panel discussion
The YIVO Folksong Project
From 1973-1975 YIVO collected 2,000 Yiddish folk songs and oral histories as a part of its YIVO Folksong Project: East European Jewish Folksong in its Social Context. The project, directed by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, created a one-of-a-kind audio resource which includes recordings of Yiddish folk songs from genres and groups which are rarely documented and gives insight into the songs traditional Eastern European Jewish singers sang, the range and variety of their repertoire, how they learned to sing, and what singing meant to them on a personal and communal level.
Thanks to a “Recordings at Risk Grant” from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), this collection has now been digitized and is available to researchers anywhere in the world. Join YIVO for a discussion of the YIVO Folksong Project including examples of material from the project, and a demonstration of how to access this material. This panel will feature the original project director Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin, singer and composer Joshua Waletzky, and YIVO Sound Archivist Eléonore Biezunski.
Part of YIVO’s Continuing Evolution: Yiddish Folksong Today, a music festival celebrating Yiddish folksong.
This program is co-sponsored by American Society for Jewish Music, The Center for Traditional Music and Dance’s An-sky Institute for Yiddish Culture, Congress for Jewish Culture, Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience, Milken Archive, and Yiddish New York.
Ticket Info: Free; register at yivo.org/FolksongFestival4 for a Zoom link
Presented by:
panel discussion
film and discussion
Film Screening: A Crime on the Bayou – Live in person
Join us for a screening of A Crime on the Bayou, followed by a discussion with civil rights attorney and one of the film's subjects, Armand Derfner.
A Crime on the Bayou is the story of Gary Duncan, a Black teenager from Plaquemines Parish, a swampy strip of land south of New Orleans. In 1966, Duncan tries to break up an argument between white and Black teenagers outside a newly integrated school. He gently lays his hand on a white boy's arm. The boy recoils like a snake. That night, police burst into Duncan's trailer and arrest him for assault on a minor. A young Jewish attorney, Richard Sobol, leaves his prestigious D.C. firm to volunteer in New Orleans. With his help, Duncan bravely stands up to a racist legal system powered by a white supremacist boss to challenge his unfair arrest. Their fight goes all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, and their lifelong friendship is forged.
Ticket Info: Free with registration at blackbaud.com
Presented by:
film and discussion
lecture
Yiddish Theatre in South America (1930-1960): Transnational Networks and Artistic Exchange
During the interwar period, a large population of Yiddish-speaking Jews settled in South America, escaping difficult living conditions and antisemitism in Europe. For Jewish immigrants, Yiddish theatre functioned as a meeting place where they could share their mother tongue and deal with the feeling of longing for the “alter heym.” As a result, the major cities of the region—Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, and Montevideo—became important Yiddish theatre centers and attractive destinations for Yiddish artists. At the same time, by the 1930s, Yiddish theatre audiences in the U.S. and Europe were starting to decline, so actors increasingly toured countries where Yiddish theatre thrived, as was the case in South America. This multidirectional migratory movement of European Jews during the interwar period and the internationally used language of Yiddish contributed to the creation of an extensive transnational network of Yiddish artists, which allowed them to perform throughout the world.
In this lecture, Dr. Paula Ansaldo will explore the development of the South American Yiddish theatre scene and the connections it established with the main Yiddish cultural centers of the time in the U.S. and Europe and with the larger theatrical ecosystem of South America.
About the Speaker
Paula Ansaldo holds a Ph.D. in History and Theory of Arts from the University of Buenos Aires. She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the National Council for Technical and Scientific Research of Argentina and the Institute of Performing Arts-UBA, and a member of the Centre of Jewish Studies. She teaches History of Theatre II in the Department of Arts at the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature-UBA. She has co-published the book Independent Theatre: History and Present (Buenos Aires: Ediciones del CCC, 2017) and Perspectives on Theater Directing: Theory, History, and Poetics (Córdoba: National University of Córdoba Press, 2021) and several articles on the history of Jewish theatre in Argentina in academic publications of the U.S., Spain, Brazil, France, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Poland, and Argentina. She has received grants from CONICET, Fordham University-New York Public Library, Coimbra Group Universities, American Philosophical Society, and Latin American Jewish Studies Association. She is also the recipient of the 2021-2022 Ruth and Joseph Kremen Memorial Fellowship in East European Arts, Music, and Theater at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
Ticket Info: Free; register at yivo.org/Yiddish-Theatre-in-South-America for a Zoom link
Presented by:
lecture
panel discussion
Thomas Brasch: The Life of an Artist
The life and legacy of the multifaceted artist Thomas Brasch will be the topic of discussion by a panel including Professor Cathy Gelbin (The University of Manchester), German Consul General in New York, David Gill, and artist Alexander Polzin.
