Blog

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

Interview

Shotns -Shadows: Songs from Testimonies in the Fortunoff Video Archive, Volume III: An interview with D. Zisl Slepovitch

Meaghan Guter­man speaks with D. Zisl Sle­povich about his pow­er­ful col­lec­tion of albums based on songs from Holo­caust sur­vivor tes­ti­monies held at the For­tunoff Video Archive for Holo­caust Tes­ti­monies at Yale University.

Blog

Seen from Afar: Henry Kreisel’s and Yankev Glatshteyn’s 1930s Vienna

Reflec­tions on two works of fic­tion that pro­vid­ed an immer­sive ren­der­ing of Jew­ish per­se­cu­tion in 1930s Austria.

Blog

Veln di verter oykh nern: Continuing Vilna’s Legacy of Cultural Resistance

Veln Di Vert­er Oykh Nern (The Words Will Also Nour­ish) is a body of work, includ­ing an edi­tion of artist books and twelve accom­pa­ny­ing prints, that Etai Rogers-Fett cre­at­ed as an In geveb/​Fortunoff fel­low between Fall 2023 and Spring 2024. The work emerges from Paja L’s Yid­dish tes­ti­mo­ny about her expe­ri­ences as a young woman, teacher, and library work­er in the Vil­na Ghetto.

Blog

Julia Pirotte’s Yiddish

On the role of Yid­dish in the Holo­caust tes­ti­mo­ny of Julia Pirotte, a Pol­ish Jew­ish photographer.

Blog

Centering the Voice of the Witness

A mem­ber of the 2023 In geveb/​Fortunoff fel­low­ship cohort reflects on the ques­tion How can one eth­i­cal­ly use record­ed Holo­caust tes­ti­mo­ny as the basis for musi­cal composition?”

Blog

Multiple Voices, One Archive: In geveb and Fortunoff Archive Work to Encourage Scholarly and Artistic Interpretation of Yiddish Testimony

Intro­duc­ing essays describ­ing the projects that our fel­lows have under­tak­en to inter­pret mate­ri­als from the archive artis­ti­cal­ly, musi­cal­ly, and for educa­tive purposes.

Interview

Linguistic Treasures in the Archive: An Interview with Isaac L. Bleaman on the Corpus of Spoken Yiddish in Europe

The Cor­pus of Spo­ken Yid­dish in Europe, a dig­i­tal lan­guage archive sourced from Holo­caust sur­vivor tes­ti­monies from the USC Shoah Foun­da­tion, is a project fund­ed by a five-year CAREER Award from the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion that will serve as a resource for Yid­dish lin­guis­tics, ped­a­gogy, and lan­guage revitalization.

Blog

The Landsberg Carnival: Purim in a Displaced Persons Center

The tra­di­tion­al Purim atmos­phere of release, excite­ment, and per­mis­sive­ness was par­tic­u­lar­ly suit­ed to the emo­tion­al needs of the time.

Blog

Heritage Tourism in Poland, A Critique in Comedy: A Review of A Real Pain

Though this film square­ly fits into the grow­ing genre of films about the return of Jews to Poland, its engine is char­ac­ter, not history.

Blog

2023, the “Year of Chava Rosenfarb” in Lodz

A future beyond any­thing Rosen­farb dared to imag­ine is now present, and it exists along­side the painful past. 

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