Moisey Beregovsky: Essays on the History of Yiddish Folk Music (manuscript)
© Copyright of the Muzyka Publishing House and the Heritage Projects Foundation
Moisey Beregovsky: Essays on the History of Yiddish Folk Music, composed by Evgenia Khazdan, translated and studied by Evgenia Khazdan, Yoel Matveyev, Elena Sarashevskaya, Galina Kopytova. Muzyka Publishers, Moscow, 2025
© Copyright of the authors, publishers and the Heritage Projects Foundation
On March 24, 2025, YIVO marked its 100th anniversary. On this day in 1925, the Institute for Jewish Research (Yidisher visnshaftlekher institut, known by its abbreviation as YIVO) was established in Vilna (then Poland, now Vilnius, Lithuania). It quickly became one of the most preeminent authorities on Yiddish scholarship and culture in all its aspects. The Institute also played a crucial role in establishing the literary standard of the Yiddish language.
Max Weinreich
The upcoming new bilingual Russian-Yiddish academic book Moisey Beregovsky: Essays on the History of Yiddish Folk Music, has been presented on March 25th, 2025, during the interdisciplinary seminar Music in Culture organized by the Russian State Institute of Art Studies. It is scheduled to be printed in mid-April.
The book is based on a previously unknown Beregovsky’s manuscript, included and edited according to modern literary Yiddish, translated and commented, and supplied with detailed musicological and historical analysis.
The discoverer of the manuscript, initiator and organizer of this book’s publishing is Dr. Mark Zilberquit, the director of the Muzyka Publishing House and the founder of our website, which already contains a rich repository of unique materials related to Beregovsky, including Evgenia Khazdan’s Biobibliographic Index.
Follow our news for further details and updates on the book!
On March 4, 2025, the Parisian Théâtre national de la Colline premiered a new staged version of Isaac Bashevis’ short story The Golem. Over one third of the play, written and directed by Amos Gitaï and performed by a small troupe of seven actors, is in Yiddish with French and English subtitles. The performance is accompanied by both instrumental music and modern arrangements of traditional Yiddish songs sung by professional opera singers.
Amos Gitaï is a well known Israeli filmmaker, playwright and artist who lives part-time in Paris. He grew up in a Yiddish-speaking family. None of the actors had any knowledge of the language; they all studied Yiddish specifically for this performance under the guidance of the Paris-based Yiddishist Shahar Feinberg, himself an actor and the director of the Parisian Yiddish theater Troïm-Teater.
A new Russian-language Jewish theater was founded in February 2025 in Saint Petersburg. Directed by Leonid Kolton under the umbrella of the charity organization Chesed Abraham and located at the Jewish cultural center Yesod, this new stage was named the Raznochinnaya Theater (named after the street where it is located, as typical for many other Russian theaters). On February 25 it performed The Book of Paradise premiered over a year ago by the collective Post-Traumatic Theater. The musical play is based on Itzik Manger’s Yiddish classic.
Sonia Dymshits
Currently (as of February 27, 2025), the Raznochinnaya Theater’s repertoire features 11 very diverse performances. Like the Moscow theater Shalom, they are geared toward general audience and are not limited to Jewish themes.
Photo credit: Post-Traumatic Theater