About the Speakers
Professor Cathy Gelbin is the co-editor of the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book for German-Jewish History and Culture (Oxford Journals). She is a film historian and cultural studies scholar with special interests in European life and its Jewish cultures. Her work on feature film, video testimony, literary texts and live art has focused on Holocaust representations and the dynamics of modern German-speaking Jewish culture. Before joining the University of Manchester, she was Research Associate and Director of Research and Educational Programmes at the Centre for German-Jewish Studies, University of Sussex.
David Gill, German Consul General in New York, was born in Schönebeck/Elbe in 1966. He has been the Consul General in New York since August 2017. Prior to his appointment, he served as State Secretary and Head of the Office of the Federal President from 2012-2017.
Alexander Polzin, born in East Berlin in 1973, originally trained as a stonemason. He enjoys an international career as a sculptor, painter, stage designer and opera director. In addition, he develops unique collaborations with writers, composers, musicians, choreographers and scholars from all over the world. He was a close friend of Brasch's and organized a multifaceted tribute to Brasch at the 2021 Berlin International Literature Festival.
Part of the Thomas Brasch Retrospective
Born in England to Kindertransport refugees who were active Communists – Thomas Brasch came to embody the fault lines of German history like few other artists. As his father Horst Brasch rose in the ranks of East Germany’s ruling Socialist Unity Party, Thomas became an uncompromisingly radical writer whose activism led to censorship and three months in prison. After his move to West Germany, he refused to play the role of GDR-dissident and focused his critique on West German society and German history in plays, poetry, and a series of brilliant but challenging films. Although he is highly regarded as a translator of Chekhov’s and Shakespeare’s works into German, none of Thomas Brasch’s major works have ever been published in English. His major films, jarring meditations on German history such as Der Passagier – Welcome to Germany (1988, starring Tony Curtis as a choleric Hollywood director who returns to Germany to make a film about his experience in a concentration camp), are rarely shown in the United States. This spring, LBI, the Goethe-Institut New York, The German Film Office, The German Consulate General in New York, Deutsches Haus at NYU, and the Friends of Freiburg Alumni of North America will re-introduce audiences to this remarkable artist and story.
Ticket Info: Free; register at lbi.org/events/thomas-brasch-life-of-an-artist/ for a Zoom link
Presented by:
panel discussion
lecture
Between 1881 and 1910 more than 200,000 Jews left the Habsburg province of Galicia, a region that is today divided between southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. No longer living in the places of their childhood, they settled in urban centers, such as New York’s Lower East Side. In this culturally diverse and densely populated immigrant neighborhood, Galician Jews began to search for new relationships that linked the places they left and the ones where they arrived and settled.
In his talk, Dr. Sophie Bookhalter Graduate Fellow Oskar Czendze (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) in conversation with Dr. Jeffrey Shandler (Rutgers University) will take the audience to the streets of New York’s immigrant quarter and trace the lives and culture of Jews who arrived from Galicia. Examples from autobiographical writings, Yiddish press, music and theatre, Jewish hometown associations, as well as visual material by American Jewish tourists visiting their hometowns, will illuminate the significance of local and regional identifications from the early immigrant era to the interwar period. Why did an Austrian province that had ceased to exist in 1918 continue to loom large in the American Jewish mind, how did the concept of Galicia change over time, and what does the “Galitsyaner” tell us about the role of regionalism in modern Jewish history and culture?
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; register at /tickets/galicia-2022-05-25 for a Zoom link
Presented by:
lecture
concert
Continuing Evolution: Yiddish Folksong Today – Live & Streamed on Zoom
YIVO’s Continuing Evolution: Yiddish Folksong Today is a music festival celebrating Yiddish folksong. The festival includes premieres of contemporary classical works reimagining Yiddish folksongs; classic compositions which engage with Yiddish folksongs; little-known settings of Yiddish folksongs from YIVO’s archival collections; discussions of archival work related to the study and preservation of Yiddish folksong; and performances by contemporary artists engaged with Yiddish folksong.
