A growing collection of in-depth interviews with people of all ages and backgrounds, whose stories about the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture offer a rich and complex chronicle of Jewish identity.
Finding Yiddish through Women Writers
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Zohar Weiman-Kelman--scholar of Queer Studies, Yiddish Studies, and Jewish literature--describes their journey to Yiddish. They explain their "crush" on Glückel of Hameln (a medieval woman diarist who wrote in Western Yiddish) which led to a Yiddish language class with Hanan Bordin, and finally finding Yiddish women's poetry.
This is an excerpt from an oral history with Zohar Weiman-Kelman.
This excerpt is in English.
Zohar Weiman-Kelman was born in Jerusalem, Israel in 1982.
This interview is part of the Yiddish in the Academy: scholars, language instructors, and students series.
Other video highlights from this oral history
Finding Yiddish through Women Writers
3 minutes 48 seconds
"Making Babies in Other Ways": Beyond Heteronormativity, Essentialism, Survival in Transmission
3 minutes
Inside or Outside: Closed Circles in the Yiddish World
2 minutes 30 seconds
Who is Irena Klepfisz?: Mentor, Lesbian Yiddish Poetess
2 minutes 19 seconds
Yiddish Rebelliousness, Pleasure, Corporeality of the Past
2 minutes 22 seconds
"Look Through Yiddish at the World": Advice for Those Interested in Yiddish
1 minute 13 seconds
Speaking Directly to the Bubbies: Transmission Between Jewish Lesbian Writers and Yiddish Poetesses
2 minutes 32 secondsMore information about this oral history excerpt
Themes:
- Languages
- Poetry
- Feminism
- Eastern Europe
- Cultural transmission
- Yiddish learning
- Yiddish teaching
- Yiddish language
- Yiddish revival and activism
- Literature
- Academia
- Education
- Israel
- Glückel of Hameln
- Zohar Weiman-Kelman
- Hanan Bordin
- yiddish writers
- yiddish women writers
- hebrew writers
- women writers
- Berlin
Keywords:
About the Wexler Oral History Project
Since 2010, the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project has recorded more than 500 in-depth video interviews that provide a deeper understanding of the Jewish experience and the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture.
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