Lecture | Other Zions: From Freeland to Yiddishland

The League for Yiddish/Afn Shvel magazine, in conjunction with the YIVO Institute, is pleased to invite all interested parties to a special opening program and exhibit in honor of several important anniversaries: the 70th year of publication for the all-Yiddish Afn Shvel; the 30th anniversary of Afn Shvel's current publisher, the League for Yiddish; and the 75th anniversary of the founding of Afn Shvel's first publisher, the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization.

The program will feature the following short talks:

"No Land Without Heaven: Yitskhok Nakhmen Steinberg and the Freeland League," Dr. Adam Rovner/ Rovner is Assistant Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver. He is currently writing an intellectual history of territorial solutions to Jewish homelessness. Since 2007 he has traveled to England, Israel, Kenya, Madagascar, Suriname, and Tasmania to trace the history of the Jewish political ideology of Territorialism. From 2007-2010, he served as the Hebrew translations editor for Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture. His articles, essays, translations, and interviews have appeared in numerous scholarly and general interest publications, including American History, The Forward, The Jewish Quarterly, Moment, and Words Without Borders.

"The Yiddish Imperative: From Freeland League to League for Yiddish," Dr. Rakhmiel Peltz. Peltz is Professor of Sociolinguistics and Director of the Judaic Studies Program at Drexel University. He is the author of From Immigrant to Ethnic Culture: American Yiddish in South Philadelphia (Stanford University Press: 1988). He has been a member of the League for Yiddish since its inception and is a former editor of Yugntruf - Youth for Yiddish magazine.
"If Pictures Could Talk: The Freeland Banquet of 1952," Dr. Cecile Kuznitz. Kuznitz is Assistant Professor of History at Bard College. She was a Miles Lerman Center for the Study of Jewish Resistance Fellow during the 2006–2007 academic year, and is currently writing a book on the YIVO Institute entitled YIVO and the Makings of Modern Jewish Scholarship, to be published by Cambridge University Press.

"The Changing Mission of a Yiddish Magazine: The History of Afn Shvel," Dr. Sheva Zucker. Zucker is current director of the League for Yiddish, and editor-in-chief of Afn Shvel. She is the author of the textbooks Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature & Culture, Vols. I & II. She has taught and lectured on Yiddish language, literature, and culture on five continents, including 13 years in the Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture in New York City, a program of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

"Yiddish Farm: A Modern-day Territorialist Project," Naftali Ejdelman. Ejdelman, a grandson of Dr. Mordkhe Schaechter, the founder of the League for Yiddish, is a native Yiddish speaker from New York City. He is one of the founders of Yiddish Farm, a new organization that integrates Yiddishism with environmentalism by establishing a Yiddish-immersion organic farm.

The lectures will be followed by a musical program featuring Yelena Shmulenson and Binyumen Schaechter in a rarely heard repertoire of songs about Jewish settlements, realized and unrealized, including Birobidzhan, Argentinian colonies, Madagascar, and Israel. Yelena Shmulenson (singer) is a Yiddish singer and actress whose film credits include A Serious Man (Yiddish scene), Life on Mars, and The Good Shepherd. Binyumen Schaechter (piano) is a Yiddish composer and performer, as well as conductor of the Jewish People’s Philharmonic Chorus (JPPC) and the Pripetshik Singers, an ensemble of native-Yiddish-speaking children.