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The first Jewish authors writing in Romanian published their work in the second half of the nineteenth century, a time when the first works of artistic value were published in Romanian. Until then, French was the language of the intellectuals in Romania.
The first Jewish intellectuals, writers, and journalists came mainly from Bucovina and Galicia, integrated quickly, adopting Romanian for their literary work. This generation and the following included the first journalists and editors of Jewish newspapers, among them Julius Barasch (1815–1863) and the Schwarzfeld brothers. Many had a thorough knowledge of German culture and were among the first to translate German classics, particularly the writings of Heinrich Heine, into Romanian.
A special figure was Cilibi Moise (1812–1870), a peddler who visited the Wallachian fairs and wrote maxims in Romanian, full of popular wisdom and humor. These were collected in booklets beginning in1858 and attracted a wide audience beyond the Jewish community.
In the late nineteenth century, a large group of Jewish writers in Romanian emerged. Most of them started as journalists, and contributed to Hebrew and Romanian language newspapers. The first of these to be acknowledged as a significant figure in Romanian literature was Moise Ronetti-Roman (1853–1908). In his essays and particularly in his drama Manasse (1900), Ronetti-Roman was the first to deal with the dilemmas of Jewish identity and assimilation as a literary theme. Many of his successors were influenced by him and dealt with these themes.
The second generation of Jewish writers, asserted at the beginning of the 20th century, includes a significant number of poets. They sought to express both the suffering of poor Jews and their own torments, as writers torn between their desire to pursue a Romanian literary career and the urge to give voice to their own community. Some, such as Avram Steuerman-Rodion (1872–1918), Avram Axelrad (1879–1963) and Enric Furtună (1881–1964), became emblematic figures in Jewish cultural life. Some Symbolist poets, such as D. Iacobescu (1893–1913) and Barbu Nemțeanu (1887–1919) died young, or like Leon Feraru (1887–1961), emigrated before they were fully recognized. Many of the Jewish poets of this generation admired Heine's poetry and imitated his mixture of lyricism and irony, as well as his way of identifying with the biblical universe and the tragic fate of Jewish history.
Alexandru Mirodan, Dicționar neconvențional al scriitorilor evrei de limbă română, 2 vols., Tel Aviv, 1986–1997
A. B. Yoffe, Be-Sadot zarim: Sofrim yehudim be-Romanyah, 1880–1940 ,Tel Aviv, 1996, abstract and table of contents also in English
Henri Zalis, ed., Contribuția scriitorilor evrei la literatura română , Bucharest, 2001
