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Celebrating Soviet Yiddish Creativity
This year, in memory of the Yiddish artists and writers who were murdered by the regime or suffered from repressions and cultural purges in the Soviet Union, the Congress for Jewish Culture has the pleasure of presenting the world premiere of Boris Sandler's film, a one-on-one interview with his old mentor and friend, Chaim Beider (1920-2003). The film is in Yiddish with English subtitles. We invite you to join us for an insiders' glimpse into the fascinating milieu of Soviet Yiddish culture.
The screening is free, but you must respond to this email and request a reservation -- please give your name and the names of any attendees to be added to the list. Space is quite limited.
Thursday, August 11th, 2016
6:30 PM
The Conference Center
130 East 59th Street (Park/Lex)
New York, NY 10022
The Soviet regime dealt a near death-blow to Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union when it executed Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee members David Bergelson, Itzik Feffer, David Hofshteyn, Leyb Kvitko, Peretz Markish, and Benjamin Zuskin on August 12th, 1952. But other writers and artists who remained behind lived to see "the thaw" of the 50s and 60s and the remarkable rise of new Yiddish publications, including the journal Sovetish Heymland. A key figure in that journal was Chaim Beider, who helped keep it going until 1991, as an editor and, eventually, Aaron Vergelis's Deputy Editor in Chief. Beider later emigrated to Israel and then in 1998 to the United States where he assumed an important role in New York Yiddish culture, becoming a staple of the Forverts, editor of the journal Di Zukunft, and an active contributor to almost every Yiddish publication the world over. A quiet, gentle soul and a dedicated cultural activist, Beider was a prolific polymath of a writer, publishing books of poetry, children's literature, essays, and, perhaps his crowning achievement, the Biographical Dictionary of Yiddish Writers in the Soviet Union, published by the Congress for Jewish Culture in 2011.
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