TSUKUNFT

TSUKUNFT (Zukunft) , U.S. Yiddish monthly. Founded in New York in 1892 as an organ of the Socialist Labor Party,Tsukunft was one of the first serious Yiddish periodicals to be published anywhere and the oldest still appearing at the turn of the 21^st century. Despite a dwindling readership and an ever-declining group of potential writers, Tsukunft continues to appear, albeit approximately twice a year, publishing poetry, literary reviews, and essays in Yiddish under the editorship of Itzik Gottesman. Edited from the first by some of the most distinguished Yiddish literary figures in the U.S., including Philip *Krantz, Abe *Cahan, and Morris *Vinchevsky, Tsukunft quickly outgrew its original dogmatic base and opened its pages wide to all sectors of opinion in American Yiddish life, while itself remaining secularist and socialist. In 1912 it was acquired by the Forward Association, publishers of the *Forverts. Under the editorship of Abraham *Liessin (1913–38) the magazine published the work of practically every Yiddish writer and thinker of note in the U.S. and of many others from all over the world. After Liessin's death, Tsukunft was edited by many prominent figures in the Yiddish world, including Hillel *Rogoff, David *Pinski, Nochum Boruch *Minkoff, Shmuel *Niger, Jacob *Glatstein, and Eliezer *Greenberg. From 1940 it was published by the Central Yiddish Cultural Organization.

bibliography:

Y. Yeshurin, in: Zukunft, 70^th Anniversary Issue (Nov.–Dec. 1962), 503–20; H. Bez, E.R. Malachi, and M. Shtarkman, ibid., 75^th Anniversary Issue (April 1968), 100–15.

[Hillel Halkin /

Samuel Spinner (2^nd ed.)]