On September 1 – 3, 2017 the representative of the World Jewish Congress Yiddish Center Prof. Valery Dymshitz from St. Petersburg University provided two lectures at the forum of the Jewish community of Estonia "Yahad" ("Together"), which took place in the Estonian town of Pärnu. Each lecture was attended by some 30 people.

The first lecture "Yiddish among Jewish languages" mainly dealt with sociolinguistic aspects of Yiddish, i.e. functioning of Yiddish in Jewish communities alongside with Hebrew and non-Jewish languages; the role of Semitic and Slavic components in Yiddish and the origin of Yiddish were also discussed.

The second lecture, "Yiddish literature from Sholom Aleichem till the 21st century", was devoted to the rapid development of modernistic Yiddish literature in the first half of the 20th century as well as to processes which are typical for Jewish literature nowadays. The list of Yiddish authors, whose translations into Russian are available, was offered to the audience.