New Book: Yiddish Lives On

The McGill–Queen’s University Press, a Canadian joint venture between McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, has published Dr. Rebecca Margolis’ book “Yiddish Lives On”. The author, formerly an associate professor at the University of Ottawa, is a professor and Pratt Foundation Chair of Jewish Civilisation at the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University, Melbourne.

The new book discusses possible strategies of transmitting Yiddish as a living spoken language to the young generation in the modern world. Margolis examines the historical ideologies of Canadian Yiddishists, the difficulties of language transmission within Yiddish-speaking families from the 1950s to the present day, and the role of theater, literature, music and cinema in the development of Yiddish culture. The last chapter of the book is dedicated to modern film production, video channels and Internet projects. The researcher concludes that online popularization is necessary for successful further transmission of the language.