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

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

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

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.

St. Petersburg Winter School of Translation: 2024

St. Petersburg State University’s Winter School of Translation, held on January 26, 2024, included a Yiddish section dedicated to the translation of literary texts and documents from Yiddish into Russian.

Yoel Matveyev, a St. Petersburg-based writer and poet, spoke about the history of women’s poetry in Yiddish and the difficulties of its adequate translation. He also briefly outlined the history of early verse in this language, starting with a short anonymous 13th century poem. The Moscow linguist Lyubov Lavrova introduced various examples of handwritten correspondence in Yiddish from WWII, explaining the difficulties of translating it due to unclear handwriting, different dialects and borrowings from different languages.

Yiddish Alive at Holocaust Commemoration Week

On January 18, 2024, the official opening of the 10th annual all-Russian Holocaust Commemoration Week took place at the Moscow Nikitsky Gate Theater. The event coincided with the 100th birthday anniversary of Ivan Martynushkin, a Soviet WWII veteran who was among the liberators of the Auschwitz death camp; he was the most honored guest of the opening event.

The Holocaust Commemoration Week is linked to the International Holocaust Remembrance Day (January 27). The events, held under the leadership of the Russian Jewish Congress, are to be continued in all regions of Russia until January 31. Our project’s creator Dr. Mark Zilberquit, the founder of the Heritage Projects Foundation (USA) and Yiddish Heritage Preservation Foundation (Israel), is also participating in these commemorative events.

At the opening evening, guests’ talks alternated with a musical and dramatic performance staged by the theater’s artistic director Mark Rozovsky, which included a medley of Yiddish songs performed by Tatyana Revzina, the musical director of the same theater. We are glad to present her performance posted on Youtube specially for our project. See also below our exclusive pictures of the commemorative events.