CSI's welcomes Miriam Udel, Associate Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture at Emory University, in conversation with Marshall Duke about her work and her latest book, Modern Jewish Worldmaking Through Yiddish Children’s Literature.

Dr. Udel is associate professor of German Studies and Judith London Evans Director of the Tam Institute of 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 with SUNY Press. In 2025, Princeton University Press will publish her critical study of Ashkenazi Jewish modernity reimagined through the corpus of Yiddish children’s literature.

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