Jake Schneider

Writing

I write poems, articles, and short fiction in Yiddish and narrative essays in English.

Projects

As a passionate Yiddishist, I organize many projects related to Yiddish culture and history.

Events

I organize and participate in a wide range of literary and cultural events.

Translations

I have been working as a freelance translator since 2012, mostly from German to English.

Upcoming Dates

25 October: Reading in Hamburg

I will be performing some of my "postpoems" (and some experimental prose) in Hamburg together with Jordan Lee Schnee's "antipoems" and Marcel Seidel's "subpoems" in a reading of contemporary Yiddish literature hosted by the Salomo-Birnbaum-Gesellschaft.

24 October: Guided Tour of Jewish Museum

The thousand-year history of Yiddish in Germany – and the role of language in Jewish identity more broadly – compressed into a 90-minute tour of the Jewish Museum's core exhbition.

Recent Publications

Forverts: Experimenting with translation on today’s Yiddish stage

The London Yiddish Shpilers, a new troupe whose performers come from a variety of acting and Yiddish backgrounds, uses a variety of methods to make its scenes accessible to a linguistically mixed audience.

Read (in Yiddish)

Timezone: A 12-part poem about time

My poema "tsaytzone (atlas)" (timezone (atlas)) appeared online in the Forverts. Photo by Diego Delso, Wikimedia commons

Read (in Yiddish)

Forverts: Yiddish Street Signs and Minority Language Status in Germany

Yiddish now appears on Berlin’s streets, but is it really being heard? A report on language, memory, and the dream of Yiddish as an official minority language.

Read (in the adapted English version)

NASJ: Two Yiddish Poems

Two of my poems with English translations and audio readings, as part of a special issue on North American-born poets in Berlin.

Who can play a Jew? A Debate in Germany

From Jewface to professional imposters, identity politics and tricky societal debates come to the stage in Berlin with Noam Brusilovsky's play "Fake Jews," starring Moritz Kienemann. My first article for the Forverts about the theater. (Photo: Jasmin Schulle)

Read (in Yiddish)

Yiddish with Rukhl: "At-Risk Languages"

Rukhl Schechter, editor of the Forverts, the world's oldest Yiddish newspaper, read an article of mine from early 2025 as episode 6 of her podcast "Yiddish with Rukhl." The article considers how language revitalization activists for different languages can work together.

Listen (in Yiddish)

Forverts: “It takes a village to raise a child in Yiddish”

How parents outside Hassidic enclaves are raising their children in this minoritized language.

Read article (in Yiddish)

Short film from residency at Manchester Poetry Library

In November 2024, I was part of a weeklong residency at the Manchester Poetry Library where a group of Yiddish-speakers reread issues of the London literary journal Loshn un Lebn, which A.N. Stencl published for four decades. The resulting video from our discussions is in Yiddish with English subtitles.

Watch on the A.N. Stencl website

Forverts: "captcha committee"

A mysterious committee interrogates a suspected “robot-revolutionary.”

Read poem (in Yiddish)

In Geveb: "The Hideaway" by A.N. Stencl

The poet A.N. Stencl (1897–1983) was an insider-outsider during his 15 years in Berlin. I am now translating his gritty memoirs of the Weimar Republic, Gerangl (Hustle), as a 2025 Translation Fellow of the Yiddish Book Center.

Read an excerpt

Current Projects

A Yiddish social club that meets twice per month at bars, parks, and other venues around the city to speak exclusively Yiddish.

I am translating a volume of gritty interwar memoirs by Berlin's most prolific Yiddish poet, the insider-outsider finally getting the attention he deserves.

Visit Berlin's Yiddishland walking tour

An immersive guided tour of Berlin’s historically Eastern European Jewish neighborhood.

Yiddish Hoyz at Yiddish Summer Weimar

An immersive Yiddish-speaking space where conversational speakers live in the language for ten days or a weekend during the annual festival.

Nu? Yiddish in All Art Forms

An open mic for Berlin’s Yiddish community to show each other and our friends what we’ve got up our sleeves: our works in progress, side projects, secret talents. Currently on hold for lack of funding.

A multimedia presentation about the intersection of queerness and Yiddish from 1877 to the present.

Yiddish in Berlin, Past and Present

Workshops, tours, and presentations on the history of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to Berlin and the current outpouring of Yiddish culture in our city.

Yiddish & Jewish Identity: Journey of a Language in Germany

I developed a walking tour of the Jewish Museum Berlin's core exhibition that tells the story of Yiddish in Germany since the Middle Ages. What is the role of language in identity? Offered four times a year.

Yiddish & Kids: Links, Resources, and an Interview with Sarah Schulman

As a supplement to my recent Forverts article (in Yiddish) about parents raising their children in Yiddish, I have compiled a list of useful links and resources for parents along with an exclusive interview with Sarah Sore Schulman, the founding director of “Dos Nisele” (Yiddish for “the Little Nut”), a publishing house and cultural organization based in Sweden.

Keep in Touch

Feel free to contact me via the contact form and I will reply as soon as possible via email.

If you are interested in Yiddish cultural events in Berlin, I recommend the Shtetl Berlin newsletter, which also announces events by other individuals and groups in our community such as Yiddish.Berlin.

Follow me on Instagram @jakeausdemschneider to see my latest Shmues un Vayn collages and other personal announcements.