Are We In The Midst Of A Yiddish Renaissance?

Panel Discussion Admission: Free Watch the video

Are we currently experiencing a Yiddish renaissance? This is one of the questions we are often asked at YIVO. YIVO’s own community of Yiddish learners has expanded more than 10-fold in the last two years. Duolingo has added Yiddish as a language. Headline after headline touts Yiddish as unexpectedly alive and well. What does this all mean for Yiddish in the 21st century?

Join YIVO for a conversation about the Yiddish world today. Led by YIVO’s Director of Public Programs Alex Weiser, this program will feature journalist and playwright Rokhl Kafrissen, scholar and In Geveb Editor-in-chief Jessica Kirzane, scholar and Yiddish podcast founder and host Sandra Fox, and YIVO’s Director of Education Ben Kaplan.

About the Speakers

Sandra Fox is a historian of American Jewish history, Jewish youth and childhood, and Yiddish culture. A senior researcher in the Concentration in Education & Jewish Studies at Stanford University, her forthcoming book, The Jews of Summer, addresses the lived experiences of youth in postwar Jewish summer camps and the role of intergenerational negotiation in the making of American Jewish culture (Stanford University Press, Winter 2023). She is also in the early stages of research on young Jews who joined new religious movements from the 1960s through the 1990s, and on the intense “anti-cult” response of American Jewish organizations.

Sandra received her doctorate from New York University’s joint program in History and Hebrew Judaic Studies in 2018. In addition to her research, Sandra is the founder and executive producer of the Yiddish-language podcast Vaybertaytsh, and is a peer-review editor at In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies.

Rokhl Kafrissen is a journalist and playwright in New York City. Her ‘Rokhl’s Golden City’ column began appearing in Tablet in 2017, the only regular feature in the world dedicated to new Yiddish culture in all its iterations. Her op-eds on feminism, sociology and Jewish life appear in newspapers all over the world. She was a 2019-2020 14th Street Y LABA fellow, for which she wrote Shtumer Shabes (Silent Sabbath), a black comedy about the dangers of ethnography and human experimentation.

Ben Kaplan runs the educational programs at YIVO, which include the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture, the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization, and the Shine Online Educational Series. He studied at Williams College, the Middlebury School of Hebrew, and now at YIVO, where he makes a point to speak Yiddish every day.

Jessica Kirzane is the assistant instructional professor of Yiddish at the University of Chicago. She is the Editor-in-Chief for In Geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. Her academic work has appeared in the Journal of Jewish Identities, Zutot, American Jewish History, Judaism: Race, and Ethics: Conversations and Questions (Penn State University Press, 2020) and The Sacred Encounter: Jewish Perspectives in Sexuality (CCAR Press, 2014) and her translations have been published in jewishfiction.net, Jewish Currents, Columbia Journal, Pakn Treger, Your Impossible Voice, and elsewhere. She is the translator of Miriam Karpilove's Diary of a Lonely Girl, or the Battle Against Free Love (Syracuse UP, 2019). Kirzane was a 2017 Translation Fellow and an 2018 Pedagogy Fellow at the Yiddish Book Center. She earned her PhD in Yiddish Studies from Columbia University in 2017.

Alex Weiser is the Director of Public Programs at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research where he curates and produces programs combining a fascination with and curiosity for historical context, with an eye toward influential Jewish contributions to the culture of today and tomorrow. Born and raised in NYC, Weiser is also an active composer of contemporary classical music. In his capacity as a composer Weiser has been praised as having a “sophisticated ear and knack for evoking luscious textures and imaginative yet approachable harmonies,” (I Care If You Listen) and his music has been described as “compelling” (New York Times), and “shapely, melody-rich” (Wall Street Journal).

An energetic advocate for contemporary classical music and for the work of his peers, before joining the team at YIVO Weiser was for nearly five years a director of the MATA Festival, the “the city’s leading showcase for vital new music by emerging composers” (The New Yorker), and co-founded and directs Kettle Corn New Music, an “engaging” (New York Times) series acclaimed for capturing “all of the prestige” that contemporary classical music has to offer, with “none of the pomp” (Feast of Music).