Registration for Yiddish Sof-Vokh
Registration for Yiddish Sof-Vokh
Registration has begun for the third annual Yiddish Sof-Vokh (Yiddish Weekend) program in Birmingham. The participants will be able to improve their knowledge of Yiddish through a full three-day immersion in the language. All events, from workshops to dances and nature walks, will be conducted exclusively in Yiddish. The program will be held from June 21 to June 23 at the historical Hillscourt Hotel.
Winter in Yiddishland 2024
Winter in Yiddishland 2024
On February 4, 2024, the American organization Arbeter Ring (Workers’ Circle) held its annual cultural and educational Internet program Winter in Yiddishland, which included a concert of contemporary klezmer music stars dedicated to Lorraine (Libby) Buch, a longtime member of the organization.
Exclusively for our website, the Workers’ Circle shared with us a recording of the popular Soviet song To see so great a snowfall written by Lydia Kozlova and performed by the famous singer Psoy Korolenko. It was translated into Yiddish by Yoel Matveyev who also prepared an English translation, the text of which is available on YouTube.
St. Petersburg Winter School of Translation: 2024
St. Petersburg Winter School of Translation: 2024
St. Petersburg State University’s Winter School of Translation, held on January 26, 2024, included a Yiddish section dedicated to the translation of literary texts and documents from Yiddish into Russian.
Yoel Matveyev, a St. Petersburg-based writer and poet, spoke about the history of women’s poetry in Yiddish and the difficulties of its adequate translation. He also briefly outlined the history of early verse in this language, starting with a short anonymous 13th century poem. The Moscow linguist Lyubov Lavrova introduced various examples of handwritten correspondence in Yiddish from WWII, explaining the difficulties of translating it due to unclear handwriting, different dialects and borrowings from different languages.
Site News: Yidishland Magazine Archive
Site News: Yidishland Magazine Archive
We are happy to offer our site’s readers a unique treasure, which all lovers and students of Yiddish will appreciate: the archive of the quarterly magazine Yidishland. This is the only literary magazine in today’s world published entirely in Yiddish in the traditional paper form. On our website you can also read about the history of Yidishland, which recently celebrated its 5th anniversary.
Our team expresses gratitude to the founders of this wonderful periodical, Velvl Chernin and Mikhoel Felsenbaum, for their decision to make available all issues of Yidishland, expect for the most recent ones published during the last year, exclusively on our website for interactive reading and downloading. There is also an option to link individual pages of the magazine on social networks. In Yidishland you will find real marvels of both historical and modern literature written in Yiddish.
News from SEFER
News from SEFER
From December 6 to 8, 2023, the international conference “The Concept of Borders in Slavic and Jewish Cultural Tradition” will be held in Moscow, organized by the SEFER Center of Academic and Humanitarian Jewish Studies, the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Center for Slavic and Jewish Studies.
The evening session on December 7, led by Dr. Valery Dymshits and Dr. Ekaterina Norkina, will cover a number of topics related to the Yiddish language. In particular, the Moscow researcher Galina Eliasberg will talk about cultural boundaries in Sholom Aleichem’s novel “Wandering Stars.”
The SEFER Center was created in 1994 with the goal of promoting scientific research in the field of Jewish studies and teaching Jewish disciplines in Russia and in all post-Soviet countries. The organization conducts language webinars, which include a group for learning Yiddish from level zero, and is currently looking for new students. The group is led by the well known specialist Dr. Ekaterina Karaseva.
SEFER has also informed us about a planned winter school for students and young researchers dedicated to the topic of Yiddish and the Holocaust. The program is still under discussion. The plan includes lectures, seminars, workshops and a cultural program. News about the development of this project will be published on our website.
