The Frieda Vizel Podcast9 Marras 2025

The power of Yiddish children's stories to shape our world | Miriam Udel

Video link to this interview: https://youtu.be/1y8ejrX4Jos

In this episode, I talk with Miriam Udel, who teaches Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Emory University. Miriam has done something quite wonderful—she’s brought to life a wide range of Yiddish children’s stories, translating them into English and making them accessible again. These stories, written before and after the Holocaust, capture the worlds Jews once imagined for their children—worlds that were playful, moral, rebellious, sometimes heartbreakingly earnest.

We talk about how children’s literature works as a cultural time capsule: how it reflects the values and anxieties of its moment, and how it teaches kids who they are supposed to be. It’s a conversation about language, identity, and the quieter ways a culture passes itself on.
Miriam Udel is the Judith London Evans Director of the Tam Institute of Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of German Studies at Emory University. She holds an AB and PhD from Harvard, and was ordained at Yeshivat Maharat in 2019 as part of its first Executive Ordination cohort.

📚 Books by Miriam Udel:
Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature
https://amzn.to/4ovS0W3
Honey on the Page: A Treasury of Yiddish Children’s Literature
https://amzn.to/476aGpF
Never Better!: The Modern Jewish Picaresque (Michigan Studies in Comparative Jewish Cultures)

https://amzn.to/47549LY
🎥 Other videos mentioned:
Why Only Girls? — Hasidic Boys and Envy
https://youtu.be/MnFddZtaWdQ
A Hilf Faren Kind — The Hasidic Children’s Book Series
https://youtu.be/2DTIsRStE3s

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