] , I.L. Peretz (1852-1915), and Sholem Aleichem (1859-1916). [cite book|title=The Hammer and the Flute|last=Keller|first=Mary|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=pST7aozdvtQC&pg=PA213|page=213|isbn=0801881889|year=2002|publisher=JHU Press|accessdate=2008-10-08]

Due in large part to the efforts of this movement, Yiddish became one of the great languages of the world, spoken by over 11,000,000 people. As many Eastern European Jews began to emigrate to the United States, the movement became very active there, especially in New York City. [cite book|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=ALBtmF8UYb0C&pg=PA64|title=Multilingual America: Transnationalism, Ethnicity, and the Languages of American Literature|last=Sollors|first=Werner|page=64|isbn=0814780938|publisher=NYU Press|year=1998|accessdate=2008-10-08] One aspect of this became known as Yiddish Theatre, [cite web|url=http://books.google.com/books?id=oFtZAAAAMAAJ|title=From Hester Street to Hollywood: The Jewish-American Stage and Screen|last=Cohen|first=Sarah Blacher|year=1983|publisher=Indiana University Press|accessdate=2008-10-08|page=233] and involved authors such as Ben Hecht and Clifford Odets. [cite book|url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=UNYdvZk2sMAC|page=210|title=Messiahs of 1933: How American Yiddish Theatre Survived Adversity Through Satire|last=Schecter|first=Joel|year=2008|isbn=1592138721|publisher=Temple University Press|accessdate=2008-10-08]

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