Free as a Jew: A New Memoir by Ruth Wisse

Book Talk Co-sponsored by the Yiddish Book Center Admission: Free Watch the video

In her new book, Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, Harvard professor emerita Ruth R. Wisse reflects on her experience fleeing the Holocaust as a child, living through the birth of the State of Israel, and teaching Yiddish literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University for more than 20 years. Wisse’s reminiscences include stories about growing up in the Jewish community of Montreal and vivid memories of meeting and interacting with great figures of the Yiddish cultural world such as Itzik Manger, Avrom Sutzkever, Chaim Grade, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Rokhl Korn, Max and Uriel Weinreich, Lucy Dawidowicz, and Irving Howe, as well as luminaries Leonard Cohen and Norman Podhoretz. Join YIVO for a discussion of Wisse’s new book focusing on the Yiddish and literary side of Wisse’s fascinating story. A special collaboration with the Yiddish Book Center, this event will feature Wisse in conversation with author and founder of the Yiddish Book Center, Aaron Lansky.

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About the Speakers

Ruth R. Wisse was Professor of Yiddish literature and Comparative Literature at Harvard University from 1993–2014 and before that, helped found the Jewish Studies Department at McGill University. Currently a senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund and recipient of its Herzl Prize, she has written widely on cultural and political subjects for the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, National Affairs, and other publications. Her books include The Schlemiel as Modern Hero, The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Literature and Culture, No Joke: Making Jewish Humor, If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews, and Jews and Power. In 2007, she was awarded the National Medal for the Humanities, and in 2004, an Honorary Degree by Yeshiva University.

Aaron Lansky is founder and president of the Yiddish Book Center. He holds a BA in modern Jewish history from Hampshire College and an MA in East European Jewish studies from McGill University, where he studied with Professor Wisse in the late 1970s. Over the years Mr. Lansky has received numerous awards and recognitions for his groundbreaking work to recover, digitize, translate, and celebrate modern Yiddish literature and culture, including honorary doctorates from Amherst College, the State University of New York, and Hebrew Union College, and a so-called “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation. His bestselling book, Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books, won the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction.