Fishman, David E. 1957–

PERSONAL:

Born 1957, in NY. Education: Yeshiva University, B.A.; Harvard University, M.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—The Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 3080 Broadway, New York, NY 10027. E-mail—dafishman@jtsa.edu.

CAREER:

Writer and educator. Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, instructor: Russian State University, Moscow, instructor; Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York, NY, professor of Jewish history and department chair; YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, NY, senior research associate. Project Judaica, Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Russian State University for the Humanities, director. Hebrew University Institute of Advanced Studies, fellow; University of Pennsylvania, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, fellow. Also taught at Bar Ilan University and Yeshiva University, Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies.

WRITINGS:

Guide to Jewish Collections in Moscow Museums, Libraries and the Former Communist Party Archives, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (New York, NY), 1984.

Russia's First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Shaytlekh Aroysgerisn Fun Fayer: Dos Oprateven Yidishe Kultur-oystres in Vilne, Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut—YIVO (New York, NY), 1996.

(Editor, with Burton L. Visotzky) From Mesopotamia to Modernity: Ten Introductions to Jewish History and Literature, Westview Press (Boulder, CO), 1999, revised Russian edition published as Ot Avraama Do Sovremennosti: Lekti sii Po Evreiskoi Istorii I Literature, RGGU [Russian State University for the Humanities] (Moscow, Russia), 2002.

(Author of introduction) Profiles of a Lost World: Memoirs of East European Jewish Life before World War II, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

Dokumenty Po Istorii I Kulture Evreev V Trofeinykh Kollekt sii akh Rossiiskogo Gosudarstvennogo Voennogo Arkhiva: Putevoditel, RGGU [Russian State University for the Humanities] (Moscow, Russia), 2005.

The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture, University of Pittsburgh Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 2005.

Editor, YIVO-Bletter. Member of editorial board of Jewish Social Studies, Jews in Europe and Eastern Europe, and Polin.

SIDELIGHTS:

A scholar and professor of Jewish history at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, David E. Fishman teaches and writes on the history and culture of East European Jewry. He serves as the director of Project Judaica, a Moscow-based Jewish-studies program jointly sponsored by the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Russian State University for the Humanities. Fishman is also the director of the project's Jewish Archival Survey, which produces guides to Jewish archival materials housed throughout the former Soviet Union.

In The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture, Fishman presents ‘not an all-encompassing history of the Yiddish language, but a mapping out of the evolution of modern Yiddish culture from its fledgling years in the 1860s to its growth and diffusion in the years after World War One,’ noted reviewer Matthew Hoffman in Shofar. Throughout, Fishman offers a view of Yiddish cultural development that is separate from the rise of Jewish Socialism and the Bund, the General Jewish Labor Union. In two main sections, Fishman looks at the emergence of modern Yiddish culture and literature in tsarist Russia, spanning the years from the late nineteenth century to World War One. He explains how it was tsarist policy that hindered the development of Yiddish culture in Russia from the 1880s until 1905, rather than a lack of modernity among Russian Jews. In the second part, he considers the condition of Yiddish culture in Poland in the time period between the two World Wars. Among his topics are the rapid expansion of Yiddish culture in Poland between the wars and the reasons that Poland served as such a welcoming and nourishing atmosphere for the development of Yiddish culture. Fishman's book is an ‘illuminating work of serious scholarship that provides a fresh look at the growth of Yiddish culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,’ Hoffman remarked. He concluded that ‘Fishman's book is a solid and much needed contribution to serious scholarship on Yiddish culture."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, September, 1995, G.R. Sharfman, review of Russia's First Modern Jews: The Jews of Shklov, p. 193; May, 2006, M. Butovsky, review of The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture, p. 1595.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 1995, review of Russia's First Modern Jews, p. 8.

Russian Review, January, 1996, Seth Wolitz, review of Russia's First Modern Jews, p. 121.

Shofar, winter, 2007, Matthew Hoffman, review of The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture, p. 137.

Slavic and East European Journal, summer, 1996, Brian Horowitz, review of Russia's First Modern Jews, p. 405.

Slavic Review, summer, 1996, John D. Klier, review of Russia's First Modern Jews, p. 466; winter, 2006, David Shneer, review of The Rise of Modern Yiddish Culture, p. 809.

ONLINE

Jewish Theological Seminary of America Web site,http://www.jtsa.edu/ (November 5, 2007), biography of David E. Fishman.

University of Pittsburgh Press Web site,http://www.upress.pitt.edu/ (November 5, 2007), biography of David E. Fishman.