ACADEMIA

Ruth Wisse

Professor

Prof. Ruth Wisse is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature Emerita at Harvard University. Wisse was the first editor-in-chief of the Library of Yiddish Classics and published a number of anthologies of Yiddish literature. She also wrote literary histories and political commentaries, most famously If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews. In 2000, she won the National Jewish Book Award for The Modern Jewish Canon. Born in Romania in 1936 into a Jewish family that found refuge in North America, Wisse's academic work has tackled two fundamental questions of Jewish literature: "What makes a great Jewish book?" and "what makes a book 'Jewish' in the first place?" Wisse is currently distinguished senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund. Her latest book, No Joke: Making Jewish Humor, a volume in the Tikvah-sponsored Library of Jewish Ideas, was recently published by Princeton University Press. (Photo: Harvard University/Matt Craig)