The Clara Sumpf Annual Lecture Series: Shachar Pinsker on Yiddish in Israel Palestine
Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), 450 Jane Stanford Way Building 360, Stanford, CA 94305
Conference Room
In what ways was Yiddish language marginalized and where did it thrive among the refugees who moved to Mandatory Palestine after the war? What role did literature play in helping refugees bridge the trauma of the holocaust with the emerging Israeli state? Join literary scholar and cultural historian, Shachar Pinsker to learn about how refugees navigated this new reality through literature and delve into his and Yael Chaver‘s new translation of a Yiddish novel from this period and the challenges they encountered along the way.
Join this year's Clara Sumpf lecturer, Shachar Pinsker, for a day of scholarship.
12:00 PM CCSRE Conference Room איבערזעצן יצחק פערלאוו'ס דזשבעליע -- Translating Yitzchok Perlov's Jebeliya
In this workshop, Yael Chaver and Shachar Pinsker will discuss their project of co-translating Yitzchok Perlov's Jebeliya, originally published in Yiddish in 1954-1955. The English translation, supported by the Yiddish Book Center, is forthcoming from White Goat Press. The speakers will discuss their translation approach by showcasing the linguistic and cultural challenges they encountered, with examples from the original Yiddish texts and their English translation. Lunch will be served.
4:30 PM CCSRE Conference Room
The Vanguard of Their Peoples: Yiddish and Refugee Writing in Israel/Palestine
The lecture explores the vibrant yet marginalized world of Yiddish writing in Israel/Palestine. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s concept of the refugee as a "vanguard," Pinsker argues that Yiddish-speaking survivors (sheyres hapleyte) used their literature to navigate a unique subject position that bridged the trauma of the Holocaust with the reality of 1948 in Israel/Palestine. By analyzing Yiddish prose, poetry, and journalism, he shows how Yiddish writing between 1948 and 1967 created an affective map of displacement and multidirectional memory, challenging nationalistic myths that remain vital in our contemporary times of crisis.