Preservation of Yiddish Culture

Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage

Сохранение культуры идиша

אָפּהיטן אונדזער ייִדישע קולטור־ירושה

לשמור על תרבות היידיש

Yiddish Women’s Poems in Berlin

Yiddish Women’s Poems in Berlin

Yiddish Women’s Poems in Berlin

The activist group Yiddish.Berlin celebrated March 8, 2024, the International Women’s Day, by an event highlighting women’s creativity in Yiddish. The participants recited poetry written in this language by women, starting with a poem by the 11-year-old girl Gela, dating back to the beginning of the 18th century. The poets Katerina Kuznetsova (one of the event’s organizers) and Yael Merlini read their own works. The program included a performance of songs written by the famous Yiddish poetess Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman (1920-2013). Iryna Zrobok read Celia Dropkin’s poems translated into Ukrainian. All the recited texts are available on the website of Yiddish.Berlin.

Photo by Jake Schneider

Jewish Avant-Garde in Moscow

Jewish Avant-Garde in Moscow

Jewish Avant-Garde in Moscow

The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow opened a new exhibition titled Jewish Avant-Garde. Chagall, Altman, Shterenberg, and Others. After the 1917 revolution, talented Jewish artists and writers from the former Pale of Settlement flocked to Moscow and Petrograd, where they played an extremely important role in the development of both the Soviet avant-garde and Yiddish culture in its various manifestations, including theater. The exhibition features more than 100 paintings and graphic works by such great artists as Marc Chagall, El Lissitzky, Alexander Tyshler, Issachar Ber Ryback, etc.

In Honor of Moishe Dovid Gisser

In Honor of Moishe Dovid Gisser

In Honor of Moishe Dovid Gisser

On February 18, 2024, the Leyvik House, a Yiddish cultural center in Tel Aviv, held an online poetry evening event dedicated to the works of the Jewish poet, journalist and writer Moishe Dovid Gisser. Hosted by the Leyvik House’s director, Daniel Galay, the program featured three contemporary Yiddish poets: David Omar-Cohen (Amsterdam), Katerina Kuznetzova and Jake Schneider (Berlin).

Moishe Dovid Gisser (1893-1952) was born in the Polish town of Radom and published his first poems in Yiddish in 1919. Starting from 1921 he lived in Buenos Aires, where his first collection of children’s poems Flemelekh un fayerlekh (“Little flames and lights”) was published. Later on, he settled in Santiago (Chile). A recording of the event was published by the Leyvik House on YouTube.

Farbindungen 2024

Farbindungen 2024

Farbindungen 2024

The 3th annual Farbindungen Yiddish Studies Conference was held online at Johns Hopkins University on February 18 and 19, 2024. The program was called Shtumer Aleph (“mute Aleph”). The keynote address was given by two renowned American Yiddish scholars and activists: Miryem-Khaye Seigel and Ayelet Brinn.

Winter in Yiddishland 2024

Winter in Yiddishland 2024

Winter in Yiddishland 2024

On February 4, 2024, the American organization Arbeter Ring (Workers’ Circle) held its annual cultural and educational Internet program Winter in Yiddishland, which included a concert of contemporary klezmer music stars dedicated to Lorraine (Libby) Buch, a longtime member of the organization.

Exclusively for our website, the Workers’ Circle shared with us a recording of the popular Soviet song To see so great a snowfall written by Lydia Kozlova and performed by the famous singer Psoy Korolenko. It was translated into Yiddish by Yoel Matveyev who also prepared an English translation, the text of which is available on YouTube.

The Lemberg Machine

The Lemberg Machine

The Lemberg Machine

On January 19, 2024, a premiere of the full-length animated film The Lemberg Machine, dedicated to the tragic fate of Lviv Jews (in Yiddish and German, this city is called Lemberg), took place at the Berlin cinema Kino Babylon. A significant part of the film’s scenes are accompanied by texts in spoken Galician dialect of Yiddish written by contemporary specialists.

The film’s director, Ukrainian artist Dana Kavelina, lived for a long time in Lviv. Currently she lives in Germany. The fantastic machine shown in her production enables us to hear voices from the past and from the afterlife, see strange and horrific scenes telling about war and revolution, utopia, repentance and the final fate of the Universe.