Dear Friends,
As many of you already know, the League for Yiddish has big news. After 15 years, our devoted executive director/editor-in-chief of Afn Shvel Sheva Zucker is retiring. Sheva was instrumental in reshaping Afn Shvel into the beautiful magazine it is today. She, together with renowned film director Josh Waletzky, has brought Yiddish language and literature to thousands through our film project Worlds within a World: Conversations with Yiddish Writers. In addition, she created a student adaptation of Sholem Aleichem’s classic Motl the Cantor’s Son and launched and organized “A Tog Yidish,” our day-long seminar series in Yiddish on a variety of topics. A committed Yiddish teacher, she will, among other things. be busy developing pedagogical projects in conjunction with the League for Yiddish.
L’Dor v’Dor – From one generation to the next
Taking over the executive director and editor-in-chief positions at the League for Yiddish are two young, dynamic Yiddish scholars and activists. This generational change is confirmation of the goals of our founder Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter who believed that Yiddish language and culture must be actively passed down to younger generations.
Our new editor-in chief, Dr. Miriam Trinh, teaches Yiddish and Yiddish literature at Hebrew University and has served on the faculty of many international summer courses. In 2018 she and Eliezer Niborski founded “Yo”-Yidish-Ort, a center for Yiddish language and culture in Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem. She has been a frequent contributor to Afn Shvel.
Our new executive director, Noah Barrera, is a Yiddish teacher, writer and translator. Most recently he was coordinator of the international Yiddish program at the Workmen’s Circle. His English translation of Abraham Rechtman’s memoirs of Sh. An-sky’s ethnographic expedition in 1912, completed in conjunction with Dr. Nathaniel Deutsch, will be published next year by Indiana University Press.
We will be honoring all of them at a celebration on Sunday, March 1, 2020, at 2 P.M., at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 15 West 16th St. in NYC.
Please mark your calendars and come join us there.
Although that would have been dayeynu, we have even more great news!
Online English-Yiddish Dictionary – Our Comprehensive English-Yiddish Dictionary is now online! This online version offers a number of features not available in a printed dictionary, such as bidirectional search (E➞Y and Y➞E), the option to search in transliteration, and regular vocabulary updates. Learn more and subscribe at englishyiddishdictionary.com/
Verter fun der Vokh – Our “Words of the Week” reach thousands of people each week on social media with our series of thematic wordlists on a variety of current topics, from transgender identity to measles to impeachment. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter (@yidishlige) to see more content and enhance your Yiddish vocabulary! http://leagueforyiddish.org/
And, of course, Afn Shvel – Our Yiddish cultural-literary magazine is now entering its 79th year. You can now access many of our articles with glossaries at leagueforyiddish.org/
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