Channel Title: Yiddish Book Center Channel Description: The Yiddish Book Center recovers, preserves, teaches, and celebrates Yiddish literature and culture to advance a fuller understanding of Jewish history and identity. The Center engages diverse, worldwide audiences, generating enthusiasm, knowledge, and commitment to the history and future of Yiddish and Jewish culture. We invite you to explore our collection of recorded virtual public programs and extensive oral histories. Many videos on this channel are excerpts from in-depth video interviews with native Yiddish speakers, world-renowned klezmer musicians, grandmothers, descendants of Yiddish writers, students, and more from the Center's Wexler Oral History Project. The interviews are focused life histories, covering family background, involvement with Yiddish language and culture, Jewish identity, and the transmission of culture and values across generations and communities. You can find the full interviews on our website: http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/tell-your-story <video> The Siege of Sidney Street: The East End of London’s Most Sensational Shootout Description: On January 3, 1911, two Latvian anarchists wanted for a police murder were tracked down to a room on Sidney Street in London’s overwhelmingly Jewish East End. For six hours, the two besieged men, equipped with semiautomatic pistols, held out against the police and army sharpshooters. Winston Churchill, then Britain’s interior minister, came to the scene, peering out from a doorway to see the action for himself. The two gunmen died, but the shootout—unparalleled in London’s history—entered folklore as “the siege of Sidney Street.” In this illustrated talk, historian Andrew Whitehead—author of the recently published A Devilish Kind of Courage: Anarchists, Aliens and the Siege of Sidney Street—will explore what the shootout revealed about London’s Jewish East End and the remarkable strength of its Yiddish-speaking anarchist movement at the time. About the speaker: Andrew Whitehead is a historian, lecturer, and freelance journalist. He spent thirty-five years working as a correspondent, presenter, and editor at BBC World Service News. Andrew teaches American undergraduates in London for Global Education Oregon and is a visiting professor at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai, south India. He is also an honorary professor at the University of Nottingham. </video> <video> They Called Me Mayer: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland before the Holocaust Description: Mayer Kirshenblatt was born in 1916 and left Poland for Canada in 1934. He taught himself to paint at age 73 and made it his mission to remember the world of his childhood in living color, “lest future generations know more about how Jews died than how they lived.” In this talk his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, will discuss her father’s legacy and recent exhibitions of his work, including the current exhibition at the POLIN Museum, which presents a dialogue between Mayer’s depictions of his youth in the shtetl and today’s Opatów, a post-Jewish town with no remaining Jewish community. About the speaker: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is the Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and University Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University. Her books include They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of Jewish Life in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt) and Image Before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki), among others. She was decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of the Republic of Poland for her contribution to the creation of POLIN Museum. </video> <video> My Wishes for the Future of Birobidzhan Description: Sofya Kirillova, preschool teacher from Birobidzhan, describes her hopes for increased interest in the Yiddish language and in the city of Birobidzhan itself. To see the full interview and learn more about the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0001432/sofya-kirillova-2021 </video> <video> Di Yerushe: A Yiddish Poem About Aaron Lansky Description: Sarah Moskovitz, z"l, professor of education and poet, reads her Yiddish poem about and reflects on Aaron Lansky's work collecting Yiddish books from elders and building the Yiddish Book Center. To see the full interview with Sarah Moskovitz, z"l, and Irving Moskovitz and to learn more about the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0001508/sarah-moskovitz-irving-moskovitz-2022 </video> <video> “I Was Like a Prophet!”: Simultaneous (Whispered) Translation for Friends at the Yiddish Theater Description: Lara Lempert, head of the Judaica Research Center at the Documentary Heritage Department in the National Library of Lithuania, tells about attending Yiddish plays in Vilnius and simultaneously translating them for new friends. To see the full interview and learn more about the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, visit: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0001250/lara-lempert-2019 </video> <video> What Does Resistance Look Like to You?: Reflecting on Truth-Telling Description: Shivaun Woolfson—writer, historian, counselor and therapist—explains what resistance looks like in her life and in the lives of the people she interviewed in Eastern Europe for her project called Holocaust Legacy in Post-Soviet Lithuania: People, Places, and Objects. To see the full interview and learn more about the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, visit: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0001565/shivaun-woolfson-2023 </video> <video> Anita Norich in conversation with Lisa Newman Description: Sunday, September 15, 2:00 p.m. ET, at the Yiddish Book Center and streamed live via Zoom Anita Norich in conversation about her recently released translation of Yiddish writer Celia Dropkin’s Desires (White Goat Press). In Desires, as in much of her work, Dropkin reflects on the complexities of love, eroticism, and domesticity. Through characters carefully drawn from her own immigrant experience, Dropkin addresses the yearnings of both the body and mind, the tension between excitement and security, and the conflicting impulses that are part of the human condition. Anita Norich will be in conversation with Lisa Newman, the Yiddish Book Center’s Director of Publishing and Public Programs. Following their conversation there will be a Q&A and a book signing. About the speaker: Anita Norich is Collegiate Professor Emerita at the University of Michigan. She is a scholar and translator of Yiddish literature who has written and taught about American Jewish and Yiddish literature and literature of the Holocaust. She earned her Ph.D. in Victorian literature from Columbia University and studied Yiddish literature at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Anita is an alumna of the Yiddish Book Center’s Translation Fellowship. In addition to her translation of Celia Dropkin’s Desires (White Goat Press), she also translated Kadya Molodovsky’s A Jewish Refugee in America. Other books by Anita include The Homeless Imagination in the Fiction of