Duane tours the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusettes, and meets with its founder Aaron Lansky, author of the book "Outwitting History."
Yiddish was a spoken language for over a thousand years before authors began to write with it in the late 1800s. In choosing to write in Yiddish, rather than in Hebrew or the local language (be it Polish, Russian, German, etc), authors could target their audience and address "Jewishness" and Jewish themes in a naturally familiar way. After over half the Yiddish-speaking population was murdered in the Holocaust, immigrants began to assimilate linguistically to their new environment, and Yiddish as a language, culture, and literature was almost lost. In the late 1970s, Aaron Lansky led an effort to save Yiddish books by creating the Yiddish Book Center.
#Yiddishbooks #jewishculture #literarymasterpiece #language #yiddishbookcenter #aaronlansky
Visit: www.yiddishbookcenter.org
In this episode:
00:00 - Introduction
02:03 - History of the Yiddish Book Center
06:56 - What is Yiddish, and how does it sound?
08:52 - A tour of the main repository
11:33 - Sholem Aleichem, author of the stories that inspired "Fiddler on the Roof"
12:24 - A peek into the Vault, special collections and rare finds
19:17 - Yiddish today
20:48 - Creating the Digital Yiddish Library www.yiddishbooks.org
23:08 - Exit through the Gift Shop
Негізгі бет Celebrating Yiddish Literature at the Yiddish Book Center (Amherst, MA)
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