The latest in our Youtube series “Gehert a Mayse!/Have you heard?” is live! The Upside-Down World of Birobidzhan
In the summer of 2007, Sheva Zucker, editor of Afn Shvel from 2005-2020, was invited to teach Yiddish in Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East of Russia, where Yiddish is still an official language. There she found a kind of Yiddish Disneyland: menorahs on fences; buildings with Yiddish signs, where no one spoke Yiddish inside; Jewish restaurants where pork was the main dish; and government officials wanting to secure the teaching of Yiddish throughout the region, even in areas where not a single Jew could be found. In this recorded piece, she explores the tragic past and enigmatic present of this extraordinary, upside-down world.
The article, which appeared in Issue 342-343/Fall/Winter 2008 of Afn Shvel, published by the League for Yiddish, also appears in Sheva’s recent publication “Fun yener zayt shvel: Geklibene artiklen funem zhurnal Afn Shvel, 2005-2020” (On the Other Side of the Threshold: Selected Articles from the Magazine Afn Shvel), published by the League for Yiddish on the occasion of her retirement in March 2020.
This reading is an abridged version of the article and omits the following sections: “Di alte shul” (p. 14), “Di naye shul” (p. 15) and “Di tsukunft” (p. 24).
