On October 17 – 18, 2018 in Kharkiv the WJC YC representative Tetyana Batanova (teacher of Yiddish at the academic Jewish studies programs at the National University "Kyiv-Mohyla Academy" and junior scientific officer at Judaica department of V. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine) provided two lectures about Yiddish language, literature and history at the Days of Jewish Culture which took place in that Ukrainian city.
This event was organized by the International Yiddish Center of the World Jewish Congress together with the local Jewish community center "Beit Dan", aiming to provide Jewish community members and its staff, as well as general public of local intellectuals with professional Jewish historical, Yiddish cultural and linguistic knowledge.
Tetyana's talks were dedicated to the following topics: "Yiddish - Zhargon or Mame-loshn/Mother Tongue: Introduction to History" and "Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in 19th-20th Centuries in the Light of Poetry: Yiddish Poets and their Translators - Famous Ukrainian Poets". The first lecture was held at the "Beit Dan" premises, and the second was organized at K. S. Stanistavsky Music and Theatre Library.
Over 30 participants were present at the lectures of Tetyana Batanova. Among them were local Jewish community members, students, university lecturers, teachers and librarians. The lectures included notes to linguistic, cultural and political history of Yiddish and Jews in the Central-Eastern Europe, especially in Ukraine. The second lecture not only provided historical sketches of Yiddish literature in Ukraine, but also focused on original Yiddish poems of Velvl Zbarzher, Morris Rozenfeld, Osher Shvartsman, Dovid Hofshteyn, Leyb Kvitko and Yiddish-Ukrainian translations made by prominent Ukrainian poets Ivan Franko and Pavlo Tychyna.