Visiting London Yiddishtown with Vivi Lachs

Vivi Lachs’ newly published book opens up the world of London’s Yiddish-speaking East End neighborhood, giving readers access to this little-known center of modern Jewish life. Her translations of stories by Katie Brown, Arnold Kaizer, and Summer Lisky from the 1930s and ‘40s illuminate London immigrant life with earnestness, satire, and comedy. The stories in London Yiddishtown: East End Jewish Life in Yiddish Sketch and Story, 1930–1950 include Brown’s explorations of generational tension as children support their parents and reject Yiddish culture; Kaizer’s humorous tellings of community foibles with competing cantors and disaffected bar mitzvah boys; and Lisky’s descriptions of antifascist activism in London. Many of the themes reflect familiar concerns of American Jewish immigrants during the same period, but in this talk, translator and scholar Vivi Lachs puts it all in a London context. She reads excerpts of her translations with her signature vivacity.

About the speaker:

Vivi Lachs is a social historian, Yiddishist, and research fellow at Queen Mary, University of London. She is a teacher, Yiddish singer, and the author of Whitechapel Noise (Wayne State University Press, 2018). She co-organizes the Yiddish Open Mic and the Great Yiddish Parade and has produced two CDs of London Yiddish songs from the old East End: Whitechapel, mayn vaytshepl with Klezmer Klub, and Don’t Ask Silly Questions with Katsha’nes. Vivi Lachs was a 2019 Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow. This volume is in part a result of her fellowship.