Exile as Home

Leyb Naydus (1890-1918) expanded the possibilities of Yiddish poetry via his rich cosmopolitan works, Literary critic Naftoli Vaynig's lengthy essay on Naydus, written in 1943 in the Vilne Ghetto, makes a remarkable case for why the poems of this cosmopolitan aesthete should serve as a fitting emblem for a culture threatened with extinction.