Yiddish language and life celebrated in new digital resource
Yiddish language and life is celebrated in a new digital resource which presents an almost complete collection of the Yiddish literary journal Loshn un lebn (Language and Life) by influential Yiddish poet A.N. Stencl for the first time.
This celebrated Yiddish literary magazine ran from 1940-1981 and was created and edited by Polish-born Yiddish poet Avrom Nokhem Stencl (1897-1983), also known as A.N. Stencl. It became the longest running foreign language journal in the UK.
Yiddish is a Jewish minority language and at its peak it was spoken by around 11 million people worldwide but its use declined dramatically after World War II although it is now on the rise again.
Stencl was a native Yiddish speaker from Poland, who settled in London’s east end in 1936 and became an activist and campaigner for the continuation of Yiddish culture. His extraordinary life spanned the height and demise of contemporary Yiddish culture and language, and he wrote about his experiences in his magazine.
Loshn un lebn featured Stencl’s own poems, essays and memoirs alongside an array of work by other Yiddish writers and poets exploring political, social and literary topics of the time.
The digital resource is the culmination of a two-year project, funded by British Academy Leverhulme Small Grant, where researchers tracked down and digitised copies of these long out-of-print Yiddish journals to create the largest publicly available collection worldwide with an index of content pages translated into English for non-Yiddish speakers.
Rachel Lichtenstein, Professor of Creative Non-Fiction at Manchester Met, who led the project, said: “This important project brings together into one online space the most complete collection of this now long-out-of-print Yiddish literary magazine, which was printed by Narod Press in London, and edited by A.N. Stencl. We hope that by sharing these magazines new information will be unearthed about Yiddish literature and life in the twentieth century.”
Collectively the content of these magazines offers new insight into a range of subjects, places and personalities connected to Yiddish culture and language including rare early issues of Stencl’s heftlekh (pamphlets).
Alongside the collection of magazines, the digital resource also presents interdisciplinary research on Stencl by Lichtenstein, alongside related articles, live events in Berlin and Manchester, and a radio documentary about Stencl.
The research has inspired several online and in-person events including a Yiddish residency hosted at Manchester Met’s Manchester Poetry Library attended by Yiddish speakers from around the world who came together to discuss the content of these journals. Recordings of these events can also be explored in the digital resource.
To coincide with the launch of this website, The Yiddish Book Center (USA), a nonprofit cultural organisation, interviewed Professor Lichenstein about the digital resource for their podcast alongside publishing an essay about the work of Stencl in the Winter 2025 edition of their international magazine Pakn Treger which covers Yiddish subjects in English.
Professor Lichtenstein is also working on a large international digital archive on Stencl in collaboration with YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, funded by Arcadia, which will digitise at-risk manuscripts, photographs, recordings, publications and other previously undocumented material relating to Stencl’s life, work, and Yiddish activities for the Stencl Digital Archive Project which will launch in 2026.
She is also writing a book The Prince of Yiddish: Story of a Language Lost and Found exploring Yiddish culture past and present centred around Stencl’s life story which will be published by William Collins in March 2027.
To contribute stories about Stencl or his magazine, please visit the digital resource for more information: www.a.n.stencl.mmu.ac.uk