This concert features music by Frederic Rzweski alongside the premiere of new works by Derek David, Lainie Fefferman, David Ludwig, Daniel Schlosberg, and Dan Shore. Performances will include current and former students of the Bard Graduate Vocal Arts Program: soprano Jardena Gertler-Jaffe, tenor Max Jansen, and Mezzo-soprano Megan Jones with special guest pianist Ryan MacEvoy McCullough. This evening also features performances by Eléonore Biezunski, Zhenya Lopatnik, and Sarah Myerson.
This program is co-sponsored by American Society for Jewish Music, The Center for Traditional Music and Dance’s An-sky Institute for Yiddish Culture, Congress for Jewish Culture, Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience, Milken Archive, and Yiddish New York.
Proof of full COVID-19 vaccination with matching ID is required in order to enter the Center for Jewish History. Click here to see our Visitor Safety Requirements.
About the Performers
The Graduate Vocal Arts Program at Bard Conservatory is a unique Master of Music program in vocal arts. Created to prepare the young singer for the special challenges of pursuing a professional life in music in the 21st century, this two-year MM degree program balances a respect for established repertory and expressive techniques with the flexibility and curiosity needed to keep abreast of evolving musical ideas. Students work on operatic, art song, chamber music, and new music repertoire throughout the coursework of the program. Operatic repertoire is studied and performed throughout the curriculum and in fully staged productions at the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts. The program also includes a strong practical component, with seminars and classes on career skills led by some of the leading figures in arts management and administration.
Ticket Info: $15 general, $10 YIVO members, students in person; free on Zoom; register at www.yivo.org/FolksongFestival5
Presented by:
concert
lecture
Between Baghdad and Asia
Beginning in the mid-19th century, a vibrant network of Jews primarily from Iraq but also from the Levant and Iran formed communities throughout the Indian sub-continent and East Asia. These communities flourished for over a decade and the remnants of these communities can still be seen to this day in places like Bombay, Singapore, and Hong Kong through the institutions they built and the communities which continue to exist. This talk traces the history of Baghdadi Jews in Asia from its earliest beginning until the present day, exploring the relevance of these communities both to Baghdad and the larger Jewish world.
About the Speaker
Sasha Goldstein-Sabbah is assistant professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, she received her PhD in 2019 from Leiden University. She is specialized in the modern history of Middle Eastern and North African Jewry. She is the author of numerous scholarly and trade publications including her recent monograph Baghdadi Jewish Networks in the Age of Nationalism (Brill, 2021).
Ticket Info: $10; register at us02web.zoom.us for a Zoom link
Presented by:
lecture
book talk
New Works Wednesdays: José and the Pirate Captain Toledano
Join us for this episode of New Works Wednesdays with Arnon Z. Schorr and Joshua Edelglass as they discuss their new book José and the Pirate Captain Toledano!
About the Book
Set in the shadows of the Spanish Inquisition, this is the coming-of-age story of José Alfaro, a young refugee who forms a powerful bond with the mysterious Pirate Captain Toledano. It’s also a dynamic pirate adventure on the high seas, with hand-to-hand combat and ship-to-ship action, and the powerful story of a dark time in history when people took different paths to survive.
About the Authors
Arnon Z. Shorr, a filmmaker and screenwriter, loves telling stories. Half-Sepharadi / half-Ashkenazi, a Hebrew speaker in America, a Jewish private-school kid in a mostly non-Jewish suburb, whenever he’d set foot in one world, his other foot would betray him as different. That’s why he tells stories that embrace the peculiar and the other. For more about Arnon, visit www.arnonshorr.com. Formerly of Los Angeles, he lives in Boston.
Joshua Edelglass’ work has appeared in publications including Tikkun Magazine, and The New Haven Review. His artwork has also appeared in numerous exhibitions, including Pow! Jewish Comics Art and Influence at the Brooklyn Jewish Art Museum. He has watched Star Trek II more times than is probably healthy. For more information about Josh, visit www.MotionPicturesComics.com. He is the Assistant Director of Camp Ramah New England and lives near Boston.
