Translating Jewishness: Conversations on Culture and Civilization draws on the collection of the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization to engage two key modes of Jewish expression: anthologies and translations. Throughout the centuries, Jews have gathered selections from the storehouse of Jewish culture and civilization into more widely accessible anthologies. In addition, for as long as Jews have lived dispersed across the globe, they have translated their sacred texts into their current vernaculars. As Jews settled in more places and began to speak more languages, the choice of what to translate and make more readily available for contemporary audiences became more complicated. Translation accompanied anthologizing. This symposium explores the dynamics of translating and dimensions of the Jewish anthological imagination.

The symposium is presented in partnership with the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization. It is also supported by the American Jewish Historical Society, the Leo Baeck Institute, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. It is organized with support from the David Berg Foundation & NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. The symposium is the sixth installment in a larger series of public symposia sponsored by the Center for Jewish History’s Jewish Public History Forum.

Related exhibition opening:

At 12:00 pm, we will host the opening of Translating Jewishness: Culture and Civilization in the Posen Library. Between 1880 and 1918, around the globe, regimes collapsed, migration and imperialism remade the lives of millions, nationalism and secularization transformed selves and collectives, utopias beckoned, and new kinds of social conflict threatened. Few communities experienced the pressures and possibilities of the era more profoundly than the world’s Jews. 

This exhibit focuses on the range of Jewish expression—from mystical visions to political thought, cookbooks to literary criticism, modernist poetry to vaudeville—in English translations in Volume 7 of the Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, edited by Israel Bartal and Kenneth B. Moss. It features examples from seven languages drawn from sources at the Center for Jewish History.

Jewish secularism and the resurgence of traditionalism, the remaking of Jews as a modern nation, cultural assimilation and integration, the triumphs of Zionism and its discontents—all have their roots in this era. This exhibit offers an engaging starting point for anyone wishing to understand the divided Jewish present.