Preservation of Yiddish Culture

Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage

Сохранение культуры идиша

אָפּהיטן אונדזער ייִדישע קולטור־ירושה

לשמור על תרבות היידיש

Boris Sandler Celebrates His 75th Anniversary

Boris Sandler Celebrates His 75th Anniversary

Boris Sandler Celebrates His 75th Anniversary

On May 22, 2025, New York’s Florence Gould Theater presented a concert dedicated to the 75th birthday of the award-winning Yiddish writer Boris Sandler, and to the 45-year anniversary of his writing career. The festive evening titled “Mit Yidish Ibern Lebn: A Lifetime of Yiddish” featured performances by the world renowned pianist Evgeny Kissin with two soprano singers, Susanna Phillips and Ekaterina Kapchits, in the world premiere of the vocal cycle for children “Shterndlekh mit mandlen” (Stars with Almonds). Other participants included the violin virtuoso Efim Zubritsky with Zisl Slepovitch’s Klezmer Trio, the actors Yelena Shmulenson with Allen Lewis Rickman, and others. The evening of songs, poetry and dramatic readings was hosted by the actor and playwright Shane Baker, the executive director of the Congress for Jewish Culture and one of the most prominent Yiddish activists in New York.

The founder of our project, Dr. Mark Zilberquit, also attended the concert. The anniversary’s star, Boris Sandler, wishes the best of luck in our activities of promoting Yiddish culture.

Sandler, who authored about two dozens of poetry and prose books, is himself no stranger to music. Born in 1950 in the Moldovan city of Bălți (known in Yiddish as Belts), he studied music at a conservatory and worked for a decade as a professional violinist. In 1981 he became one of the first Yiddish writers and poets to study Yiddish literature on a professional level at the Higher Literary Courses of the Gorky Institute in Moscow. Since 1998 he served as the head the Forverts, the world’s oldest Yiddish newspaper based in New York. Since 2017, Sandler, who remains one of today’s most prolific Yiddish writers, has been running the online literary magazine Yiddish Branzhe.

2025 Jewish Book Day in St. Petersburg

2025 Jewish Book Day in St. Petersburg

2025 Jewish Book Day in St. Petersburg

The annual Jewish Book Day in St. Petersburg, Russia, held at the city’s Great Choral Synagogue on April 27, 2025, included a presentation of the recently published bilingual Russian-Yiddish book Moisey Beregovsky: Essays on the History of Yiddish Folk Music.

The book fair also included two lectures related to Hasidic Yiddish and its speakers. The poet and writer Yoel Matveyev spoke about the sacred status of the language among Hasidim; the renowned researcher Dr. Valery Dymshits presented a recent Russian academic book on Chaim Zanvil Abramowitz, the Rybnitser Rebbe, largely based on Yiddish materials gathered in American Hasidic communities.

Photo credit: Jeps.ru and Alexandra Yegorova

Yiddish Golem in Paris

Yiddish Golem in Paris

Yiddish Golem in Paris

On March 4, 2025, the Parisian Théâtre national de la Colline premiered a new staged version of Isaac Bashevis’ short story The Golem. Over one third of the play, written and directed by Amos Gitaï and performed by a small troupe of seven actors, is in Yiddish with French and English subtitles. The performance is accompanied by both instrumental music and modern arrangements of traditional Yiddish songs sung by professional opera singers.

Amos Gitaï is a well known Israeli filmmaker, playwright and artist who lives part-time in Paris. He grew up in a Yiddish-speaking family. None of the actors had any knowledge of the language; they all studied Yiddish specifically for this performance under the guidance of the Paris-based Yiddishist Shahar Feinberg, himself an actor and the director of the Parisian Yiddish theater Troïm-Teater.

Berl Kotlerman Celebrates His Yiddish Poetry Book

Berl Kotlerman Celebrates His Yiddish Poetry Book

Berl Kotlerman Celebrates His Yiddish Poetry Book

On February 19, 2025, the CYCO Yiddish Book Center celebrated the publication of a Yiddish poetry book by Dr. Berl Kotlerman who shared with us the information about this exciting event. The festive evening included a talk with the poet conducted by the renowned Yiddishist veteran Sheva Zucker, and a concert by Deborah Strauss and Jeff Warschauer.

