Lecture on Yiddish and Irish in St. Petersburg

On March 13, 2023, before St. Patrick’s Day, the Jewish Community Center of St. Petersburg hosted a lecture on connections and parallels between the Jewish and Irish culture by the writer and journalist Yoel Matveyev. A particular attention was paid to the development of the Yiddish and Irish language in the 21st century.

At the end of his speech, the lecturer recited his Yiddish translations of William Butler Yeats’s poems. According to Matveyev, Yiddish and Irish share a number of historical and sociolinguistic similarities. He suggests that Yiddishists and Gaelic activists should learn from each other practical strategies for further development of their respective languages. A report on the lecture was published in Yiddish and in Russian by the newspaper Birobidzhaner Shtern.