Yiddish @ Sydney

THE FRIENDS OF THE SECULAR YIDDISH SCHOOLS
IN NORTH AMERICA COLLECTION
At Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special Collections

is pleased to announce that it is accepting applications for its
Annual Research Fellowship 2007-2008

The sum of $3-4,000 to be awarded to the applicant who will commit to at least a 2 month in-residence period (of choice) using the impressive multilingual resources (Yiddish, English and Hebrew) of the extensive SYSNA Archival Collection. Fluency in reading Yiddish is required. A substantive publishable paper or project in any of the three languages is one of the goals of this fellowship.

A distinguished panel of scholars in Jewish/Yiddish Studies, Education, Bilingualism and Ethnicity will review all applications.

The deadline for submission of applications (in triplicate) is May 15, 2007.
Notification of award will be no later than June 15, 2007.

For further information contact: Joshua A. Fishman

Mailing address: 3616 Henry Hudson Parkway #7B-N
Riverdale, NY 10463

Those of you who have either listened to me rave about The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay or have read the excerpt in the golem course, might be interested to know the following factoids:

• Michael Chabon will be on Tuesday's episode of The Simpsons
  
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union will finally be out on May 1. It will be a hardback release, so unless you order it from Amazon, maybe go to Kinokunya (not Borders, where exchange rates are of their own making.)
  
• The Final Solution: A Story of Detection is already available. Remember, it's a YA novel.
  

If you haven't read Kavalier and Clay, why not?

"Language: Go and figure it out for yourself"

by William Safire

The Language Mavenhood is becoming less pluralistically ignorant. ...

The reason for today's uncharacteristic cri du cerveau is the cache of e-mail that has come in from all over the world in response to a hook placed in this column two weeks ago fishing for the origin and meaning of the vogue expression go figure.

Click on the link above to read the whole article, including a supposition commonly held that the phrase "go figure" comes from Yiddish.

Which phrase will be discussed in Tuesday's class.

אַ ייִנגעלע , איציק, וויל זײַן אַ דריידל...

Professor George Brooke, the noted Dead Sea Scrolls expert from Manchester, England, will speak on "The Dead Sea Scrolls for the Next 60 Years", in light of the 60th anniversary of the discovery of the Scrolls.

The talk will be at Mandelbaum House on Wednesday, April the 11th, 2-4PM.

Note: this is the mid-semester break.

Along the Milky Way

Ha'aretz - Tel Aviv,Israel
Milky Way" was originally supposed to be the direct continuation of "Lemele," the wonderful album of Yiddish songs that Alberstein recorded early last year...
(This segues into her release of Hebrew lullabies instead of Yiddish ones.)

A talented 'Yunge' writer

Jerusalem Post - Jerusalem,Israel
Yiddish dreams about America as di goldene medine envisioned a new utopia that beckoned the Jews of Eastern Europe when their lives in the shtetl fell apart.
A review of the translation ofThe Cross and Other Jewish Stories by Lamed Shapiro.

Ashkenaz is in the house

Jerusalem Post - Jerusalem,Israel
For this show they [Oy Division] will be joined by vocalist Noam Inbar of the influential punk/folk ensemble Habiluim, who seems to have caught the Yiddish bug in a bad way.

The Short, Brilliant Life of the American Yiddish Theater

Jewish Theatre - Tel Aviv,Israel
Stefan Kanfer reminds us in his beautifully written new book, Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy, and Mishugas of the Yiddish Theater in America (Knopf, 352 pages, $26.95), that there was a brief moment in time, somewhere between the 1870s and the 1940s, when Yiddish theater was one of the most thriving, creative, and popular art forms in urban America.

Cabaret Act Revives Music of Warsaw

Jewish Theatre - Tel Aviv,Israel
On a frigid January evening in New York City, Rebecca Joy Fletcher and Stephen Mo Hanan performed their two-person act, “Kleynkunst!: Warsaw’s Brave and Brilliant Yiddish Cabaret,” before a full house at Helen’s Restaurant, Cabaret & Piano Lounge in Chelsea, as part of a five-day-long European cabaret festival.

If you've students who are interested in social networking, but want an Australian flavour to their groups/pages, lead them to StudentFace, the newly launched networking site for Australian tertiary students.

You need to be an enrolled student at an Australian university, with a valid uni email, to register.

Make sure to read the FAQs.

Call For Papers

3rd Mandelbaum Conference on Yiddish Studies
“Kehiles”/Communities

Following upon the success of previous years, the Yiddish programme at the University of Sydney will be convening another international conference, 1-2 July 2007 at Mandelbaum House, University of Sydney. This year the theme will be ‘community’.

As defined in the OED, a community for the purposes of the conference will be “a body of people organized into a political, municipal, or social unity; those members of a civil community, who have certain circumstances of nativity, religion, or pursuit, common to them, but not shared by those among whom they live”. Hence, communities under discussion can be geographical (Bialystock, Birbidzhan, Ottawa, Melbourne), religio-political (Bundist, Satmar Hasidim), social (artists, virtual, landmanshaftn).

This is an interdisciplinary conference: papers relating to pedagogy, history, literature, sociology, and the arts are welcomed. Other topics will be considered, but only those bearing directly upon Yiddish language, culture and education will be accepted. Postgraduate students are encouraged to submit proposals based on their research.

Papers can be presented in English, Yiddish or bi-lingually. In addition, the possibility presentation via video-conferencing exists if arranged in advance.

Deadline for abstracts: April 30, 2007. Abstracts should not exceed three hundred words and must include title, author's name, postal and email address. Accepted speakers will be notified before 12 May 2007.
Please send abstracts either electronically or by post to:

Dr Jennifer Dowling
Dan Goodridge Lecturer in Yiddish Studies
Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies (A17)
SLaC
University of Sydney
Sydney NSW 2006
or email jennifer.dowling@arts.usyd.edu.au

Below are the dates for individual workshops, which will focus on
connecting innovations in new Yiddish music with traditional Yiddish
music.

Opening concert July 14, 2007
Instrumental Workshop for Advanced Musicians, July 18-25, 2007
Dance Music Workshop for Dance Musicians, July 27-31, 2007
Dance Workshop, July 28-31, 2007
Yiddish Song Workshop, August 2-9, 2007
Yiddish Languages (for Beginners and Beyond), August 2-9, 2007

You can find a further information on Yiddish Web