Beyond Nostalgia: Can Yiddish Continue to Shape Jewish Culture? Nahma Sandrow, Kathryn Hellerstein & Sarah Bunin Benor Recorded November & December, 2005

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This creative and thought-provoking three-week minicourse, featured noted scholars in the field of Yiddish language and culture. It explored the unique ways Yiddish influenced and shaped the evolution of Jewish culture for over one hundred years. We looked at samplings from theatre, poetry and songs that demonstrated the powerful ways in which Yiddish has made its mark on North American Jewry. Through the lens of each scholars’ area of expertise, Language and Culture, Yiddish Poetry and Song, and Yiddish Theatre, participants explored how Yiddish has and still does shape the Jewish landscape.

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Scholars' Bios

Dr. Nahma Sandrow wrote Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater and 'God, Man, and Devil': Yiddish Plays in Translation, as well as other books and articles about Yiddish and other theaters. She has lectured about Yiddish theater at Harvard, Brown, Oxford, the Young Directors Lab at Lincoln Center, the Smithsonian, and elsewhere and is a member of the Editorial Board of All About Jewish Theatre. She also wrote the "book" for two musical shows based on Yiddish theater materials, Vagabond Stars and Kuni-Leml. The latter won Outer Critics Circle awards, including the year's Best Off-Broadway Musical and Best Book of an Off-Broadway Musical; it ran nearly a year and has been revived several times. Her translation/edition of the Yiddish play Bronx Express was produced in New York City's Fringe Festival, 2005.

She writes features and reviews on a range of subjects for the New York Times, the Forward, the New York Sun, Playbill, and other publications. She was Professor of English at City University of New York. Daughter of a congregational rabbi, she has a son and daughter and lives with her husband in New York City.

Dr. Kathryn Hellerstein is the Ruth Meltzer Senior Lecturer in Yiddish and Jewish Studies and Undergraduate Director of the Jewish Studies Program at the University of Pennsylvania. Her books include a translation and study of Moyshe-Leyb Halpern's poems, In New York: A Selection, (Jewish Publication Society, 1982), Paper Bridges: Selected Poems of Kadya Molodowsky (Wayne State University Press, 1999), and Jewish American Literature: A Norton Anthology, of which she is co-editor (W. W. Norton, 2001). of which she is co-editor (W. W. Norton, 2001). She is also a major contributor to American Yiddish Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology (University of California Press, 1986). Her poems and many scholarly articles on Yiddish literature, and most recently, on women poets in Yiddish, have appeared in journals and anthologies. She has received grants from the NEA, the NEH, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Dr. Sarah Bunin Benor is Assistant Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion (Los Angeles campus) and Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Southern California. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. She teaches about the social science of American Jews, as well as about language and culture, and she has given lectures to Jewish groups around the country about Jewish languages, Yiddish, American Jews, and Orthodox Jews. She is currently working on a book entitled Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism. Dr. Benor edits the Jewish Language Research Website and moderates the Jewish Languages Mailing List, both of which she founded. In her spare time, she enjoys her husband, Mark, and two young children, Aliza and Dalia.

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