Israel Joshua Singer; Discovering Exile: Yiddish and Jewish Culture in America During the Holocaust; and Writing in Tongues: Translating Yiddish in the 20th Century. She is also co-editor of Gender and Text in Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature; Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext; and Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures: Comparative Perspectives. </video> <video> Curating Yiddish Culture with David Mazower Description: Join us for a talk with David Mazower, the Yiddish Book Center’s research bibliographer and the chief curator and writer of the Center’s acclaimed permanent exhibition, Yiddish: A Global Culture. David will share his favorite objects and images from the exhibition, stories of the search for original artifacts, and reflections on how the exhibition speaks to us about the past, present, and future of Yiddish culture and community. </video> <video> Teaching Jewish Culture to Preschoolers in Birobidzhan Description: Sofya Kirillova, preschool teacher from Birobidzhan, describes the development of a curriculum on Jewish culture for preschoolers and sings one of the Yiddish songs they teach the children. To see the full interview and to learn more about the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral history Project: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0001432/sofya-kirillova-2021 </video> <video> The Yiddish Book Center is on Bloomberg Connects Description: The Yiddish Book Center is on Bloomberg Connects! Watch a short tutorial with Caleb Sher, Richard S. Herman Endowed Senior Fellow, to learn about the free app and how to access the Yiddish Book Center’s digital guide from anywhere in the world. </video> <video> "Yiddish is Indispensable!" Description: Lara Lempert, head of the Judaica Research Center at the Documentary Heritage Department in the National Library of Lithuania, discusses the importance of considering Yiddish when thinking about Jewish culture. To see the full interview and learn more about the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, visit: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0001250/lara-lempert-2019 </video> <video> “The First Yiddish War Reporter”: Aaron Lansky and Deborah A. Green on S. L. Shneiderman (1906-1996) Description: Translator Deborah A. Green and Lisa Newman, director of White Goat Press (the Yiddish Book Center's imprint), talk about the recent recently released Journey Through the Spanish Civil War (White Goat Press 2024) by poet, translator and literary journalist S. L. Shneiderman (1906-1996), translated by Deborah A. Green. Aaron Lansky, Yiddish Book Center founder and president, gives an introduction prior to the conversation. This event took place live at the Grolier Club on June 25, 2024. Shneiderman’s coverage of the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War earned him the moniker “the first Yiddish war reporter.” With his wife, Eileen, he became one of the 20th century’s most influential Yiddish journalists and a pillar of New York’s Yiddish literary and journalistic community. His book on the Spanish Civil War was published in 1938 (two years before he immigrated to the U.S.) as Krig in shpanyen: hinterland. The Yiddish Book Center's White Goat Press is bringing out its first appearance in English. Deborah A. Green is a native Yiddish speaker and translator, author, and attorney. Her research focuses on Jewish participation in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and with Polish partisan groups during WWII. Her translations of Yiddish letters written by Jewish fighters have been featured in anthologies, magazines, and journals. Aaron Lansky is founder and president of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., a nonprofit organization working to recover, celebrate, and regenerate Yiddish and modern Jewish literature and culture. White Goat Press, the Center’s imprint, publishes newly translated work in all genres of fiction and nonfiction. The Center grew out of Lansky’s discovery in the late 1970s of vast numbers of Yiddish books being discarded by younger Jews who could not read their ancestors’ language. Since his first public appeal for unwanted Yiddish books in 1980, when scholars believed just 70,000 volumes were extant and recoverable, more than a million volumes have been gathered at the Center. Lansky has earned degrees from Hampshire College, McGill University, Amherst College, the State University of New York, and Hebrew Union College; received a so-called “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation in 1989; and wrote a bestseller in 2005, Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books. </video> <video> I Didn't Think About Being Jewish Growing Up Description: Lara Lempert, head of the Judaica Research Center at the Documentary Heritage Department in the National Library of Lithuania, reflects on her sense of identity growing up in Soviet-era Ukraine. To see the full interview and learn more about the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, visit: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0001250/lara-lempert-2019 </video> <video> How to use a Yiddish Typewriter Description: Yiddish: A Global Culture, the Yiddish Book Center's landmark permanent exhibition, features an interactive Yiddish typewriter for visitors to practice their typing skills on. Don’t know where to start? Watch a tutorial with Caleb Sher, Richard S. Herman Endowed Senior Fellow, who gave a demonstration of the typewriter in action, along with some tips for first timers. </video> <video> Prayer Behind a Curtain: A Fear of Religion Growing Up in Soviet Times Description: Lara Lempert, head of the Judaica Research Center at the Documentary Heritage Department in the National Library of Lithuania, explains her childhood fear of her grandmother’s Soviet-era prayer book. To see the full interview and learn more about the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, visit: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/oral-histories/interviews/woh-fi-0001250/lara-lempert-2019 </video>

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The Yiddish Book Center recovers, preserves, teaches, and celebrates Yiddish literature and culture to advance a fuller understanding of Jewish history and identity. The Center engages diverse, worldwide audiences, generating enthusiasm, knowledge, and commitment to the history and future of Yiddish and Jewish culture. We invite you to explore our collection of recorded virtual public programs and extensive oral histories.

Many videos on this channel are excerpts from in-depth video interviews with native Yiddish speakers, world-renowned klezmer musicians, grandmothers, descendants of Yiddish writers, students, and more from the Center's Wexler Oral History Project. The interviews are focused life histories, covering family background, involvement with Yiddish language and culture, Jewish identity, and the transmission of culture and values across generations and communities. You can find the full interviews on our website: http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/tell-your-story

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