For more about the book: amazon.com
Ticket Info: Free; register at us02web.zoom.us for a Zoom link
Presented by:
book talk
panel discussion
Are We in the Midst of a Yiddish Renaissance?
Are we currently experiencing a Yiddish renaissance? This is one of the questions we are often asked at YIVO. YIVO’s own community of Yiddish learners has expanded more than 10-fold in the last two years. Duolingo has added Yiddish as a language. Headline after headline touts Yiddish as unexpectedly alive and well. What does this all mean for Yiddish in the 21st century?
Join YIVO for a conversation about the Yiddish world today. Led by YIVO’s Director of Public Programs Alex Weiser, this program will feature journalist and playwright Rokhl Kafrissen, scholar and In Geveb Editor-in-chief Jessica Kirzane, scholar and Yiddish podcast founder and host Sandra Fox, and YIVO’s Director of Education Ben Kaplan.
About the Speakers
Sandra Fox is a historian of American Jewish history, Jewish youth and childhood, and Yiddish culture. A senior researcher in the Concentration in Education & Jewish Studies at Stanford University, her forthcoming book, The Jews of Summer, addresses the lived experiences of youth in postwar Jewish summer camps and the role of intergenerational negotiation in the making of American Jewish culture (Stanford University Press, Winter 2023). She is also in the early stages of research on young Jews who joined new religious movements from the 1960s through the 1990s, and on the intense “anti-cult” response of American Jewish organizations.
Sandra received her doctorate from New York University’s joint program in History and Hebrew Judaic Studies in 2018. In addition to her research, Sandra is the founder and executive producer of the Yiddish-language podcast Vaybertaytsh, and is a peer-review editor at In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies.
Rokhl Kafrissen is a journalist and playwright in New York City. Her ‘Rokhl’s Golden City’ column began appearing in Tablet in 2017, the only regular feature in the world dedicated to new Yiddish culture in all its iterations. Her op-eds on feminism, sociology and Jewish life appear in newspapers all over the world. She was a 2019-2020 14th Street Y LABA fellow, for which she wrote Shtumer Shabes (Silent Sabbath), a black comedy about the dangers of ethnography and human experimentation.
Ben Kaplan runs the educational programs at YIVO, which include the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization, and the Shine Online Educational Series. He studied at Williams College, the Middlebury School of Hebrew, and now at YIVO, where he makes a point to speak Yiddish every day.
Jessica Kirzane is the assistant instructional professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago. She is the Editor-in-Chief for In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. Her academic work has appeared in the Journal of Jewish Identities, Zutot, American Jewish History, Judaism: Race, and Ethics: Conversations and Questions (Penn State University Press, 2020) and The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives in Sexuality (CCAR Press, 2014) and her translations have been published in jewishfiction.net, Jewish Currents, Columbia Journal, Pakn Treger, Your Impossible Voice, and elsewhere. She is the translator of Miriam Karpilove's Diary of a Lonely Girl, or the Battle Against Free Love (Syracuse UP, 2019). Kirzane was a 2017 Translation Fellow and an 2018 Pedagogy Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center. She earned her PhD in Yiddish Studies from Columbia University in 2017.
Alex Weiser is the Director of Public Programs at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research where he curates and produces programs combining a fascination with and curiosity for historical context, with an eye toward influential Jewish contributions to the culture of today and tomorrow. Born and raised in NYC, Weiser is also an active composer of contemporary classical music. In his capacity as a composer Weiser has been praised as having a “sophisticated ear and knack for evoking luscious textures and imaginative yet approachable harmonies,” (I Care If You Listen) and his music has been described as “compelling” (New York Times), and “shapely, melody-rich” (Wall Street Journal).
An energetic advocate for contemporary classical music and for the work of his peers, before joining the team at YIVO Weiser was for nearly five years a director of the MATA Festival, the “the city’s leading showcase for vital new music by emerging composers” (The New Yorker), and co-founded and directs Kettle Corn New Music, an “engaging” (New York Times) series acclaimed for capturing “all of the prestige” that contemporary classical music has to offer, with “none of the pomp” (Feast of Music).
