Preservation of Yiddish Culture

Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage

Сохранение культуры идиша

אָפּהיטן אונדזער ייִדישע קולטור־ירושה

לשמור על תרבות היידיש

Yiddish WWII Poetry Book Presented in Moscow

Yiddish WWII Poetry Book Presented in Moscow

Yiddish WWII Poetry Book Presented in Moscow

Several presentations in Moscow were dedicated to the unique bilingual Yiddish-Russian poetry book “Продолжит петь его строка” (His Poem’s Line Will Continue to Sing), which contains poems of 23 Yiddish poets who died as Red Army soldiers fighting the Nazis during WWII.

Published in Birobidzhan, the book is dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the WWII victory. The poems, previously published in their original in the 1985 Soviet volume Di Lire (The Lyre), were translated for the first time into Russian by the Birobidzhan-based poet Alla Akimenko. The new book is richly illustrated by Vladislav Tsap, the main illustrator for the newspaper Birobidzhaner Shtern and the author of numerous sculptures and other prominent art works in Birobidzhan.

The official presentation, led by Elena Sarashevskaya, the editor-in-chief of Birobidzhaner Shtern, the initiator of the book’s project and its sole curator, was held on September 30 at the Moscow’s National Center Russia. A few days earlier, on September 20 and 21, the book was also independently presented by two writers of Birobidzhaner Shtern, Yoel Matveyev and Lyubov Lavrova. Their presentations, also held in Moscow, were accompanied by readings of other wartime Yiddish poets, mainly Shmuel Halkin (1897-1960) whose 65th death anniversary was marked on September 21. Presentations and TV coverage of the book were held in Birobidzhan as well.

Celebrating the Giant Yiddish Dictionary in Amsterdam

Celebrating the Giant Yiddish Dictionary in Amsterdam

Celebrating the Giant Yiddish Dictionary in Amsterdam

A festive evening was held in Amsterdam on September 17, 2025, in honor of Justus van de Kamp, the compiler of the giant Yiddish-Dutch comprehensive dictionary, on which he has been enthusiastically and voluntarily working for over 35 years. The result of his work is the free online dictionary, containing over 100,000 entries and over 24,000 sample phrases. Besides the speeches of several Yiddish specialists, the festive gathering was accompanied with a rich musical program by the singer Shura Lipovsky.

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.

Shtetl on Fontanka

Shtetl on Fontanka

Shtetl on Fontanka

On July 17, 2025, the exhibition “Shtetl on Fontanka. From Chagall to the Present” opened at the KGallery in St. Petersburg. It is dedicated to Jewish artists whose life and work are closely connected to St. Petersburg. Fontanka is one of the city’s rivers. The project’s curator is Dr. Valery Dymshits, a folklorist and scholar of Yiddish literature. The conceptual design of the exhibition was created by the theater artist Valery Polunovsky.

The large three-story exhibition, consisting of seven thematic sections, is permeated with the history and culture of Eastern European Jews. A significant part of the exhibits is directly or indirectly related to Yiddish. For the first time, the works of four generations of Jewish painters, graphic artists and sculptors who worked over the past 150 years in St. Petersburg (historically also known as Petrograd and Leningrad) were brought together. 24 artists are presented in total, from Isaac Asknaziy to Marc Chagall, Nathan Altman, Solomon Yudovin, Anatoly (Tankhum) Kaplan and many other world famous masters.

Visitors who come to the exhibition find themselves in an imaginary Jewish shtetl, as the artists viewed their home city, Leningrad, and get acquainted with the religious traditions of Judaism, Jewish theater, folklore, modern interpretations of Jewish folk art. The presented works allow us to view the city’s Jewish art as a coherent integral cultural phenomenon.

The exhibition is opened until September 14. The editor-in-chief of our website, writer and journalist Yoel Matveyev, attended the press premiere inauguration of the exhibition with the photojournalist Svetlana Smaznova.

Credit: Yoel Matveyev and Svetlana Smaznova

Mieczysław Weinberg’s Yiddish Songs in Nizhny Novgorod

Mieczysław Weinberg’s Yiddish Songs in Nizhny Novgorod

Mieczysław Weinberg’s Yiddish Songs in Nizhny Novgorod

Sofia Zhurkina (left) and Anastasia Djilas
Credit: Anastasia Konovalova

On June 22, 2025, honoring the 80-year WWII Victory anniversary and commemorating the beginning of the Nazi invasion in the USSR, a memorial concert was held at the Nizhny Novgorod Opera and Ballet Theater (Russia). It included works by Boris Tchaikovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich and two cycles of Jewish songs by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, op. 13 and op. 17, performed in Yiddish by tenor Sergei Pisarev and soprano Anastasia Djilas.

Moishe (Mieczyslaw) Weinberg (1919 – 1999) was one of the greatest Soviet composers who authored 26 symphonies, 7 operas and many other musical works. However, only in his two cycles of Jewish Songs, created in 1943 and 1944, he explicitly turns to poetic works written in his native language, Yiddish. Opus 13 is based on the First World War poems by the Yiddish classic poet Yitskhok Leybush Peretz. Opus 17, full of the tragedy and heroism of WWII, is based on the wartime poems of the famous Soviet Yiddish poet Shmuel Halkin (1897 – 1960). Researchers note that both vocal cycles are deeply interconnected.

Anastasia Djilas, a graduate of the Moscow State Conservatory, a soloist of the Nizhny Novgorod Opera and Ballet Theater since 2022, brilliantly performed Weinberg’s cycle of six song based on Halkin’s poems, accompanied by Sofia Zhurkina on the piano. The performance was accompanied by subtitles with a literary Russian translation, which were prepared specially for this concert by the Yiddish and Russian poet Yoel Matveyev based on a draft version by the musicologist Evgeny Khazdan. Sergey Pisarev performed Weinberg’s Opus 13 with the pianist Lyudmila Gorokhova.

Yiddish performances have already become a tradition at the Nizhny Novgorod Opera and Ballet Theater, which in November 2023 held a concert called Menorah Music, where the Yiddish song “Makh tsu di eygelekh” (“Close Your Little Eyes”) was performed by Anastasia Djilas as an encore. Two tragically murdered authors, the poet Isaiah Spiegel and the composer David Beigelman, wrote it in the Lodz ghetto after the children imprisoned there were deported to a death camp.

It’s worth a note that Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s parents also died in a concentration camp: the Yiddish theater composer Shmuel Weinberg and the Yiddish actress Sonya (Surah-Dvoirah) Weinberg. His 1944 Jewish Songs based on Halkin’s poems are both the composer’s personal requiem and a hymn to the then soon-to-be expected victory.

Credit: Anastasia Konovalova