As a Yiddish poet within Berlin’s growing contemporary Yiddish poetry scene, I am in the final stages of preparing the manuscript for my debut collection, titled Tsaytzone (Time Zone). Poems from this project have appeared in many Yiddish publications from venerable newspapers to grassroots zines, and been translated into seven languages. I have also occasionally published speculative Yiddish microfiction. See below for a full bibliography.
I have participated in public readings hosted by Haus für Poesie, Leivik House, Yiddish.Berlin, Yung Yiddish Vienna, LABA Berlin, Lettrétage, Haver Serbia, the Yiddish Café Trust, and others.
I also write journalistic articles in Yiddish for the Forverts, the oldest Yiddish newspaper in the world, often reporting on contemporary Yiddish communities around the world (from Texas to Vienna) and questions of language revitalization more broadly.
I also occasionally write nonfictional essays in English, often about the politics of linguistic diversity, but also literature, community, and memory.
Poems from my manuscript Tsayzone (Time Zone) have been published in most of the major Yiddish literary publications around the world, and have been translated into seven languages. My Yiddish short fiction has been printed in Afn Shvel and will soon appear in English translation as part of an anthology by V&Q Books.
“Naye gasnshprakh (malke fun di oygnderner)” (New slang (Queen of the eye-thorns)), Afn Shvel no. 406, New York/Jerusalem, 2025, p. 52
“Aroys fun indzele (realitetn-farmest, loshn-rabim)” (off the island (realities contest, polyglossia)), Read on RBB3 Radiokultur during a German interview (timecode 7:52, followed by German translation), 29 May 2025.
“Captcha-komitet (anti-post-post)” (Captcha committee (anti-post-post)), Forverts, New York, 12 Aug 2025. Also included in the anthology zine Lokshn un Lebn (Berlin: Tsuzamenyu, 2025), p. 14–15
“In 2025” (In 2025) and “Shtumer sturem 2: levone turem” (Silent storm 2: moon tower), Yiddish Branzhe, April 2025
“Tsvey shtern” (Two stars), Birobidzhaner Shtern (Yiddish edition), Birobidzhan, March 26, 2025
“Zeitzone (Tempelhof)” and “Douze points,” Di goldene pawe no. 2, Amsterdam, January 2025, pp. 8–12. Audio recording of poem read by Gloria Fein Makkink on their website.
“oy vi ikh benk nokh der alter tsukunft (anatevke),” (Oy how I miss the old future (anatevka)), Queer/Lefty/Yiddish Futures vol. 1, Toronto: Queer Yiddish Camp, October 2024, p. 36–39
“Tsveyike getrayshaftn” (Dual loyalties), Shabbes 24/7 zine no. 3, Brussels, autumn 2024
“A shtumer shturem” (A silent storm), Yiddishland no. 24, Malmö/Jerusalem, autumn 2024, p. 66
“A ponim (lehavdil)” (On its face (forgive the analogy)), Ma’agal 5785 [poetry calendar], Stockholm, autumn 2024, p. for Sivan
“Hemshekhdikeyt” (Continuity), Afn Shvel no. 398–399, New York/Jerusalem, 2024, p. 61
“Stefan” [fiction], Afn Shvel no. 398–399, New York/Jerusalem, 2024, p. 46
“Undzer astronoyt” (Our astronaut), Yiddish Branzhe, New York, April 2024. English translation and introduction at Pulling at Threads, May 2025.
“A shteyndl funem yugnt brunem” (A pebble from the fountain of youth), Yiddish Branzhe, New York, April 2024. Reprinted in Glitter no. 7, 2024, p. 43
“Ir hot es nebekh farfelt” (Sorry you missed it) and “Lehavdil. A kvitl in der mizrekh-vant” (Lehavdil. A slip of paper in the eastern wall), Stadtsprachen Magazin, Berlin, April 2024
“In onheyb” (In the beginning) and “Di mener zenen shener” (trans. as “Men Are Better Tempters”), Di nayste yidishe dikhtung/The Newest Yiddish Poetry, Berlin: Propeller, 2022, pp. 11 and 13
“männer sind schöner” (But nothing like a man), “im anfang” (In the Beginning), “Die Marsianer entdecken eine Insel auf der Erde” (The martians discover an island on earth), trans. Arndt Beck and Horst Berhnardt, Parabolis Virtualis 4, Berlin: Querverlag, 2025, pp. 32–37
“nationalstaat (eindringungen)” (Nation-state (penetrations)), trans. Jake Schneider and Arndt Beck, Mein schwules Auge/My Gay Eye 21, Berlin: konkursbuch, 2025, p. 233
“ein steinchen vom brunnen der jugend” (A pebble from the fountain of youth), trans. Horst Bernhardt, Glitter no. 7, 2024, p. 42
A small selection of my Yiddish poems with German translations appeared as a zine: lehavdil. heilig-profane jiddische gedichte von jake schneider. trans. Horst Bernhardt and Arndt Beck. Berlin, 2023.
I have prepared English self-translations of many of my Yiddish poems, which I use for surtitles at readings. Most of these are unpublished to date. A few exceptions:
“oy how I miss the old future (anatevka),” Queer/Lefty/Yiddish Futures vol. 1, Toronto: Queer Yiddish Camp, October 2024, p. 37–40
“In the beginning” and “Men are better tempters,” Di nayste yidishe dikhtung/The Newest Yiddish Poetry, Berlin: Propeller, 2022, pp. 10 and 12
“sorry you missed it,” Stadtsprachen Magazin, Berlin, April 2024
Dutch: “Zeitzone (Tempelhof)” and “Douze points,” trans. Dovid Omar Cohen, Di goldene pawe no. 2, Amsterdam, January 2025, pp. 8–12.
