Yiddish Culture Festival

Kolya Borodulin was born in Birobidzhan, the capital of the still existing Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East of the Russian Federation, near China. It was created in 1928 with the decision of the Soviet government to give Jews a land of their own to create the Jewish Soviet Socialist Republic. Yiddish was, and still is, the official language of Birobidzhan. The experiment unfortunately failed, but a unique page of Jewish history exists and needs to be remembered. Kolya’s talk will cover historical and cultural developments of the Jewish Autonomous Region as well as his personal experiences there.

Kolya Borodulin is the Director of Yiddish programming at the Workers Circle in New York, one of the largest providers of Yiddish classes for all levels in the world. He has been teaching Yiddish language and culture at the Workers Circle to multigenerational audiences since 1993. His dynamic style has garnered a growing fan base across the United States and beyond. Kolya left Birobidzhan in 1992 to study in the Yiddish program at Columbia University Graduate school. His research and subsequent work at YIVO was devoted to collecting Birobidzhan’s history, its hey days and tragedies.

As a longtime Yiddish educator, Kolya has taught for a number of organizations internationally, including the Coalition for the Advancement of Jewish Education, the YIVO summer program, the Teacher’s College in Birobidzhan, as well as Klezkanada, which he has attended for close to two decades.

Kolya is the author of Yiddish Year Round: A Curriculum for the Young Beginners and a recipient of Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish 2019 award.

This event is co-sponsored by the Haverford History and Bryn Mawr Russian departments.

The Yiddish film Mothers of Today (1939) has been restored by the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis. Made in the USA and directed by Harry Lynn. We previously showed this film in 2010.

This essentially unknown 1939 Yiddish film stars Esther Field, the 1930s radio personality known as the “Yiddishe Mama,” in one of her only appearances on film. Field plays an immigrant Jewish widow in New York who suffers the gradual deterioration of her family and Jewish tradition at the hands of neighborhood criminals and the realities of assimilation. This soapy, over-the-top drama — with cantors and gangsters, Yiddish songs, liturgical singing and comedy interludes — is surprisingly moving in its authentic emotional directness. Mothers of Today is a surviving example of the era’s shund genre: proudly sentimental, low-budget and low-brow films, books, and theater. Shund films were particularly popular with working-class Jewish immigrant audiences, who recognized and enjoyed seeing their own daily lives reflected on the big screen, especially the central role women played in Jewish family life. Mothers of Today is a fun ride, a time capsule, and a rescued piece of Jewish and cinema history. Bring a hanky for the tsuris, and a few insults to yell at the no-goodniks.

“For those with a particular interest in the Yiddish language, there’s an added bonus: It’s a fascinating record of American Yiddish circa 1939. The English words absorbed into the vocabulary (even among the European-born characters) and the American accents in the speech of the younger actors reflect the Yiddish that many of our parents and grandparents spoke. It’s nice to hear it again…Leon Field’s wonderfully over-the-top score provides the eye-rolling and chest-clutching.” – A.L. Rickman, The Forward

Discussion to follow the film. In Yiddish, with English subtitles (85 minutes).

Dos Kleyne Mentshele ("Ha-Barnash Ha-Katan" in Hebrew, "The Parasite" in the English translation) was the debut work in Yiddish of the Hebrew writer S. J. Abramovich (1836-1917). Here he introduced the persona of Mendele Moykher Sforim (Mendele the Book Peddler), one of the most Illustrious characters in modern Yiddish literature. This innovation left its stamp on the subsequent explosive expansion of Yiddish written work. In the guise of "Mendele," Abramovich became "the grandfather" of both modern Yiddish and modern Hebrew literature. Among his well-known compositions is “Fishke the Lame” which was subsequently made into a film (“The Light Ahead” -- screened in 2022 at the Yiddish Culture Festival). The talk will discuss and analyze this historic literary figure, his works and influence. (English translations provided.)

