Memories of Mazltov Theater in Kiev

The Kiev publishing house Duh i Litera (“Spirit and Letter”) published a book in Ukrainian titled “Georgy Melsky’s Kievan Jewish theater Mazltov in the memoirs of its participants.” The book’s editor, Svetlana Simakova, compiled the memories of people who participated in this professional stage collective. This theater performed in Ukraine’s capital in Yiddish from 1988 to 1995. Its first production was Sholem Aleichem’s play The Bloody Hoax known in its stage version as It’s Hard to be a Jew. The book is illustrated with photographs of actors, stage scenes and posters.

News from Birobidzhan

On October 13, 2023, the state TV channel Bira in Birobidzhan, Russia, showed an episode of the weekly program Yiddishkait, in which Yoel Matveyev, a Yiddish writer, poet and literary translator based in St. Petersburg, spoke about women’s poetry in Yiddish from the 16th century to the present day. His recent Yiddish publication in the newspaper Birobidzhaner Shtern was devoted to this topic as well. During the TV program, Alexandra Glebovskaya and Olga Anikina, who also reside in St. Petersburg, read Anna Margolin’s poems in the Yiddish original and in their Russian translations.

The Jewish Autonomous Region of the USSR was established in 1934. A series of celebrations dedicated to the region’s 90th anniversary are expected to be held in Birobidzhan during the upcoming year. On October 18, Birobidzhaner Shtern published an interview with Yoel Matveyev who recently translated Buzi (Boris) Miller’s play He is from Birobidzhan from Yiddish into Russian. This unique translation was specially dedicated to the region’s anniversary. Born in Ukraine, Miller (1913-1988) lived in Birobidzhan and for many years was the newspaper’s editor-in-chief.

Women on the Yiddish Stage

The recent book Women on the Yiddish Stage, edited by Alyssa Quint and Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel, covers the history of women’s integration into public Yiddish theatrical performances, starting from the 1870s. Gradually, actresses had become leading stage figures who revolutionized modern Jewish culture. Historically, women were barred from public performances in traditional Jewish communities, while Yiddish-speaking men performed for centuries as singers and entertainers. Women on the Yiddish Stage presents a diverse array of scholarly essays that challenge the existing historical accounts of modern Yiddish theater. The book highlights many pioneering personalities and maps sources in this area of Yiddish and Jewish history.

Yuval Ben Yakov: Fallen in Battle

On October 7, 2023, Yuval Ben Yakov, a 21-year-old staff sergeant of the IDF, was killed in battle against Hamas militants who unexpectedly attacked Israel.

The father of the fallen soldier, Dr. Hayym Ben Yakov, is the director general of the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress. He is a close friend and ally of our project who provided us with significant support and played a key role in installing the Sholem Aleichem monument, which was erected last summer at the campus of Tel Aviv University.

We express our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Yuval Ben Yakov.

Site News: Nechama Lifshitz’s Collected Recordings

The third International Nechama Lifshitz vocal competition took place in Vilnius on September 17-18, 2023, Nechama Lifshitz was a famous performer of Yiddish songs who was called the “Jewish Nightingale” during her lifetime. 35 singers from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Israel, Poland, Germany and Bulgaria took part in the competition.

We are happy to inform our readers that at the same time we also made our contribution to preserving Nechama Lifshitz’s legacy. On our website you can read her biography (in Yiddish too) and listen to 46 recordings of her songs. To our knowledge, this is the largest virtual recording collection of this outstanding singer.

Modern-ish and Yonia Fain’s Yiddishland

On September 13, 2023, an exhibition called Modern-ish: Yonia Fain and the Art History of Yiddishland by the contemporary artist Yevgeniy Fiks opened at CUNY’s James Gallery, as a part of his project Yiddishland Museum of Modern Art.

Yonia Fain (1913-2013) was a renowned modernist artist and a Yiddish poet, author of 5 poetry books published in that language. During his life he travelled across the entire globe: from Ukraine and Lithuania to Japan, China and Mexico. Fiks told our website that his neologism “Modern-ish” refers to the special modernist tradition of Yiddishland, the global space of Yiddish culture, which does not quite fit into the canons of modernism. Representatives of this tradition often have multiple hyphenated identities: for example, one may be Lithuanian-Jewish-American.

We have already written on our website about Yevgeniy Fiks and his concept of Yiddish as a “cosmic” language, a cultural bridge capable of uniting traditional ethnicity with the principle of universalism, the local with the cosmopolitan and cosmic. In 2022, the Yiddishland pavilion, organized by Fiks, opened at the Venice Biennale. The current exhibition at CUNY will be open until December 9.