The seminar "Pearls of Yiddish culture" took place on March 23-24, 2017 in two Ukrainian towns: Kmelnitzki (Proskurov) and Kamenetz-Podolsk within the youth program "Children of Holocaust", organized by the World Jewish Congress International Yiddish center and the charity fund "Khesed Besht" supported by American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee.
Two representatives of WJC YC - director of Kiev Jewish Studies Institute Yuliya Smilianska and lecturer at National University "Kyiv Mohyla Academy" Tatyana Batanova - provided 3 lectures each to 115 participants. Smilianska focused mostly on Jewish history and culture, and Batanova concentrated on the Yiddish language.
The first day the audience constituted of representatives of the young generation, the second day was intended for leaders of Khesed programs.
The subject of the first Smilianska's class was "Yiddishland: history, life, ruin and revival?" It was intended for the students of the Educational college of Khmelnitzki and consisted of two parts: the first one was a normal lecture, illustrated by captivating video materials, and the second was a tour across Jewish towns and shtetls of Podolye, including visiting the memorial in Dunayevtzy.
Тhe second and third Yuliya's lectures were addressed to the employees of the Khesed Besht of Khmelnitzki and Kamenetz-Podolsk. In those lectures the life of shtetls had been described on a higher academic level, considering previous knowledge and competence of the audience.
Batanova talked on such topics as: "Geography of Yiddishland" and "If Yiddish is slang or mame loshn?". The last lecture was provided twice for different audiences.
All lectures aroused great interest and curiosity of the listeners. Live reaction and cordial thanks of the listeners for pleasure they got, witnessed success of the event. WJC YC got a grateful letter from the director of "Khesed Besht" Igor Ratushny with hopes and wishes to continue cooperation with our Yiddish center.
In numerous feedbacks, the participants expressed their gratitude for pleasure thy got, thanked for revived interest in Yiddish, noted high professional level of the lecturers and emphasized necessity to hold much more seminars on subjects of Yiddish culture, language and music heritage. Here is an extract from Margarita Shoinik's impression:
"This is a very valuable fact that alongside with historic data at the lectures a lot of documents, maps, pictures were demonstrated, answers to the questions of the listeners were very comprehensive, with dates and source of information. Conversation between lecturers and the audience ran in very informal interactive atmosphere. Yiddish culture in Jewish families is always actual – it helps to awake genetic memory of the Jews, touches the thinnest strings of their souls. The lecturers managed to plunge into the world of childhood, family traditions and Jewish/Yiddish memory. We got lots of pleasure and information from this seminar."