Hana Wirth-Nesher

Hana Wirth-Nesher was born in 1948 in Munich

Hana Wirth-Nesher was born in Munich in 1948 to Holocaust survivors. Her father was a Polish Jew and her mother came from Germany, and both had lost their first spouses in the war. In 1949 the family moved to the United States, shortened its name to Wirth and settled in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

She grew up hearing Yiddish from her father, German from her mother and grandmother, and English from friends. She earned a bachelor's degree in English at the University of Pennsylvania in 1970 and completed her doctorate at Columbia University in 1977, as one of the last doctoral students of Lionel Trilling. She then did postdoctoral research in Yiddish at the YIVO Institute.

She taught English at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, from 1976 to 1984. In 1984 she moved to Israel and joined Tel Aviv University, where she chaired the English department and became a full professor in 2004. She has held the Haber Chair since 1998 and has directed the Goldreich Family Institute for Yiddish since 2005.

Her research looks at the role of language, especially Yiddish, in personal identity in Jewish American literature. She has written two books and many essays, edited The Cambridge History of Jewish American Literature in 2015, and co-founded the annual Yiddish summer program at Tel Aviv University.