Oct 31, 2024
Twenty-six years ago, the first Symposium for Yiddish Studies in Germany was held at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, organized by Marion Aptroot (HHU) and Erika Timm (University of Trier). Since then, the Symposium has taken place annually, hosted alternatively by the chairs for Yiddish Studies in Düsseldorf and Trier and organized together by the two institutions. When Timm retired, this role was taken on by her successor Simon Neuberg in 2002. Although other Yiddish Studies conferences are held in Germany, such as the YiLaS: Yiddish Language Structures conference (University of Regensburg in 2009 and at HHU in 2019) and the Thinking Europe in Yiddish conference (HHU in 2018), the annual Symposium plays a unique role for Yiddish in Germany. It is not merely that an annual conference fosters a sense of community among the German and international scholars who attend regularly; the symposium also stands out as a conference where all talks are given in Yiddish or German. Participants are confronted with the limits and possibilities for communication between these two historically-intertwined languages — in a setting that avoids the frequent reliance on English in academic spaces. As a result of the language options and conference location, the symposium is a unique opportunity to learn about the research directions prevalent in German Yiddish Studies and to hear academic Yiddish in action.
This year’s conference (see the conference program here) marked the end of an era: the last time Aptroot would be hosting the conference in Düsseldorf before her upcoming retirement. With this in mind, I decided to attend this year’s conference and support a scholar who has long been one of my mentors. Over a career spanning over four decades, Aptroot has played a pivotal role in Yiddish Studies in Germany and in Europe more broadly, through her research on Early Modern Yiddish especially in Amsterdam, her (co-authored or co-edited) books, including Storm in the Community: Yiddish Polemical Pamphlets of Amsterdam Jewry, 1797-1798, editions of Isaak Wetzler’s call for reform of Jewish society Libes briv and Isaac Euchel’s Enlightenment comedy Reb Henoch, oder: Woß tut me damit, a textbook aimed at German speakers, and a history of Yiddish for a German general readership, as well as for her involvement in the Amsterdam Yiddish Symposium and the Leo Baeck Institute jury, and more. Aptoot’s mentorship of Early Career scholars has also been influential; those she supervised as students or postdocs have gone on to positions in Yiddish Studies at the Heidelberg University of Jewish Studies (Roland Gruschka), University of Kassel (Lea Schäfer), and Lund University (Oren Cohen Roman). I would also include myself (and UCL) on this list, having spent a year as a visiting Fulbright student supervised by Aptroot, and I have fond memories of classes taught by her and her colleagues on topics such as Yiddish literature and culture before 1800 and Yiddish language standardization. Recognizing the value of Aptroot’s chair, the university has committed to a search for a new professor. We can look forward to a conference hosted by interim chair Marc Caplan in Düsseldorf in 2026.
Marion Aptroot delivers opening remarks. Photo: Sonia Gollance.
The symposium showcased a number of themes, some of which (such as linguistics and Early Modern Yiddish) take a particularly prominent role in Yiddish Studies in Germany. While some of the panels tended to focus on one topic (such as Early Yiddish romances, Yiddish language standardization, or Yiddish culture in Soviet bloc countries), the sessions did not have explicit titles or themes and sometimes seemed to be grouped as much by language as by topic. Most speakers were based in various parts of Germany (with particularly strong representation from Düsseldorf, Berlin, and Mannheim), but participants also hailed from Austria, Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States (some of these participants attended without giving talks or chairing, a testament to the enthusiasm for sharing Yiddish research in Yiddish). The group was remarkably diverse in terms of academic rank, as it included MA and PhD students, independent scholars, museum professionals, and academic faculty in various positions and points in their career. Roughly half of the talks were delivered in Yiddish and half in German (panel chairs opted to either introduce all the speakers in one language or switch based on the language of the talk), with audience members often but not always asking questions in the language which the speaker used for the talk itself. Not surprisingly, most of the German-language talks were delivered by speakers from institutions in Germany, whereas speakers from abroad and independent scholars were more likely to give their talks in Yiddish. Without a keynote lecture or formal cultural program, the conference was squarely focused on the sharing of ideas between peers: in sessions, in the coffee breaks, during lunch in the university cafeteria. And, of course, this sharing of ideas also meant an emphasis on (speaking) Yiddish.
Some of the talks I found most memorable involved resources for Yiddish (especially in Germany), and in this respect these talks underscored how a conference can be a way of informing people about exciting developments in academic Yiddishland. Talks such as Mirjam Gutschow’s presentation about using Transkribus to recognize old Yiddish texts and Jürg Fleischer’s discussion of sound recordings of the Yiddish speech of Jewish World War I-era prisoners of war by the Prussian Phonographic Commission gave participants a sense of the kind of materials available for doing Yiddish research. Other talks informed attendees about new developments in Yiddish in Germany that they might want to take part in, such as Carmen Reichert and Malin Drees’s presentations about the upcoming “Yiddish, Jewish, Taytsh” exhibition at the Jewish Museum Augsburg Swabia and Jake Schneider’s overview of the “Shmues un vayn” conversation group he established in Berlin.
The conference involved a good mix of papers on more canonical and less-studied topics and protagonists. For instance, one theater-related paper addressed unexpected connections between well-known plays by Avrom Goldfadn and Sh. An-ski (Caplan), whereas another introduced attendees to the nineteenth-century farce Dem falschen Kaschtun (Daniel S. Katz). Talks explored translation into Early Modern Italian (Claudia Rosenzweig) and 1960s Czech (Marie Krappmann). Jerusalem appeared as the setting of Khonen Ayalti’s first novel (Adi Mahalel) and as a place where you can buy food with Yiddish on the labels (Roman). While the overwhelming majority of talks addressed contributions made by Yiddish-speaking men, the two talks that focused on women writers (Julia Koifman on Rosa Palatnik and Jordan Lee Schnee on his edition of Debora Vogel’s poetry) both involved works published in Latin America. A Symposium on Yiddish Studies in Germany upsets — almost by necessity — the idea of Warsaw and New York as the centers of Yiddishland, and a number of the papers included in the conference reflected new scholarly directions that challenge us to consider the breadth of Yiddish Studies today.
The Symposium for Yiddish Studies in Germany is a unique conference that reflects the possibilities that are available with two linguistically-related languages. For those who appreciate the interplay of Yiddish and German, it invites you to imagine a world where these two languages exist side by side, which is something I have always greatly enjoyed when doing Yiddish Studies in Germany.
While the conference itself was, in this respect, a utopian space, it took place against the backdrop of a world in turmoil. The week of the conference was politically intense one in Germany and internationally, marked by the murder of six Israeli hostages by Hamas, amidst what had by that point been almost a year of Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza with no end in sight, and the electoral success of the far-right Alternative for Germany party in Saxony and Thuringia. While these incidents did not become matters of public debate at the conference, Caplan did dedicate his talk to those suffering from the war, regardless of side.. World events were also felt in a very concrete way in the makeup of the conference: none of the speakers who were based in Israel were able to attend in person.
Next year, in Trier, one hopes for a shenere un besere velt.
