ABSTRACT
The relatively scanty English-language criticism that treated the literary works of Joseph Opatoshu during the first prolific decade of his career tended to place the representation of sex at the centre of his literary project. Goldberg's perspective on Opatoshu's work is especially worth attending to if the authors are concerned with Opatoshu's developing reputation among English-speakers in the United States, because Goldberg was the pre-eminent translator of Yiddish literature in America at that time, and he himself would finally render In poylishe velder into English, for the Jewish Publication Society of America, in 1938. This chapter sketches the perception that obtained during the first decade of Opatoshu's career that Yiddish writers in America could treat sex more frankly than their counterparts writing in English, and suggests that this perception helps to explain why Buchwald and Goldberg mentioned Opatoshu's representation of 'erotic passion'.
