Sunday, March 2, 2025, 3:00-5:00 pm Pacific Time
Join us for an online viewing of the opera, The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language and a conversation with composer and finalist for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Music Alex Weiser, acclaimed librettist Ben Kaplan, and renowned Yiddish theatre scholar Nahma Sandrow!
The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language premiered in May 2024. It explores the post-Holocaust collaboration by two prominent linguists--Max Weinreich and Yudel Mark--to rescue Yiddish from cultural extinction. We will view excerpts from the 60-minute concert performance of this important new English-language opera.
Together with composer Alex Weiser, librettist Ben Kaplan, and Jewish theatre historian Nahma Sandrow, we will explore the contributions and relevance of this Yiddish-themed work to contemporary audiences.
T H E C O M P O S E R A N D L I B R E T T I S T
Alex Weiser’s (above, L) musical education began in earnest while attending New York City's Stuyvesant High School in pieces for their symphonic orchestra, studying theory and conducting with Joseph Tamosaitis, and studying composition with Paul Alan Levi. Weiser then continued his studies at Yale University and New York University. Weiser is now the Director of Public Programs at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research where he curates and produces programs that combine a fascination with and curiosity for historical context, with an eye toward influential Jewish contributions to the culture of today and tomorrow. At YIVO Weiser has commissioned over fifteen works from some of today’s leading composers that were featured in concerts he curated. . . . Source: https://www.alexweiser.com/about
Born in Brooklyn, NY, Ben Kaplan (above, R) studied literature and theater at Williams College. He currently serves as Director of Education at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where he directs programs that teach Jewish history and culture to a broad and diverse audience. These programs include the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture and the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization. Ben wrote the libretto for State of the Jews, an opera collaboration with composer Alex Weiser based on the life of Theodor Herzl. As a librettist, he creates historically-informed dramatic works that chronicle turning points in history lost to contemporary cultural discourse. Source: https://www.benkaplanlibrettist.com/about
S P E C I A L G U E S T
Born in 1940, Nahma Sandrow (above) is a world renowned scholar of theater - particularly, Yiddish theater - and cultural history. She is a prize-winning author whose works include: "Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater"; "God, Man, and Devil: Yiddish Plays in Translation"; "Surrealism: Theater, Arts, Ideas"; and "Kuni-Leml and Vagabond Stars." She has also written off-broadway musicals based on Yiddish theater material and feature articles for the "New York Times," the "New York Sun," "ARTnews," and other newspapers, magazines, and journals. Source: http://www.yivoarchives.org/index.php?p=collections/controlcard&id=33203
T H E O P E R A:
A S H M O O Z A P E R S P E C T I V E
S C R O L L D O W N F O R T H R E E A R I A S
The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language is a 60 minute concert that tells the tragi-comic story of Yiddish linguists Max Weinreich and Yudel Mark’s collaborative, unfinished effort to create the first comprehensive Yiddish dictionary. According to the American Opera Projects website, "The Great Dictionary invites audiences to contemplate this surprisingly grand ambition" of dedicated Yiddish culture workers after the Holocaust (just counting the Nazi and not the Soviet) decimation of some ten million Jews. The great majority were Yiddish speakers either with Yiddish as their primary language or multilingually. The AOP site notes that the opera "invites us to consider the power of language to transform and shape us. "
For Shmoozers familiar with New York City's YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, the towering figure of Max Weinreich (1894-1969) will be of particular interest. Weinreich was the founding director in Europe of YIVO, the Institute for the Scientific Study of Yiddish (Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut). YIVO was instituted by a committee in Berlin in 1925 and began its work in Vilna, then part of Poland, until the Nazi invasion in 1939.
Today's YIVO at 15 West 16th Street is the place where composer Alex Weiser and librettist Ben Kaplan both happen to work at their "day jobs." Ben Kaplan directs YIVO's extensive in-person and online educational offerings in Yiddish language learning. Alex Weiser directs YIVO's public programming with wide-ranging lectures and performances. Here's a partial roster of academic programs from this team at YIVO currently online for winter 2025:
Returning to YIVO's founding director, Max Weinreich: Weinreich "was first and foremost a linguist" but wrote also about psychology (he translated Freud into Yiddish), sociology, economics, theater studies, literary history, education, ethnography, and philosophy. Among the long list of Weinreich's books and other publications in Yiddish and English is his magisterial two-volume work, History of the Yiddish Language.
Weinreich's son, Uriel Weinreich (1926-1967), a linguist at Columbia University, authored the longtime standard textbook for English learners, College Yiddish. He founded at Columbia the Yiddish summer program that is now named for him and offered through YIVO and Bard College. In 1969, he published the Modern Yiddish-English, English-Yiddish Dictionary .
K E E P I N G Y I D D I S H
F O L K L O R E A L I V E
Just a reminder of a past Yiddish Shmoozers (In Translation) reading about Weinreich and YIVO in Vilna: Some Shmoozers will remember the short stories by Abraham Karpinowitz in the wonderful collection, Vilna, My Vilna. Among these, the story "The Folklorist" is a send-up about an educated bachelor who devotes himself to being a zamler (a collector) under Max Weinreich's direction. Rubinshteyn the Folklorist goes to the fish market and collects curses and imprecations from one Chana-Merke the Fishwife, who puts her eye on him as a prospective husband:
People in the Yiddish Scientific Institute had told him [Rubinshteyn] if he wanted to hear the genuine lanuage of the people, he should hang around the fish market . . . Rubinshteyn thought the Vilna sayings had to be documented as quickly as possible. If, God forbid, they were forgotten, it would be a great loss for the culture. . . .In the Institute, they wanted to pair him up with Zelda the researcher, an old maid who specialized in Jewish cuisine all the way back to the twelfth century. . .. Rubinshetyn stood in the fish market, waiting for folklore. . . .Chana-Merka was the first to notice Rubinshteyn. . . .
Finally, the folklorist showed some life and stammered, "I . . . I'm not looking for fish." . . .
"That's all I have to offer. What are you looking for?"
Rubinshteyn blurted out, "Some good curses."
***
Rubinshteyn's notes lay on his desk. Zelda peeked furtively at them, like a hen at its oats. Rubinshteyn had written in florid handwriting on a large piece of white paper:
Material from folklore investigation, taken from Mrs. Chana-Merka Solodukhin, a fish seller in the Vilna fish market.
Sayings:
You're already a dog, don't be a pig.
When a shlimazl tries to kill a chicken, it's the chicken who walks away.
Eating Matzoh balls is better for your health than reading the Haggadah.
Reading the material had enflamed Zelda's sore tooth, but she still took a look at the list of curses.
May they carry you and sing.
May a weak balcony fall on your head.
May they use your guts to hang laundry.
Zelda couldn't bear to read any further. She spat at the floor and returned to her desk. . . .
T H R E E A R I A S F R O M T H E O P E R A
"Gather Every Spark" (2:09 min)
"We Are Fire" (2:50 min)
"In Vilna" (3:14 min)
W A L M A R T S H O P P E R S !
O N L Y $ 4 , 3 5 1 . 0 0
M O R E I N F O R M A T I O N
A B O U T T H E O P E R A
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