Preservation of Yiddish Culture

Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage

Сохранение культуры идиша

אָפּהיטן אונדזער ייִדישע קולטור־ירושה

לשמור על תרבות היידיש

Farbindungen 2023

Farbindungen 2023

Farbindungen 2023

The Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the Toronto University announces registration for a two-days program of online events focusing on the future development of Yiddish and scientific research of this language. The program will take place on February 19 and 20. According to the organizers, the main target audience are graduate students, advanced undergraduates and early career professionals who will get an opportunity to look toward the future of Yiddish and Yiddish Studies, to participate in interactive workshops and moderated paper panels.

The organization Farbindungen, which means “Connections” in Yiddish, was established in 2022. Its first winter conference focused on international team work of scholars and other creative personalities whose activities are related to the Yiddish language. The schedule of the upcoming program has been posted on the Farbindungen website.

New Performance by Yiddishpil

New Performance by Yiddishpil

New Performance by Yiddishpil

On January 8, a new performance was premiered by the Tel Aviv theater Yiddishpil, entitled Zikhroynes fun Motl Peyse dem khazns (The Memories of Mottl, Peysi the Cantor’s Son), based on Sholem Aleichem’s classic novel. The new musical drama was written by the Israeli playwright Rami Rosen (1944-2019) and directed by Yonatan Esterkin, starring two actors, Yaacov (Yankele) Bodo and Yonatan Rosen. The performance is entirely in Yiddish, subtitled in Hebrew and Russian. It will run until February 19.

Unknown Sholem Aleichem

Unknown Sholem Aleichem

Unknown Sholem Aleichem

On January 30, the Jewish Community Center of St. Petersburg hosted two events at once: the opening of an exhibition of Anatoli (Tankhum) Kaplan’s graphic works, dedicated to the artist’s 120th birth anniversary, and the presentation of Alexander Frenkel’s Russian book “The Unknown Sholem Aleichem”. The exhibition presents Kaplan’s illustrations for the works of this great Yiddish classic. Another exhibition of works by the same artist, dedicated to the liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi blockade, opened on January 26 at the St. Petersburg State Museum of History.

Alexander Frenkel is the director of the St. Petersburg Jewish Community Center, a literary critic, historian and translator. In addition to a number of academic studies, his book contains several of Sholem Aleichem’s works translated by the author for the first time into Russian. In his speech at the presentation, Frenkel emphasized that despite Sholom Aleichem’s worldwide popularity, much of his work still remains little known and unexplored.

“The Bloody Hoax” Online

“The Bloody Hoax” Online

“The Bloody Hoax” Online

The American Yiddishist Raphael (Refoel) Finkel has published on the Internet the original Yiddish text of Sholom Aleichem’s novel The Bloody Hoax, typed in using the standart YIVO spelling and provided with explanations of Russian, English and Latin words found in this work.

Finkel, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky, is known as a pioneer in the computerization of Yiddish literature, as the author of the first Yiddish spell checker computer program and the creator of a major online resource dedicated to this language. From 1997 to 2006, together with the poet Sholom Berger, he directed the online magazine Der bavebter yid.

Yiddish at Winter Translation School

Yiddish at Winter Translation School

Yiddish at Winter Translation School

On January 26, a series of video lectures dedicated to Yiddish was held within the framework of the Winter School of Translation at St. Petersburg State University. Three well known Yiddish translators made presentations: Alexandra Glebovskaya, Yoel Matveyev and Lyubov Lavrova.

Glebovskaya’s report was dedicted to the intrinsic peculiarities of literary translation from Yiddish into Russian. Matveyev spoke about the history and methods of developing scientific and technical terminology in Yiddish. Lavrova’s lecture touched upon various aspects of translating Holocaust texts into English.

The other sections of the three-day conference were devoted to a broad range of other languages, including Hebrew. The St. Petersburg State University’s Winter School of Translation was founded in 2020, during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and has been now held online for the fourth time.

Goldfaden’s Bar Kokhba in Hebrew

Goldfaden’s Bar Kokhba in Hebrew

Goldfaden’s Bar Kokhba in Hebrew

On January 25, the premiere of Avrom Goldfaden’s musical play Bar Kokhba translated into Hebrew took place at the Malenkiy Theater in Tel Aviv. Goldfaden, nicknamed “the father of Jewish theater”, staged this play for the first time in 1883 in Odessa (originally in Yiddish, of course). It immediately received great applause. This work, now celebrating 140 years since its debut, is long known to be an extremely important milestone in the history of Jewish theatrical art.

The rhymed translation of the play into Hebrew was made by Vicki Shifris. The new production was directed by the actress Esti Nissim who acts primarily in Yiddish.