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Essays, interviews, listicles, podcasts, and much more, covering all aspects of Yiddish culture.

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Behind the Scenes: Vaybertaytsh’s “Farvos” Series and the Making of “Mameloshn Academy?”

On mak­ing com­mu­ni­ty and a Yid­dish fem­i­nist pod­cast, or: where the acad­e­my ends and the self begins. 

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Feminist Dybbuks in Melbourne: Possession, Desire and Voice

In August 2018, Aus­tralian the­atre mak­er and direc­tor Sama­ra Her­sch, along with Cham­ber Made, a com­pa­ny oper­at­ing at the nexus of con­tem­po­rary per­for­mance, music and sound’, pre­sent­ed Dyb­buks – a pro­duc­tion in three acts explor­ing ideas of pos­ses­sion; of women being with the dead; of desire, rit­u­al, and voice. Here, Nico­la Menser Hearn reviews the pro­duc­tion and dis­cuss­es it with Hersch.


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The 2087th Question or When Silence Is the Only Answer

What kind of life will there be after the Res­ur­rec­tion of the Dead? 

I may not believe in an after­life or in res­ur­rec­tions, but I do believe that cul­tures can be reawak­ened and revived in new generations. 

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Discovering Di Froyen

The fabled book­let Di Froyen Women and Yid­dish: Trib­ute to the Past, Direc­tions for the Future: Con­fer­ence Pro­ceed­ings, pub­lished in 1997, which records the Di froyen con­fer­ence held Octo­ber 28 – 29, 1995, reminds us of the conference’s lega­cy as a turn­ing point for women in Yid­dish. More than that, it under­scores par­tic­i­pants’ vision­ary goals and uphill work to achieve them. It also rais­es ques­tions of gen­der, lan­guage, and pow­er that con­tin­ue to ani­mate con­tem­po­rary fem­i­nist Yid­dishist debates.

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How to Suppress Yiddish Women’s Writing

Joan­na Russ’ 1983 schemat­ic of strate­gies and dynam­ics that sup­press wom­en’s writ­ing — along with some addi­tions spe­cif­ic to mod­ern Yid­dish cul­ture — helps explain both the his­tor­i­cal sup­pres­sion of Yid­dish women writ­ers and more recent chal­lenges to fem­i­nist schol­ar­ship on wom­en’s Yid­dish writ­ing. Faith Jones guides us to make the Yid­dish future togeth­er, and to make our place in it.

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Daughterhood

A lyri­cal essay on rela­tion­ships between a trans­la­tor and pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tions: Liba Augen­feld, a native Yid­dish speak­er who lived in Vil­na before the Holo­caust and could share lin­guis­tic and cul­tur­al knowl­edge she knew first hand, and the trans­la­tor’s own moth­er who had a con­flict­ed rela­tion­ship with Yiddish.

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“We Collected Everything”: An Interview with Frieda Johles Forman

An inter­view with a pio­neer­ing Yid­dish fem­i­nist translator.

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