YIVO Presents: Are We in the Midst of a Yiddish Renaissance?

(New York, NY) – On Wednesday, June 1, 2022 at 1:00pm (ET), the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research presents Are We in the Midst of a Yiddish Renaissance? Join YIVO on Zoom 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.

YIVO is frequently asked if we are currently experiencing a Yiddish renaissance. 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. This conversation will explore the increased demand for Yiddish language classes and what it means for Yiddish in the 21st century.

When:           Wednesday, June 1, 2022 at 1:00pm (ET)
Where:          Live on Zoom
Reservations Available at:  yivo.org/Yiddish-Renaissance

For more information contact:
Alex Weiser
Director of Public Programs

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).

YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story