Around the turn of the twentieth century, a group of Yiddish-speaking educators, authors, and cultural leaders undertook a bold project: creating a corpus of nearly one thousand books and several periodicals that would articulate a new vision for modern Jewish childhood that drew on ancient Jewish values. These vibrant texts cut across continents and ideologies but shared in their creators’ overarching goal: to write into being a better world, a shenere un besere velt—in a distinctively Yiddish key. In this talk, "How Mensches Were Made in Yiddish," Professor Miriam Udel will unpack her work on Yiddish children’s literature as a site of political and ethical formation and Jewish cultural transmission.

Miriam Udel is Professor of German Studies and the Judith London Evans Director of the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies at Emory University, where her teaching focuses on Yiddish language, literature, and culture. She holds an AB in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and a PhD in Comparative Literature, both from Harvard University. She was ordained in 2019 as part of the first cohort of the Executive Ordination Track at Yeshivat Maharat, a program designed to bring qualified mid-career women into the Orthodox Jewish rabbinate.

Udel is the author of Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque (University of Michigan Press), winner of the 2017 National Jewish Book Award in Modern Jewish Thought and Experience. She is the editor and translator of Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature (NYU Press, 2020), winner of the Judaica Reference Award from the Association of Jewish Libraries. Udel’s translation of Chaver Paver’s 1935 story collection about the adventures of a lovable proletarian mutt became the basis for Theater Emory’s 2021 puppet film "Labzik: Tales of a Clever Pup;" her full translation of the stories will appear early next year with SUNY Press. Last October, Princeton University Press published her critical study, Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature, which won the National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity.

Her ongoing research looks to children’s literature and culture as a powerful force for political formation and a resource for the intergenerational transmission of culture, values, and ideology.

She is a proud alumna of the KI Preschool and even prouder daughter of KI Past President Edward Udel.