On December 15 – 17, 2017 the seminar „Pearls of Yiddish Culture" was held for teachers of Jewish schools. This is our 3rd seminar taking place in Kiev for diverse audiences. The event was organized by the International Yiddish Center of the World Jewish Congress with assistance of the Jewish Forum of Ukraine, in order to provide educators of Jewish schools and communities with Jewish historical and Yiddish cultural and linguistic knowledge.
Four WJC YC representatives took part in the seminar: Tetyana Batanova (teacher of Yiddish at the Jewish programs at the National University "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy" and junior scientific officer at Judaica department of V. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine), Nataliia Ryndiuk (teacher of Yiddish at Interdisciplinary Certification Program in Jewish Studies at the National University "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy" & scientific officer at the Center for Study of History and Culture of East European Jewry at the National University of "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy"), Yulia Smilianska (the Director of Judaica Institute in Kiev), and WJC YC academical director Dr. Mordechay Yushkovsky from Israel.
Dr. Yushkovsky and T. Batanova presented three lectures each; N. Ryndiuk and Y. Smilianska – one per each.
All the lectures involved notes to linguistic and cultural history of Yiddish and Jews in Central-Eastern Europe, especially in Ukraine, Yiddish poetry and Ukrainian translations of the poetry, notes to development of genre of utopia in Jewish literature, first and foremost in Ukraine, the most interesting samples of such works as Mendele Moyher-Sforim's "Journey of Benjamin the Third", Sholem Aleichem's "The First Jewish Republic", etc.
Special attention was paid to the almost forgotten novel in Yiddish "In the City of Future Edenia" by Kalmen Zingman (Ben-Yakov), published in 1918 in Kharkiv and dedicated to the joint bright and happy future of Jewish and Ukrainian peoples in the same area.
Although each lecturer provided the talk in her/his personal manner, used different visual aids and spoke on various subjects, all of them gained excellent feedbacks from the participants of the seminar and received their request to proceed with education of Yiddish culture.