Celebrating Yiddish Voices: YIVO’s New Translation Series

Book Talk & Performance In Person: Admission: Free Zoom Livestream: Admission: Free Watch the video

Yiddish Voices is an exciting new series of translated works that connects today’s readers with Yiddish literature, in its full range of authors, genres, and subject matter. Published in partnership with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and Bloomsbury Academic, each volume presents a rich and engaging literary work in English translation with a well-matched historian’s introduction, one that is both erudite and readable. Expertly curated by Alyssa Quint and Elissa Bemporad, the series is organized to showcase first-time translations of enduring Yiddish texts—memoirs, novels, and plays—from which arise topics and themes that have powerful resonance today.

The first volume of Yiddish Voices, Three Yiddish Plays by Women, brings together plays penned in Russia, Poland, and the United States from over a century ago. Each play grapples with enduring women’s issues, including motherhood, pregnancy and abortion, financial independence, and self-realization, and each from a woman’s perspective.

Join YIVO as we celebrate the launch of Yiddish Voices, complete with performances of scenes from the first volume of the series led by Alyssa Quint and discussion with editors and translators Allen Lewis Rickman, Zissel Piazza, and Miro Mniewski.

Buy the book.

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