Preservation of Yiddish Culture

Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage

Сохранение культуры идиша

אָפּהיטן אונדזער ייִדישע קולטור־ירושה

לשמור על תרבות היידיש

A Poetic Dialogue of Translators

A Poetic Dialogue of Translators

A Poetic Dialogue of Translators

As last year, the Yiddish section of the 7th International Winter School of Translation at St. Petersburg State University was held by Yoel Matveyev, Lyubov Lavrova, and Olga Matvienko. This time, the lecturers engaged in a poetic dialogue about two Jewish poets who lived in Birobidzhan.

Matveyev spoke about his work on his Yiddish translations of Rilke. Lavrova talked about her participation in the Yiddish authors’ database on the website of the Congress of Jewish Culture (CJC), an international Yiddish organization founded in 1948. The database is available in both Yiddish and English. Olga Matvienko spoke about her recent translations of poems about Birobidzhan and the Jewish Autonomous Region, which she translated into Russian.

Works by Henekh Koyfman and Aaron Kushnirov that she liked were previously translated by Yoel Matveyev. Both versions have now been published by the newspaper Birobidzhaner Shtern.

Contemporary Yiddish Poetry with Russian Translations

Contemporary Yiddish Poetry with Russian Translations

Contemporary Yiddish Poetry with Russian Translations

The Jewish publishing house Knizhniki in Moscow published a bilingual volume of original contemporary Yiddish poetry with Russian translations titled I Return (“איך קער זיך אום”.“Я возвращаюсь”). Realized under the auspices of the private publisher Boris Zaitschick, the book has been composed and edited by Yoel Matveyev, the editor-in-chief of our website.

A short anthology of contemporary Yiddish poetry with Russian translations (42 poems by 17 authors) had already been included in the 2023 issue of the almanac Birobidzhan, but the new poetry book from Moscow is a major new milestone dedicated to the same subject.

As explained in the preface and in the co-editor’s Dr. Valery Dymshitz’s introduction, the book focuses on generational, gender and stylistic diversity of today’s Yiddish poetry. By any means it’s not meant to be an exhaustive anthology. It contains 120 poems by 12 poets who live in 7 countries: Lev Berinsky, Felix Chaimovich, Mikhoel Felsenbaum, Velvl Chernin, Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, Yisroel Nekrasov, Beruriah Wiegand, Sholem Berger, Yoel Matveyev, Marek Tuszewicki, Katerina Kuznetsova and David Omar Cohen.

Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City

Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City

Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City

Henry Sapoznik, an award-winning producer of Yiddish recordings and radio programs, musicologist, performer and writer, published The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City. Once upon a time, about a hundred years ago, about a million and a half of New York’s Jews spoke Yiddish at home and at work. Sapoznik covers virtually every aspect of their life and culture, from food to architecture, music and theater, illustrated by tickets, advertisements, posters, restaurant menus and various photographs.

It’s worth to note that Yiddish-speaking New York still exists and flourishes in Hasidic Brooklyn enclaves such as Williamsburg and Boro Park, where thousands of Jews of all ages speak Yiddish on a daily basis. However, their lifestyle and culture differs in many ways quite radically from the Yiddish New York Sapoznik meticulously portrays in his well researched book.

Ester-Rokhl Kaminska’s Memoirs in English

Ester-Rokhl Kaminska’s Memoirs in English

Ester-Rokhl Kaminska’s Memoirs in English

The memoirs of the pioneering Yiddish actress Ester-Rokhl Kaminska (1870–1925), have been for the first time published in English, translated by the actor and theater researcher Mikhl Yashinsky.

The original text of Kaminska’s memoirs appeared as a series of 32 publications in the Warsaw Yiddish newpaper Der Moment under the title “Derner un blumen: der veg fun mayn lebn – memuarn” (Thorns and Flowers: the Path of My Life – Memoirs). As Yashinsky explains in his detailed introduction, Ester-Rokhl Kaminska is known today as the mother of Yiddish theater for a number of reasons: her husband Abraham Isaac Kaminsky was the founder of the first professional Jewish theater in Poland, where her most prominent role was in the play Di Mame (The Mother). She was also the mother of another famous Yiddish actress, Ida Kaminska (1899-1980).

The actress managed to write her intimate self-portrait while suffering from cancer. The memoirs appeared in Der Moment after her death. They also provide a unique glimpse into the everyday life of working Jewish women of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Boris Sandler Celebrates His 75th Anniversary

Boris Sandler Celebrates His 75th Anniversary

Boris Sandler Celebrates His 75th Anniversary

On May 22, 2025, New York’s Florence Gould Theater presented a concert dedicated to the 75th birthday of the award-winning Yiddish writer Boris Sandler, and to the 45-year anniversary of his writing career. The festive evening titled “Mit Yidish Ibern Lebn: A Lifetime of Yiddish” featured performances by the world renowned pianist Evgeny Kissin with two soprano singers, Susanna Phillips and Ekaterina Kapchits, in the world premiere of the vocal cycle for children “Shterndlekh mit mandlen” (Stars with Almonds). Other participants included the violin virtuoso Efim Zubritsky with Zisl Slepovitch’s Klezmer Trio, the actors Yelena Shmulenson with Allen Lewis Rickman, and others. The evening of songs, poetry and dramatic readings was hosted by the actor and playwright Shane Baker, the executive director of the Congress for Jewish Culture and one of the most prominent Yiddish activists in New York.

The founder of our project, Dr. Mark Zilberquit, also attended the concert. The anniversary’s star, Boris Sandler, wishes the best of luck in our activities of promoting Yiddish culture.

Sandler, who authored about two dozens of poetry and prose books, is himself no stranger to music. Born in 1950 in the Moldovan city of Bălți (known in Yiddish as Belts), he studied music at a conservatory and worked for a decade as a professional violinist. In 1981 he became one of the first Yiddish writers and poets to study Yiddish literature on a professional level at the Higher Literary Courses of the Gorky Institute in Moscow. Since 1998 he served as the head the Forverts, the world’s oldest Yiddish newspaper based in New York. Since 2017, Sandler, who remains one of today’s most prolific Yiddish writers, has been running the online literary magazine Yiddish Branzhe.

Blavatnik Archive: Individual WWII Experiences

Blavatnik Archive: Individual WWII Experiences

Blavatnik Archive: Individual WWII Experiences

On May 15, 2025, celebrating its 20th anniversary, the Blavatnik Archive ran the program “Individual Experiences of the Second World War”, featuring letters between a young Soviet couple separated by the war, diaries of the Red Army soldiers and artists in the starving besieged city of Leningrad, and other intimate wartime documents. The event, held in the Academy Mansion, New York, included talks by four American historians.

The Blavatnik Archive was founded in 2005 as a non-profit foundation dedicated to preserving materials on 20th-century Jewish and world history. Much of its collections are written in or directly related to Yiddish. The archive continues its series of anniversary events, guided by the belief that its everyday records offer invaluable perspectives on the past. The public events are to highlight popular and personal artifacts — postcards, photographs, illustrations, letters, diaries and testimonies.