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.

2024 Yiddish Reading Classes in St. Petersburg

2024 Yiddish Reading Classes in St. Petersburg

2024 Yiddish Reading Classes in St. Petersburg

A new series of Yiddish reading classes for advanced students was launched on early November at the Jewish Community Center of St. Petersburg. The studies are led by the Yiddish writer Yoel Matveyev.

For the current academic year, the classes’ organizers have chosen Yitzkhok Yoel Linetzky’s semi-autobiographical novel “Dos Poylishe Yingl” (The Polish Lad), considered a masterpiece of Yiddish picturesque satire. While its vitriolic humor is aimed againt Hasidim, this book may help secular readers to understand better Hasidic Hebrew and Aramaic expressions used in Yiddish. Many of these expressions are still in common use. Linetzky (1839–1915) first published his novel in 1867.

Riki Rose’s New Song

Riki Rose’s New Song

Riki Rose’s New Song

Riki Rose, a talented young singer and composer who lives in New York, posted on YouTube a recording of her new Yiddish song “Utem Arein Utem Arois” (“Breathe in, breathe out”), produced and arranged by Shloime Bernstein and mixed by Yanky Cohen. The video clip is accompanied by the song’s lyrics.
Rose was raised in a family of Satmar Hasidim; she is singing in her native Yiddish dialect of Austrian-Hungarian origin. Besides her musical activities, she also writes essays in Yiddish. Her colleagues involved in the this song production grew up in Yiddish-speaking Hasidic communities as well.

4th Yiddish Festival in Birobidzhan

4th Yiddish Festival in Birobidzhan

4th Yiddish Festival in Birobidzhan

From October 22 to 24, 2024, the 4th annual Yiddish Festival was held in Birobidzhan and several other localities of Russia’s Jewish Autonomous Region. Dozens of festive activities included concert programs, workshops, exhibitions, etc.

The coverage of these events in the local weekly TV program Yiddishkeit was combined with another exciting achievement: a children’s animation in Yiddish recently produced in Birobidzhan. It is based on a poem by Chaim Beider and is recorded in his original voice from historical Soviet-era radio archives.

Chaim Beider (1920–2003) was a Soviet Yiddish poet, journalist and literary historian. Since 1996 he was living in New York where he also played an important role in the delelopment of the American Yiddish literary scene.