Russian: “Tsvey shtern” (Two stars), trans. Yoel Matveyev, Birobidzhaner Shtern, Birobidzhan, 25 June 2025.
Serbian: “U početku” (In the beginning) and “oh kako mi nedostaje stara budućnost” (oy how I miss the old future (anatevka)), trans. by Boris Volucic and Mina Pasajlic, read in 2025 at Haver Serbia, Belgrade, unpublished.
Irish: “Geineasas” (In the beginning), trans. by Tadhg Mac Eoghain, unpublished.
Yael Merlini is also preparing Italian translations for a forthcoming bilingual anthology of contemporary Yiddish poets living in Germany.
I also write journalistic articles in Yiddish for the Forverts, the oldest Yiddish newspaper in the world:
“A yidish-redndik kind darf a ‘shtetl‘: Vi eltern kumen zey antkegn”
It takes a village to raise a child in Yiddish: How parents are doing it
Forverts, 18 December 2025
“Sholem-bayis in vin: Khasidim, yidishistn un bukharer yidn”
Jewish coexistence in Vienna: Hasidim, Yiddishists and Bukharan Jews
Forverts, 9 July 2025
“Kokni-yidish: A podkast, a loshn un a shteyger lebn”
Cockney Yiddish: A podcast, a language, and a way of life
Forverts, 29 April 2025
“Yidish lebt in teksas: An umgerikht loshn rayt nokh alts dem bronko”
Yiddish is alive in Texas: An unexpected language is still riding the bronco
Forverts, 4 March 2025
Later republished in an adapted English translation
“Vos aktivistn far shprakhn in a sakone kenen zikh oplernen eyner funem tsveytn”
What activists for at-risk languages can learn from each other
Forverts, 24 January 2025
“A dialog mit undzere bobes: Yidishistkes praven dem internatsoynaln froyentog”
A dialogue with our grandmothers: Yiddishist women celebrate International Women’s Day
Forverts, 14 March 2024
Many of my English essays have some connection to the theme of multilingualism.
Pulling at Threads: “Our Astronaut: A Report from the Gravestone Sales Yard” (Personal essay about a Jewish grave-measuring ritual, a Halloween drag performance, and our relationship with the dead – as an extended introduction to a Yiddish poem, 2024)
“We crossed the street from the locked cemetery to the sales yard of a stonemasonry company, H. Albrecht (est. 1883). On display was a selection of uninscribed headstones for sale in different styles and materials: classic arched slabs, rectangular prisms, and sinuous shapes in polished granite, laser-cut quartzite, or hand-chiseled limestone. The yard itself resembles a kind of cemetery-in-waiting, a stark reminder of our collective destination. (Undz tsu lange yorn; may we all live long lives – not to tempt the evil eye here.) Suspended above it is a permanent crane on metal tracks, something like the arcade game where you try to manipulate a ‘claw’ with a joystick to grab a prize, except the crane is for hoisting gravestones into the air before they are inscribed with a person’s name and shuttled to that person’s new resting place. Some prize!”
Stadtsprachen Magazine: “Yiddish Centers, Yiddish Futures” (Essay/talk about the geography and future of the Yiddish language and its literature, 2024, available in German translation here)
“Just as a bagel with a center isn’t a bagel, Yiddish with a center would not be Yiddish. […] To build a strong future for Yiddish, we also need to be focusing on the third, creative network […] We need to cultivate communities where people aren’t just learning Yiddish but speaking it, not just reading or singing or studying it but writing in it. Communities that welcome people who were previously marginalized – women, queer and trans people, heretics, activists. Communities of people engaging with their heritage and history on their own terms. Communities whose members feel comfortable experimenting and making mistakes, whose creativity in the language becomes mutually inspiring. That will lead to more and better art that is relevant to our present lives. ”
The Austrian Riveter: “A Shelving Problem” (Essay about Galician Jewish literature, 2023)
“The disconnect between nations as we imagine them and people, in their messy distribution across the planet, is one reason why, without a more sophisticated and inclusive shelving system, so many important books and authors are left without a home.”
Westopia Festival catalog: “Sprachraum versus Doikayt: Berlin and the Case for Multilingual (Post)national literature” (Essay/lecture in English with German translation, 2022)
“We as linguistic minorities need to acknowledge that these challenges will never be easy and that the only way to achieve a world that celebrates all the little worlds inside it, for all their diversity and all their languages, is to keep creating and publishing, no matter what happens, and to stop apologizing for who and where we are. We’re all in the right country.”
Stadtsprachen Magazine: “Head Ropes: A Life in Translation” (Essay, 2021)
“The agent from the Vienna office of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company was confirming the details of my great-grandmother Irma’s reservation. To emigrate from the hyphen of the disintegrating Austro-Hungarian Empire to the United States, one-way, for life.”
SAND: “A Journal from Vietnam” (Travel journal, 2017)
“The subtitles and competing languages on screen made up a kind of motion-picture Talmud, with Chinese and Korean going down the sides, English and Vietnamese on the bottom, Portuguese interludes, the occasional centered quote, and sometimes languages like Thai and Georgian, even Schwäbisch, thrown in.”
Epitext: “International Berlin’s ‘Language Spaces’ in Conversation and Literature” (Essay, 2017)
“Monolingualism is the historical exception, not the rule. Speakers of different languages have always coexisted, often in the same brain, and they haven’t always been sorted into neat national boxes. Although linguistic uniformity does create larger communities of communication, this flatness is always forced.”