Preservation of Yiddish Culture

Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage

Сохранение культуры идиша

אָפּהיטן אונדזער ייִדישע קולטור־ירושה

לשמור על תרבות היידיש

St. Petersburg Winter School of Translation 2025

St. Petersburg Winter School of Translation 2025

St. Petersburg Winter School of Translation 2025

St. Petersburg State University’s Winter School of Translation, an annual international educational program of online studies held on January 24-25, 2025, included a 3-hour long Yiddish section.

Two lectures, by the poet Yoel Matveyev and the philologist Olga Matvienko, were dedicated to artistic and linguistic aspects of poetry translation from Yiddish. One of the major subjects discussed was a volume of contemporary Yiddish poetry with parallel Russian translations currently prepared for publication under the auspices of the Moscow-based publisher Boris Zaitschick.

The linguist Lyubov Lavrova described her practical experience as a Yiddish author working for the newspaper Birobidzhaner Shtern and as a contributor to the Yiddish section of the almanac Birobidzhan. Her work involves translating various historical and cultural materials from several languages into Yiddish.

Genius from a Shtetl

Genius from a Shtetl

Genius from a Shtetl

Grigori Ilugdin’s Russian-Yiddish film Genius from a Shtetl, a documentary about the famous sculptor Mark Antokolsky, is now publicly available online with English subtitles. It contains several 3D-animated scenes in Antokolsky’s native Lithuanian dialect of Yiddish. The director expresses his deep gratitude to the Heritage Projects Foundation (USA) and Yiddish Heritage Preservation Foundation (Israel) who supported the documentary.

Ilugdin wishes all the best to our website and other projects supported by the same two foundations. The film successfully premiered on TV. The Yiddish-oriented Birobidzhan-based channel Bira TV recently broadcast a talk (in Russian) with our website’s editor-in-chief Yoel Matveyev who translated the documentary’s dialogs into Yiddish and organized their audio recordings.

We are also planning to start very soon a new section on our website dedicated to Yiddish and Yiddish-related films. Stay tuned with our news!

Genius from s Shtetl

Documentary about the famous Russian-Jewish sculptor Mark Antokolsky (1843-1902)

Producer: Mark Zilberquit
Director: Grigory Ilugdin

© Grigfilm Production 2024

Supported by the Heritage Projects Foundation (USA) and Yiddish Heritage Preservation Foundation (Israel)

Yiddish New York 2024

Yiddish New York 2024

Yiddish New York 2024

From December 21 to 26, 2024, the 10th annual festival Yiddish New York will be held at the city’s Hebrew Union College. This year’s program will include dozens of events, including concerts featuring the world’s leading Yiddish music artists, lectures by leading scholars of Yiddish history, literature and culture, music lessons, singing and folk dance workshops, Yiddish film screenings, etc. The programs will be presented online as well.

According to its organizers, Yiddish New York is the largest festival of Yiddish music, culture and language in the US. Detailed information and tickets are available online.

2024 Yiddish Reading Classes in St. Petersburg

2024 Yiddish Reading Classes in St. Petersburg

2024 Yiddish Reading Classes in St. Petersburg

A new series of Yiddish reading classes for advanced students was launched on early November at the Jewish Community Center of St. Petersburg. The studies are led by the Yiddish writer Yoel Matveyev.

For the current academic year, the classes’ organizers have chosen Yitzkhok Yoel Linetzky’s semi-autobiographical novel “Dos Poylishe Yingl” (The Polish Lad), considered a masterpiece of Yiddish picturesque satire. While its vitriolic humor is aimed againt Hasidim, this book may help secular readers to understand better Hasidic Hebrew and Aramaic expressions used in Yiddish. Many of these expressions are still in common use. Linetzky (1839–1915) first published his novel in 1867.

4th Yiddish Festival in Birobidzhan

4th Yiddish Festival in Birobidzhan

4th Yiddish Festival in Birobidzhan

From October 22 to 24, 2024, the 4th annual Yiddish Festival was held in Birobidzhan and several other localities of Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region. Dozens of festive activities included concert programs, workshops, exhibitions, etc.

The coverage of these events in the local weekly TV program Yiddishkeit was combined with another exciting achievement: a children’s animation in Yiddish recently produced in Birobidzhan. It is based on a poem by Chaim Beider and is recorded in his original voice from historical Soviet-era radio archives.

Chaim Beider (1920–2003) was a Soviet Yiddish poet, journalist and literary historian. Since 1996 he was living in New York where he also played an important role in the delelopment of the American Yiddish literary scene.

Yiddish in Berlin

Yiddish in Berlin

Yiddish in Berlin

The 4th Summer Program for Yiddish Language and Literature in Berlin is being held at the Free University of Berlin from August 12 to 30, 2024. The pedagogical team under the direction of Prof. Yitskhok Niborski offers intensive language courses, lectures, film screenings and various workshops.

At the same time, Yiddish.Berlin, an informal group of artists, scholars and activists dedicated to Yiddish, celebrate its 5th anniversary. As one of its recent activities related to this celebration, from August 15 to August 28, the group is presenting the exhibit NATO in Yiddishland by Yevgeniy Fiks, which satirizes the dangerous pathos of fervent nationalism and militarism. The exhibit’s organizers believe this pathos has no place in Yiddisland — the virtual and extraterritorial country of Yiddish.

Yiddish.Berlin