Voices of Jewish Literary Giants: Hayim Nahman Bialik and Philip Roth

In person and on Zoom

Philip Roth and Hayim Nahman Bialik are some of the most celebrated writers in contemporary Jewish literature. In his newly published biography of Roth (1933–2018), Philip Roth: Stung by Life, Steven J. Zipperstein explores the complex life and astonishing work of one of America’s most celebrated novelists. Born in Newark, New Jersey, Roth wrote with relentless ambition, producing a wide-ranging body of work—from Goodbye, Columbus to American Pastoral—that grappled with sex, identity, and American Jewishness. Simultaneously charismatic and reclusive, Roth lived, in his own words, like an “unchaste monk,” obsessively committed to the craft of writing.

In On the Slaughter, translated and introduced by MacArthur-winning poet Peter Cole, the poetry of Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873–1934) emerges with renewed force. Born in a Ukrainian village and hailed by Maxim Gorky as “a modern Isaiah,” Bialik transformed Hebrew literature, bridging traditional Jewish thought with modern humanism. This compact collection reveals a poet far more politically and psychologically unsettling than his image as a national icon suggests—ranging from furious responses to pogroms to luminous introspection and children’s verse.

Join YIVO for a conversation with Zipperstein and Cole about the enduring legacies of Roth and Bialik, led by Edward Hirsch.

You may also like the following events from YIVO Institute for Jewish Research:

• This Sunday, 19th October, 03:00 pm, YIVO and the Oyneg Shabes Archive: A Centennial Reflection in New York, New York
• Next Thursday, 23rd October, 05:00 pm, The Tourist's Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City in New York, New York
• This month, 29th October, 05:00 pm, The Jewish Inn in Polish Culture in New York, New York

Also check out other Arts events in New York, Literary Art events in New York.