Abstract
Yoysef Opatoshu died in 1954 after a long and productive career as a fiction writer and activist in the worldwide Yiddish cultural movement. His novels and short stories have been largely ignored by scholars and translators during the past six decades, however, and have fallen into obscurity. Several of Opatoshu's longer works were serialized in newspapers and literary magazines before they appeared in book form. By 1914, Opatoshu had, with Yoysef Rolnik, Y. Y. Shvarts, Yoyl Slonim, and M. Y. Khayemovitsh, broken artistic ties with Di Yunge, producing a new anthology, entitled 'Di naye heym'. Opatoshu was a regular contributor of short fiction to the New York daily Der tog (Day) from its inception in November 1914. The First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the subsequent wars over the borders of new states had vitiated cultural contact between Jewish communities in Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.
