Preservation of Yiddish Culture

Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage

Сохранение культуры идиша

אָפּהיטן אונדזער ייִדישע קולטור־ירושה

לשמור על תרבות היידיש

Yiddish Arts Community: Emes Truth

Yiddish Arts Community: Emes Truth

Yiddish Arts Community: Emes Truth

The new exhibition Emes Truth by the Yiddish Arts Community, curated by the artists Yevgeniy Fiks and Deborah Ugoretz, will open on December 17, 2024, at the Backman Gallery of the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum (Hebrew Union College). The opening event, which will take place from 5 to 7 PM, will feature a performance by the musicians Sarah Myerson and Ilya Shneyveys. Participation is free, but requires online registration.

Participating artists are Danielle Alhassid, Yuliya Lanina, Debbie Schore, Miriam Stern, and Silvia Wagensberg. In historial orthography of the Yiddish language, there are several ways to spell the word “truth” (“emes”). The exhibition, related to the upcoming festival Yiddish New York 2024, will offer a variety of “orthographies” that spell out various human concepts and lived experiences.

Yosef Ostrovsky Exhibition

Yosef Ostrovsky Exhibition

Yosef Ostrovsky Exhibition in Ma’ale Adumim

A major exhibition of artworks by Yosef Ostrovsky (1935–1993) titled Jewish Sound and Soul: From Odessa to Ma’ale Adumim, dedicated to the 90 year anniversary of the artist’s birth, opened earlier in December 2024 at the Moshe Castel Museum of Art in Ma’ale Adumim, Israel.

Yosef Ostrovsky was born in the small Ukrainian town of Shepetovka, but lived most of his life in Odessa. Critics compare his works to the finest production of the École de Paris. In 1984, the office of the Soviet Yiddish magazine Sovetish Heymland held an exhibition of his works, which was accompanied by a publication in the magazine itself. In 1989 the artist immigrated from the USSR to Israel, where he spent most of his time in Ma’ale Adumim.

Beruriah Wiegand’s Poetry Evening

Beruriah Wiegand’s Poetry Evening

Beruriah Wiegand’s Poetry Evening

On December 1, 2024, the London-based Yiddish poet Beruriah Wiegand will read and discuss her poetry at the special online event hosted by the Leyvik House in Tel Aviv at 6 PM Israel time. The event, moderated by the Amsterdam-based Yiddish poet David Omar Cohen, will be entirely in Yiddish. Follow this link to register.

Dr. Beruriah Wiegand teaches Yiddish and Yiddish literature at the University of Oxford. She is also a Yiddish poet, the author of two bilingual poem collections, as well as a poetry and prose translator from English into Yiddish and vice versa.

New Yiddish Magazine Presented in Amsterdam

New Yiddish Magazine Presented in Amsterdam

New Yiddish Magazine Presented in Amsterdam

On November 24, 2024, the official presentation of the new Yiddish magazine “Di Goldene Pave” (“The Golden Peacock”) was held in Amsterdam, although its first pilot issue had already been published in June. The publication is the continuation of the previous Amsterdam-based Yiddish magazine “Di grine medine” (“The Green Country”), published since 2000.

“Di Goldene Pave” is edited by Dr. David Omar Cohen, Gloria Fein Makkink and Daniella Zaidman-Mauer and is supported by the Yiddish Foundation of the Netherlands.

Mikhoel Felsenbaum Awarded for Lifetime Achievement

Mikhoel Felsenbaum Awarded for Lifetime Achievement

Mikhoel Felsenbaum Awarded for Lifetime Achievement

Mikhoel Felsenbaum, a prominent Yiddish novelist, poet and playwright, has received a lifetime achievement award for 2024 in the field of literature from the Israeli National Authority for Yiddish Culture. Dr. Shoshana Dominski, who compiled a Yiddish-Hebrew online dictionary, was awarded a certificate of appreciation.

Born in 1951 in Soviet Ukraine, Felsenbaum studied stage directing, theater and art history in Leningrad and worked as a stage director. In the 1980s, he began to publish his Yiddish works in the magazine Sovetish Heymland. After immigrating to Israel in 1991, he published several volumes of poetry and prose in Yiddish.

Socialist Yiddishlands

Socialist Yiddishlands

Socialist Yiddishlands

De Gruyter, a major German publishing house specializing in academic literature, published a book entitled Socialist Yiddishlands dedicated to the role of Yiddish in post-WWII socialist states, including Poland, the USSR, the German Democratic Republic and Romania. The volume, edited by Miriam Chorley-Schulz and Alexander Walther, also uncovers diverse cultural Yiddish-related initiatives during the Cold War era between the Eastern Bloc and such Western countries as the US, Great Britain and Israel.