Psychoanalysis and Jewish Languages

Book Talk Admission: Free Registration is required. Register

There is an academic interest in the "Jewish Freud," aiming to detect Jewish influences on Freud, his own feelings about being Jewish, and suppressed traces of Jewishness in his thought. This book takes a different approach, turning its gaze not on Freud but rather on those who seek out his concealed Jewishness. What is it that propels the scholarly aim to show Freud in a Jewish light? Naomi Seidman explores attempts to "touch" Freud (and other famous Jews) through Jewish languages, seeking out his Hebrew name or evidence that he knew some Yiddish. Tracing a history of this drive to bring Freud into Jewish range, Seidman also charts Freud's responses to (and jokes about) this desire. More specifically, she reads the reception and translation of Freud in Hebrew and Yiddish as instances of the desire to touch, feel, "rescue," and connect with the famous professor from Vienna.

Join YIVO for a discussion with Seidman about this newly published book, led by scholar Ken Frieden.

Buy the book.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. 

About the Speakers

Naomi Seidman is the Jackman Humanities Professor at the University of Toronto, in the Department for the Study of Religion and the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies. Her fourth book, Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition, won a National Jewish Book Award in Women's Studies in 2019. Her podcast on leaving the ultra-Orthodox Jewish world, Heretic in the House, was recently released by the Shalom Hartman Institute.

Ken Frieden is the B.G. Rudolph Professor of Judaic Studies at Syracuse University. He takes a comparative literature approach to Yiddish and Hebrew writing, in the broader contexts of European and world literature. From this perspective, he recently completed a book on Travel and Translation in Jewish Literature. His past books include: Classic Yiddish Stories of S.Y. Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and I.L. Peretz (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2004); Classic Yiddish Fiction: Abramovitsh, Sholem Aleichem, and Peretz (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995); Freud’s Dream of Interpretation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990); Genius and Monologue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). Frieden also edits a series (with Harold Bloom), Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art, at Syracuse University Press. In addition to working in the fields of Yiddish, Hebrew, and Comparative Literature, he is active as a Klezmer clarinetist.