Max Weinreich on the Great Jewish Books Club

The Shmooze caught up with Max Weinreich to talk about his interest in and work with the Great Jewish Books Club. Max, a postdoctoral researcher in mathematics at Harvard University, comes to Yiddish through his family ties to the language. His great-grandfather, also named Max Weinreich, founded the field of Yiddish sociolinguistics and was one of the three co-founders of YIVO. His grandfather, Uriel Weinreich, was a renowned Yiddish linguist in his own right. Drawn to Yiddish by a budding curiosity about this family history, he’s an alum of the Yiddish Book Center’s Steiner Summer Yiddish Program in 2016, where he worked on indexing poetry recordings, and has gone on to be the moderator for the Yiddish Book Center’s Great Jewish Books Club since its inception. As a book club steward, he leads discussion and conversation about both classic Jewish books and new translations.