When Yiddish was Young in Israel

Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series See all lectures » Admission: Free Watch the video

Shachar Pinsker | Delivered in English.

Focusing on “Yung Yisroel” (Young Israel), the name of a group of Yiddish writers in 1950s–1960s Israel, this talk will examine the history of Yiddish as it played out in cultural production. Shachar Pinsker studies the writers in Israel—some are well-known; others are less-studied—who continued to write and publish in Yiddish, and he explains the influence of Yiddish on Hebrew cultural production from the establishment of the state in 1948 until today. Pinsker will show why the Israeli culture of the past and the present, from literature, journalism, visual art, film, to popular culture, cannot be fully understood without considering the pervasive role of Yiddish. Taking Yiddish in Israel seriously shines new light on Israel and its population, from landscape to language, from collective memory to contemporary identities.

About the Speaker

Shachar Pinsker is Professor of Judaic Studies and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan and Associate Director of the school's Frankel Center for Judaic Studies. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Jewish Research. His scholarly writings include two award-winning books , Literary Passports: The Making of Modernist Hebrew Fiction in Europe (2011) and A Rich Brew: How Cafés Created Modern Jewish Culture (2018). He is currently writing a book on Yiddish in Israeli literature and co-directing the NEH-supported research project The Feuilleton, the Public Sphere, and Modern Jewish Cultures.