Yiddish represents an international diasporic culture, found in many unexpected corners of the globe. In this presentation, Christa P. Whitney, director of the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, will explore the local influences of Yiddish culture based on her work capturing oral histories over the past fifteen years.
Christa’s talk will feature videos of Yiddish speakers from Vilna to Toronto, Melbourne to Birobidzhan, with several stops in between. These interviews reveal the global nature of Yiddish culture and how it adapts to its local context, illuminating the similarities among diverse communities of Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews across the globe.