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.

Media Coverage of Sholem Aleichem Monument

News about Sholem Aleichem’s statue recently unveiled at Tel Aviv University have been published by two major Jewish media sources: Jerusalem Post and the Forward. Below we are reposting the text of the JP’s article:

Remembering the Yiddish Literature Great, Sholem Aleichem

■ IT’S DOUBTFUL that anyone outside the world of Yiddish literature has ever heard of Solomon Naumovich Rabinovich, but even non-Jews have heard of Sholem Aleichem, which was Rabinovich’s pen name.

Credit: Yuval Yosef

One of the institutes of higher education that includes Yiddish classes in its curriculum is Tel Aviv University, which earlier this month became the on-campus repository of a bronze, life-size statue of Sholem Aleichem created by sculptor Yury Chernov. Located close to the ANU Museum, it is an all-weather reminder of how much joy and laughter Sholem Aleichem brought not just to thousands of people, but literally to millions across the decades. Fiddler on the Roof is based on his story about his character Tevya the Dairyman. “This is the beginning of a new era,” said Daniel Galay, the chairman of Leyvik House, the Association of Yiddish Writers and Journalists in Israel.

The commissioning of the statue and its placement was the brainchild of Dr. Mark Zilberquit: a Moscow-based author publisher and founder of the Yiddish Heritage Preservation Foundation, whose goal is to preserve Yiddish language and culture which was the common denominator of the majority of European Jews before the Holocaust.

This foundation was among the donors to the project, as was the Blavatnik family whose foundation engages in international philanthropy – mostly in education and culture – and is well known for its sterling support of London’s Tate Gallery.

In New York, it also founded the Blavatnik Archives which are dedicated to the study of 20th-century Jewish and world history with special emphasis on the World Wars I and II and Soviet Russia.

The Yiddish Heritage and Preservation Foundation has a strong connection with Tel Aviv University and provides scholarships for students studying various aspects of Yiddish culture.

The statue of Sholem Aleichem is part of a pilot project. If all goes well, it may become the nucleus of a Yiddish literature sculpture garden, with statues of figures such as Isaac Bashevis Singer, I.L. Peretz, Avraham Sutzkever, Sholem Asch, Itzik Manger, Kadia Molodowska, Avraham Goldfaden, Esther Kreitman and others.

New Tribute to Yiddish Culture at Tel Aviv University

As we already have informed our readers, a statue of the great Yiddish writer Sholem Aleichem has been recently inaugurated at Tel Aviv University. The inauguration event, which took place on June 6th, 2023, was the culmination of an important project spanning over three years.

The monument is a generous gift of two charitable foundations: the Heritage Projects Foundation (USA) and the Yiddish Heritage Preservation Foundation (Israel). Our website, among other important initiatives, is also a result of these foundations’ activities.

The inauguration ceremony was led by the administration of Tel Aviv University. Among the attendees were President Prof. Ariel Porat, Vice President Mr. Amos Elad, and Dr. Haim Ben Yakov, the director general of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress, and others. Among the speakers were Prof. Ariel Porat, Leonard Blavatnik, the founder of the Blavatnik Family Foundation, Dr. Mark Zilberquit, the president of the Yiddish Heritage Preservation Foundation, and Dr. Yair Lipshitz. Other distinguished professors, university lecturers and special guests were also present, including Alexander Chernov, the nephew of the monument’s author, sculptor Yuri Chernov, as well as Julia Zilberquit, the executive director of the Yiddish Heritage Preservation Foundation.

Dr. Mark Zilberquit expressed his excitement about his recently introduced initiative: the interdisciplinary Yiddish program, which will be added to the university’s educational system starting from the upcoming academic year 2023-2024. This program will involve not only studying the Yiddish language as such, but also provide novel approaches to the studies of history of Yiddish culture, using Dr. Zilberquit‘s important discoveries as primary materials: previously unknown or nearly forgotten music, theater, art and literature artifacts. The new studies will be coordinated by Dr. Yair Lipshitz and Dr. Ruthie Abeliovich.

After the monument’s unveiling ceremony, Dr. Mark Zilberquit presented our website – Yiddish-Culture.com – to the audience.

Peter Thoren, Amos Elad, Julia Zilberquit, Mark Zilberquit, Ariel Porad, Leonard Blavatnik, Avi Fisher.

Pictures: Yuval Yosef