Ticket Info: Free; register at yivo.org/Yiddish-Renaissance for a Zoom link
Presented by:
panel discussion
conversation
At Lunch with Julianna Margulies
Julie Salamon (Wall Street Journal and NY Times) sits down with Emmy, Golden Globe, and Screen Actors Guild Award winner, Julianna Margulies. Currently seen starring as Laura Peterson on Apple TV+'s The Morning Show, Margulies previously starred as Alicia Florrick on CBS' The Good Wife, which she also produced, and is well known for her role as one of the original cast members of ER. She has starred in the critically acclaimed series Billions and The Hot Zone. Julianna has added author to her list of credits with the recent release of her memoir, Sunshine Girl: An Unexpected Life. She has been involved with Project ALS and Erin's Law and is also a board member of the New York City based MCC Theatre company. She resides in New York City with her husband and son.
Julie Salamon is a New York Times best-selling author, critic and storyteller. She was a reporter and film critic for The Wall Street Journal and then a TV critic and arts reporter for The New York Times. Her twelve books include the Hollywood classic The Devil’s Candy and Wendy and the Lost Boys,an acclaimed biography of playwright Wendy Wasserstein. Julie has just completed "Unlikely Friends," a memoir available on Audible, and season two of TCM’s hit podcast The Plot Thickens which was named by the New York Times as one of the top ten podcasts for 2021.
Ticket Info: Free; register at ajhs-org.zoom.us for a Zoom link
Presented by:
conversation
book club
LBI Book Club: Where She Came From
About the Book
After the death of her mother, author and journalist Helen Epstein set out to uncover her mother's past and to learn more about her grandmother and great-grandmother, victims of the Holocaust. The result is this compelling biography, both a chronicle of three generations of women and a social history of Czechoslovakia's Jews. We chose to read this book in relation to our upcoming exhibit at the Leo Baeck Institute about the Theresienstadt Ghetto, which will be opening in April.
Click here to watch a discussion with Epstein about her mother's life and survival in the Holocaust.
About the Author
We will be joined at our meeting by Helen Epstein. The first tenured woman Professor of Journalism at NYU, she is the author of numerous books about her family history. These include the trilogy Children of the Holocaust (1979); Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History and The Long Half-Lives of Love and Trauma (2018). She published her late mother Franci Rabinek Epstein's memoir, Franci's War in 2020-2021, in seven languages. Her latest book is Getting Through It: My Year of Cancer during Covid.
"In Epstein's expert and sensitive hands, truth becomes not only stranger than fiction, but more magnetic, wise and powerful." Gloria Steinem
Learn more at www.helenepstein.com.
Ticket Info: Free; register at lbi.org/events/book-club-where-she-came-from/ for a Zoom link
Presented by:
book club
book talk
Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond
Ghil'ad Zuckermann's new book, Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond, tells the story of the Hebrew revival with new insights about modern Israeli Hebrew's connection to the Yiddish language. Introducing a new, trans-disciplinary field he calls revivalistics, Zuckermann's account also explores language revival more broadly and provides practical lessons for reclaiming and reviving languages with examples from the Barngarla Aboriginal language of South Australia. Join YIVO for a discussion of this new book featuring Zuckermann in conversation with Yiddish poet and linguist Dov-Ber Kerler.
About the Speakers
Ghil'ad Zuckermann is Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is a chief investigator in a large research project assessing language revival and mental health, funded by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council. He is elected fellow of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, board member of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, and President of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies.
Dov-Ber Kerler is the Cohn Chair in Yiddish Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. He taught Yiddish as well as courses on Yiddish literature, culture and scholarship in Jerusalem, Oxford, Moscow, and Vilnius. A son of the noted Yiddish poet, Yosef Kerler, Dov-Ber has been publishing his own original Yiddish poetry since 1993, in addition to scholarly and general articles (mostly in Yiddish). To date, since 1996, six collections of his poetry have been published in Britain and Israel, including a joint volume of his and his father’s poems, entitled “Shpigl–ksav” (Words in a Mirror).
Ticket Info: Free; register at yivo.org/Revivalistics for a Zoom link
Presented by:
book talk
discussion
The French Revolution created a rupture in all aspects of life in France, including its recordkeeping practices. In this talk, Anne Morddel, a certified genealogist specializing in French genealogy, will explain how you can discover your Jewish ancestors in France in both pre-Revolutionary legal and religious records and post-Revolutionary civil records. Providing additional context, Ms. Mordell will outline the history of Jewish settlement in France from the Jewish expulsion of 1394 to the expansion of France’s boundaries during the Revolution, focusing on the Southwest, Alsace-Lorraine, and the communities around Avignon.
