Clara Sumpf Annual Lecture Series Featuring Shachar Pinsker with Yael Chaver

CCSRE Conference Room (Bldg. 360), First Floor
Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity, 450 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford CA

12:00 PM CCSRE Conference Room (In Yiddish)
איבערזעצן יצחק פערלאוו’ס דזשבעליע — Translating Yitzchok Perlov’s Jebeliya  

In this workshop, Yael Chaver and Shachar Pinsker will discuss their project of co-translating Yitzchok Perlov’s Jebeliya, originally published in Yiddish in 1954-1955. The English translation, supported by the Yiddish Book Center, is forthcoming from White Goat Press. The speakers will discuss their translation approach by showcasing the linguistic and cultural challenges they encountered, with examples from the original Yiddish texts and their English translation. Lunch will be served.

4:00 PM CCSRE Conference Room (In English)
The Vanguard of Their Peoples: Yiddish and Refugee Writing in Israel/Palestine

The lecture explores the vibrant yet marginalized world of Yiddish writing in Israel/Palestine. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s concept of the refugee as a “vanguard,” Pinsker argues that Yiddish-speaking survivors (sheyres hapleyte) used their literature to navigate a unique subject position that bridged the trauma of the Holocaust with the reality of 1948 in Israel/Palestine. By analyzing Yiddish prose, poetry, and journalism, he shows how Yiddish writing between 1948 and 1967 created an affective map of displacement and multidirectional memory, challenging nationalistic myths that remain vital in our contemporary times of crisis.