The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature

The existence of a substantial body of Hebrew literature written on American shores is one of the best-kept secrets of Jewish American cultural history. In 1927, there were 110 Hebrew authors living in the United States, according to Daniel Persky, a columnist for the Hebrew-language newspaper Hadoar, which had been published in New York since 1922.

Having witnessed the failed revolution of 1905—the dream of a New Russia followed by the nightmare of new pogroms—a whole generation of Jewish intellectuals emigrated to America. Some, the fledgling poets and prose writers among them, displaced their radical politics by ushering in an aesthetic revolution.

To be a Yiddish writer in the New World was to chronicle the depradations of exile and the dreams that failed.