Kriszta Eszter Szendrői from the Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies introduces the YUNG YiDiSH library in Tel Aviv.

About the event

There is a place in Tel Aviv, Israel, called YUNG YiDiSH, where over sixty thousand books, collected painstakingly one by one, sit on shelves and inside boxes, bearing witness to Eastern European Yiddish culture.

They reveal a rich world, one which is quintessentially (Eastern) European, but also transnational. A world that crosses the boundaries of the religious and the secular, but united through the Yiddish language, the thousand-year-old mother tongue of Eastern European Jews. A world that was once seemingly everywhere, and now, almost nowhere, except in places like YUNG YiDiSH.

Let me take you on a whirlwind tour of some of the treasures of this library, and acquiant you with this world. I will provide some necessary historical and geographical background, but mostly I will let the poets, writes, singers and film actors speak for themselves, through beautiful contemporary and current day recordings.

The event will be presented by Kriszta Eszter Szendrői.

About the lecturer

Kriszta Eszter Szendrői is professor of linguistics and expert on the Yiddish language. Her research areas include:

• Information structure in language, encompassing different subdisciplines of linguistics such as syntax and prosody
• Theoretical and experimental perspectives on language, including the study of oth adult and child language
• Documentation and analysis of Contemporary Hasidic Yiddish grammar and development of pedagogical tools for the language