14 participants came to study Yiddish language, literature, culture, history of music and Yiddish songs. This event is the result of WJC's continuing cooperation with JDC and JCC "Nikitskaya", Moscow.

The participants had a chance to hear Dr. Mordehay Yushkovsky's lectures about Yiddish as a century-old civilization, about Sholem-Aleichem – unsurpassed classic, about Yiddish culture in the USSR, and about the genial story-teller Yitzhak Bashevis-Singer.

Another lecturer from Israel, Dr. Levi Sheptovitsky, spoke about the origin of Yiddish songs, birth of Yiddish song in Eastern Europe, Yiddish songs in 20th century and their future.

Dr. Lara Lempert from Vilnius university presented the topic of Yiddish literature in the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. A Vilnius guide, Nikita Meytin, lead two tours: the first around the Jewish quarter in Vilnius Old Town and the second, including the Ponar Memorial.

On the last day, the local ensemble "Klezmer Klangen" together with Dr. Yushkovsky gave a lecture-concert on Yiddish songs and their history.

Here is a feedback letter of Galina Murakhovskaya, CEO of JCC "Nikitskaya":

Dear colleagues,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for letting Nikitskaya team be a part of your wonderful educational project. It was quite an experience and we really enjoyed diving into the history and culture of Yiddish. It's always nice to learn new things and to feel yourself one of the "happy few", especially to restore the history of your people through language and cultural sources.

Of course, 3 days in a company of super-qualified lecturers are too few to master a new language; nevertheless we had a unique chance to get acquainted with the culture of Yiddish and realize its magnificence and importance for the Jewish history. We learned that Yiddishkeit encompasses not just traditional Jewish religious practice, but a broad range of movements, ideologies, practices, and traditions in which Ashkenazi Jews have participated and retained their sense of "Jewishness". We feel sorrow for this lost part of Jewish cultural heritage and the fact we no longer speak and hear Yiddish. And now we do think of learning it to read Sholem-Aleichem and Bashevis-Singer in the original and to comprehend the very tzimmes of Yiddishkeit.

I'd like to make a pointed reference to the professional competence of lecturers who told us about Eastern European Jewish food, Yiddish humor, shtetl life, and klezmer music, among other things. Yiddish was the substance cementing the European Jewry throughout Holocaust and preventing it from dying out in the process of assimilation.

Thank you ever so much for doing this great and challenging job, preserving and retaining this unique treasure of Yiddish. We look forward to a more expansive collaboration in the future, to seeing you in Moscow with seminars and lectures on Yiddish.