Berl Kotlerman

Kotlerman, a professor and the head of the Rena Costa Center for Yiddish Studies at Bar Ilan University (Israel), is the author and co-author of several books on such diverse aspects of Yiddish culture as Jewish Studies in the Far East, Sholem Aleichem’s implicit influence on early Yiddish cinema and Bauhaus architecture in Birobidzhan, as well as four fiction books in Yiddish. His new poetry collection published by the CYCO and entitled Tkiyes-kaf: Diptikhlekh (“Handshake in Agreement: Little Diptychs”) is written in a novel style: all poems are grouped by pairs of complementary “diptychs” dedicated to different dimensions of the same subject.

The CYCO, Tsentrale yidishe kultur-organizatsye (“Central Yiddish Cultural Organization”), was founded by leading American Yiddish authors and cultural activists in 1938 as a cultural organization with branches throughout the US and as far away as Argentina. Among the authors published by the CYCO were top Yiddish writers of their time, including the Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Photo credit: Berl Kotlerman

Yiddish Love Poetry Evening in Berlin

Yiddish Love Poetry Evening in Berlin

Yiddish Love Poetry Evening in Berlin

On February 13, 2025, the informal group Yiddish.Berlin held a Valentine’s Eve celebration: an evening of Yiddish poetry entitled “Libebriv” (Love Letters). Can Valentine’s be also Jewish? Osian Evans Sharma, a Yiddish teacher from England, and Michelle Bernstein, a local Berlin-based Yiddish researcher, who came up with the idea of ​​this event, are convinced that it can!

The participants mainly recited their freshly written Yiddish poems, as well as many works by well-known 20th modernist female poets. Poetic and musical undertakings are a common activity of Yiddish.Berlin; for over five years, the group has already been organizing many similar evenings.

A couple of words about the participants:

Jake Schneider is very much a Berlin poet. His works are infused with fantastic themes and formal plays with language subtleties.

Yael Merlini is an Italian-language poet who started writing in Yiddish two years ago. She writes mystical and erotic songs full of shadowy and sensual images.

Jordan Lee Schnee, like Merlini, started writing poetry in his native language (English) before Yiddish. Besides his own texts, he read two poems by Debora Fogel. He translates her poetry into English and he was the editor of her poetry collections in Spanish and Portuguese translations.

Two newcomers also appeared. Luise Fakler, a musician and historian, recited her own Yiddish poem for the first time. Daria Ma, a poet who writes in Russian and experiments with mixed language poetry, also presented a poem she wrote entirely in Yiddish especially for this event.

I, Katerina Kuznetsova, won’t talk here about my own works — you can read them online following this link, along with all the other texts recited during this Valentine’s evening.

The recitations were alternated by pieces of music. The composer and musician Zhenja Oks performed his compositions he created to Celia Dropkin’s, Itzik Manger’s and Olexander Beyderman’s lyrics.

The evening took place at the Café Chagall. It was also meant to signal a new season of Yiddish programs. The group’s new project “Nu? Yiddish in all art forms”, curated by Jake Schneider, is to be started in March. There are also going to be a series of open mics for all Berliners who are involved in Yiddish creativity.

Katerina Kuznetsova, Berlin

From our editorial staff:

We would like to remind our readers that we already have covered the activities of Yiddish.Berlin more than once and keep following them closely. In 2023 our website featured an article about the Berlin-based poet and Yiddishist Katerina Kuznetsova, accompanied by a number of her poems, which the poet Yoel Matveyev also translated into Russian. We wish her and all her Yiddishist fellows lots of luck and success!

Photo credit: Arndt Beck

Boris Sandler and Daniel Galay Receive Rubinlicht Prize

Boris Sandler and Daniel Galay Receive Rubinlicht Prize

Boris Sandler and Daniel Galay Receive Rubinlicht Prize

Boris Sandler and Daniel Galay, two prominent Yiddish authors, editors and cultural activists, have been awarded the annual Rubinlicht Prize for outstanding contributions to Yiddish literature. The celebration, broadcast online, took place at the Tel Aviv Yiddish center Leyvik House on December 26, 2024.

In addition to their own literary works, both laureates have been involved for many years in editing and publishing Yiddish books, as well as in Yiddish-related educational projects. Galay, the chairman of the Leyvik House, born in 1945 in Argentina, is also an internationally renowned composer. Sandler, born in 1950 in the USSR, formerly an editor-in-chief of New York’s Yiddish Forward, runs the online Yiddish monthly Yiddish Branzhe.