Worldmaking in Action: How Children's Literature Imagined Jewish Futures

Between 1900 and 1950, nearly a thousand Yiddish children's books appeared across four continents: chickens learning Yiddish, children with magical powers, a democracy-loving mutt. These weren't just entertaining stories. They were blueprints for modern Jewish life, carrying competing visions from socialism to Zionism, cultural revival to secular nationalism.

This four-session course will explore how Yiddish writers used children's literature to help young readers imagine worlds of dignity, justice, and joy amid massive upheaval. These texts reveal deep tensions between the Jewish past and imagined Jewish futures, between rootedness and migration, between collective belonging and individual freedom. What emerges is a picture of how Jewish thinkers crafted symbolic worlds when the future itself seemed uncertain.