After the Second World War, Yiddish culture appeared all but annihilated. The murder of large numbers of Yiddish speakers during the Shoah, which came after almost a century of linguistic assimilation among of Ashkenazic Jews, seemed to mark the end of Yiddish as a living language. This caused serious concern among remaining Yiddish intellectuals such as authors, journalists, theatre and film makers and educators, who began to question how and if the use of the Yiddish language was to be continued.

During this symposium, three scholars of Yiddish literature and culture will present important observations and considerations regarding the state and future of Yiddish after the end of the Second World War. Gali Drucker Bar-Am will map out major Yiddish cultural enterprises that took place around the world in the immediate post-war years. Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov will describe and analyze Yiddish activities in Poland, a country with state-sponsored Jewish institutions, in the two decades following the Second World War. Anita Norich will talk about the role of translation: translation as the herald of the end of a living Yiddish culture or as a means of preservation of this culture that enables it to continue to flourish.

Het Menasseh ben Israel Instituut organiseert voor de elfde maal, dit keer in samenwerking met de Abteilung für Jiddische Kultur, Sprache und Literatur at the Heinrich Heine Universität Düsselfdorf, het Amsterdam Yiddish Symposium met de volgende lezingen: 

Gali Drucker Bar-Am (Tel Aviv University)

Memory, Lament and Endurance in Early Post WWII Yiddish Culture

Joanna Nalewajko-Kulikov (Polish Academy of Sciences)

Yiddish Form, Socialist Content: Yiddish in Postwar Poland, 1945-1968

Anita Norich (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)

“Ver Vet Blaybn? Vos Vet Blaybn?” (Who Will Remain? What Will Remain?)

Datum:               donderdag 19 januari 2017, 13.00-17.30 uur

Plaats:                VOC zaal in het Oost-Indisch Huis, Kloveniersburgwal 48, Amsterdam

Kosten:               € 10,-; voor studenten en donateurs van het instituut  € 5.-

Voertaal:            Engels          

Inschrijving:        via email, telefonisch 020-5310325 of webformulier. 

Voor meer informatie, klik hier.