Dr. Orenstein is a retired Associate Professor in the Department of Jewish Studies at McGill University, where he specialized in the area of modern Jewish social and intellectual history, with particular emphasis on the Jewish labor and socialist movement in Eastern Europe, North America and pre-state Israel as well as the development of modern Yiddish culture. He also taught at the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Studies; the Summer Program in Yiddish Studies at the Postgraduate Centre for Hebrew Studies, Oxford University; University College, London; the Centre for the Study of Jewish Civilization, Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and at the International Yiddish Summer Program, Tel Aviv University.

90 minutes with German Intertitles and English Subtitles.

The City Without Jews, (Die Stadt ohne Juden) H. K. Breslauer’s 1924 silent masterpiece, is the tragicomic story of the fictional Austrian city of “Utopia”, which becomes a dystopia when it expels its diverse and thriving Jewish population.

Based on the bestselling novel by Hugo Bettauer, The City Without Jews was produced two years after the book’s publication and, tragically, shortly before the satirical events depicted in the fictional story transformed into all-too-horrific reality. All complete prints were thought to be destroyed, but thanks to the discovery of a nitrate print in a Parisian flea market in 2015, this “lost” film can once again be appreciated in its unfortunately ever-relevant entirety.

The story follows the political and personal consequences of an anti-Semitic law passed by the National Assembly of “Utopia” forcing all Jews to leave the country. At first, the decision is met with celebration, but when the citizens of Utopia eventually come to terms with the loss of the Jewish population – and the resulting economic and cultural decline – the National Assembly must decide whether to invite the Jews back. Though darkly comedic in tone and stylistically influenced by German Expressionism, the film nonetheless contains ominous and eerily realistic sequences, such as shots of freight trains transporting Jews out of the city. The film’s stinging critique of Nazism is part of the reason it was no longer screened in public after 1933.

Violinist/composer Alicia Svigals is the world's leading klezmer fiddler and a founder of the Grammy-winning Klezmatics. She has performed with and written for violinist Itzhak Perlman, and has worked with the the Kronos Quartet, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Ensler, poet Allen Ginsburg, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin, Debbie Friedman and Chava Albershteyn. Svigals was awarded a Foundation for Jewish Culture commission for her original score to the 1918 film The Yellow Ticket, and is a MacDowell fellow. Her CD Fidl (1996) reawakened klezmer fiddle tradition. Her newest CD is Beregovski Suite: Klezmer Reimagined, with jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer—an original take on long-lost Jewish music from Ukraine.

Pianist/composer Donald Sosin grew up in Rye, New York and Munich. Sosin received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Denver Silent Film Festival, and the Best Original Film Score award by the 2022 Mystic Film Festival. He has performed his scores for silent films, often with his wife, singer/percussionist Joanna Seaton, at Lincoln Center, MoMA, BAM, the National Gallery, at major film festivals in New York, San Francisco, Telluride, Hollywood, Yorkshire, Pordenone, Bologna, Shanghai, Bangkok, Berlin, Vienna, Moscow, and Jecheon, South Korea and many college campuses. He has worked with Alexander Payne, Isabella Rossellini, Dick Hyman, Jonathan Tunick, Comden and Green, Martin Charnin, Mitch Leigh, and Cy Coleman, and has played for Mikhael Baryshnikov, Mary Travers, Marni Nixon, Howie Mandel, Geula Gill, and many others. He records for Criterion, Kino, Milestone, Flicker Alley and European labels, and his scores are heard frequently on TCM. He has had commissions from MoMA, EYE Amsterdam, Deutsche Kinemathek, L'Immagine Ritrovata, the Chicago Symphony Chorus, the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra. He lives in rural Connecticut with his family.

Generously supported with a grant from the Sunrise Foundation for Education and the Arts. Read more about the artists and the film.

This event is co-sponsored by the Haverford and Bryn Mawr German Studies departments.

Alicia Svigals will teach workshop participants how to make the beautiful and deeply Jewish sounds of authentic klezmer music. All instruments welcome, no prior klezmer experience necessary, and both musicians and non-musicians are encouraged to attend. Come prepared for dancing, joy and fun! The event is free, and supported by the Weinberg Family Foundation; however, a donation of $18 is suggested to cover additional expenses.

Registration is required.

Register for the Klezmer Jam