This program is sponsored by the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at the Center for Jewish History. It is funded, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. Live closed captioning has been made possible by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; register at programs.cjh.org/tickets/family-history-today-2022-06-17 for a Zoom link
Presented by:
discussion
book club
Go behind the stories and peer into the archives at the CJH book discussion, led by Lauren Gilbert, Senior Manager for Public Services at the Center for Jewish History. Join a discussion of Remote Sympathy by Catherine Chidgey, an exquisite novel of domestic drama and human connection set in and around Buchenwald during World War II and its aftermath, focusing on the relationship between an SS officer, his ill wife, and a prisoner called in for his medical expertise. We will be joined by LBI archivist Michael Simonson to look at some of the historical photos and documents relating to Buchenwald in the collections of the Leo Baeck Institute (LBI) at the Center for Jewish History, and we and will have a Q&A with the author after the discussion.
Participants will need to obtain their own copy of the book to read in advance.
NOTE: This is an interactive book discussion for all participants, not a lecture, so space is limited.
This program is funded, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Ticket Info: Pay what you wish; register at programs.cjh.org/tickets/people-book-club-2022-06-22 for a Zoom link
Presented by:
book club
book talk
Fear and Other Stories by Chana Blankshteyn, Translated by Anita Norich
Fear and Other Stories is a collection of the short stories of Yiddish writer Chana Blankshteyn (~1860-1939) which was originally published in July 1939, just before the Germans invaded Poland and two weeks before Blankshteyn's death. Anita Norich's new translation brings this collection to English readers for the first time, shedding light on the work of a woman who was almost entirely forgotten despite being widely admired during her long and productive life.
The nine stories in this volume take place primarily in Vilna, as well as various parts of Europe. As if presaging what was to come, World War I and Russian civil wars are the backdrops to these stories, as Jews and non-Jews find themselves under German occupation or caught up in the revolutionary fervor. Reflecting Blankshteyn's perspective as a feminist and an activist, the young women in the stories insist on their independence, on equality with their lovers, and on meaningful work.
Join YIVO for a discussion about this new book with translator Anita Norich in conversation with professor of Yiddish and comparative literature Chana Kronfeld.
Purchase the book at a discount from the Yiddish Book Center.
About the Speakers
Anita Norich is Collegiate Professor Emerita of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. She is also the newly appointed Academic Advisor to the CJH Fellowship Program. She is the translator of Fear and Other Stories by Chana Blankshteyn, and A Jewish Refugee in New York by Kadya Molodovsky. Norich is also the author of Writing in Tongues: Yiddish Translation in the 20th Century; Discovering Exile: Yiddish and Jewish American Literature in America During the Holocaust; The Homeless Imagination in the Fiction of Israel Joshua Singer, and co-editor of Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures: Comparative Perspectives Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext, and Gender and Text in Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literatures. She translates Yiddish literature, and teaches, lectures, and publishes on a range of topics concerning modern Jewish cultures, Yiddish language and literature, Jewish American literature, and Holocaust literature.
Professor Chana Kronfeld teaches Hebrew, Yiddish and Comparative Literature with a special emphasis on modern poetry. Kronfeld is the author of On the Margins of Modernism: Decentering Literary Dynamics which won the MLA Scaglione Prize in 1996 for Best Book in Comparative Literary Studies. Her co-translation (with Chana Bloch) of Yehuda Amichai’s Open Closed Open won the PEN Translation Prize. She is the recipient (with Chana Bloch) of the top 2005-6 National Endowment for the Arts award for the translation and annotated edition of Hovering at a Low Altitude: The Collected Poetry of Dahlia Ravikovitch (N.Y. W.W. Norton, 2009). She’s the author, most recently, of The Full Severity of Compassion: The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (Stanford, 2016). Her contributions (with Chana Bloch) to Robert Alter’s The Poetry of Yehuda Amichai (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015) include an expanded edition of Open Closed Open. Benjamin Harshav’s Hebrew-Yiddish volume, Kol Ha-Shirim, is her most recent collaborative project (with Udi Hrushovski; Carmel, 2017).
Ticket Info: Free; register at yivo.org/Blankshteyn for a Zoom link
Presented by:
book talk
