Ruth R. Wisse is the Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard University. Born in Romania and raised in Montreal, she was the first professor of Yiddish Literature in North America (at McGill University, where she helped to found the Jewish Studies Department in the late 1960s). She has written or edited eight previous books on Jewish literature and culture, including The Schlemiel as Modern Hero, published by the University of Chicago Press, and If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews.