Expert talk with Professor Rebecca Margolis
Wednesday 3 May 2023 from 1pm to 2pm
Join us at the Museum in person for a talk by Professor Rebecca Margolis about the revival of the ancient Jewish language: Yiddish. This talk draws on Professor Margolis’s recent research comparing the current revitalisation of the Yiddish language, internationally with other linguistic movements. It examines strategies that have been used over the last hundred years to transmit Jewish languages to new generations, both within families and among cohorts of students, artists and performers.
This event is run in partnership with the University of Sydney’s Department of Biblical, Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Mandelbaum House and Jewish Folk Centre.
About the expert
Professor Rebecca Margolis is the Pratt Foundation Chair of Jewish Civilisation at Monash University. Her research looks at the legacies of the Yiddish language. She is the author of Yiddish Lives On: Strategies of Language Transmission (2023) and Jewish Roots, Canadian Soil: Yiddish Culture in Montreal (1905-1945) (2011). Her current project on new Yiddish cinema investigates the production of twenty-first-century fiction film and television with subtitled Yiddish-language dialogue.
Please note: this Expert Talk will be held in person at the Museum. We will endeavour to provide a recording for on-demand viewing; however, this cannot be guaranteed.
Image: A first-grade classroom in the Vitkin School in Tel Aviv, Archives of Jewish education, 1973.