Yiddish: Biography of a Language

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Jeffrey Shandler's new book, Yiddish: Biography of a Language, presents the story of Yiddish, the defining vernacular of Ashkenazi Jews, from its origins to the present. Shandler relates the multifaceted history of Yiddish in the form of a biographical profile. Through a series of thematic chapters—from “Name” and “Date and Place of Birth” to “Religion” and “Life Expectancy”—he offers surprising insights into the dynamic interrelation of the language, its speakers, and their culture and explores the varied symbolic investments that Yiddish speakers and others have made in the language. Join us for a conversation celebrating this new book with Jeffrey Shandler, Anita Norich, and Ayala Fader, moderated by YIVO's Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions Eddy Portnoy.

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About the Speakers

Jeffrey Shandler is Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. His publications include Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture (2005) and Shtetl: A Vernacular Intellectual History (2014); among other titles, he is editor of Awakening Lives: Autobiographies of Jewish Youth in Poland before the Holocaust (2002) and translator of Emil and Karl, a Holocaust novel for young readers by Yankev Glatshteyn (2006). Shandler has served as president of the Association for Jewish Studies and is a fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research.

Anita Norich is the Tikva Frymer-Kensky Collegiate Professor of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Writing in Tongues: Yiddish Translation in the 20th Century (2013), Discovering Exile: Yiddish and Jewish American Literature in America During the Holocaust (2007), The Homeless Imagination in the Fiction of Israel Joshua Singer (1991); and co-editor of Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures: Comparative Perspectives (2016), Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext (2008), and Gender and Text in Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literatures (1992). She translates Yiddish literature, and teaches, lectures, and publishes on a range of topics concerning modern Jewish cultures, Yiddish language and literature, Jewish American literature, and Holocaust literature.

Ayala Fader's ongoing research agenda ethnographically investigates contemporary North American Jewish identities and languages in urban centers. Fader's scholarship engages key issues at the intersection of the religion, Jewish Studies, gender and linguistic anthropology (including language and media). Fader's most recent book is Hidden Heretics: Jewish Doubt in the Digital Age (2020).

Eddy Portnoy is the Academic Advisor and Director of Exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. He is the author of Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford University Press 2017).