Y. L. Peretz in a Time of Revolution
Presented in Yiddish.
This talk traced Peretz’s day-to-day reactions and the development of his ideas amidst the Revolution of 1905-06 as it unfolded in Warsaw, the cultural capital of the Yiddish-speaking world. For the first time during these years, nationalism and socialism—no longer the property of small groups of intellectuals—burst onto the streets as mass movements. Simultaneously attracted to and wary of the forces unleashed by these new ideologies, Peretz began to formulate a response rooted in the realities of Jewish life in Eastern Europe. It was a response that articulated both the glories and the dangers of attempting to build a modern Jewish culture in the diaspora.
About the Participants
Michael Steinlauf is professor of history and director of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies Program at Gratz College in Philadelphia. He is the author of Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust (Syracuse), and a contributing editor to the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. His writings, including studies of Yiddish theater and the Jewish press in Eastern Europe, have been translated into Hebrew, Polish, German and Italian. He is currently at work on a study of the Yiddish writer and activist Y. L. Peretz.
Edward Portnoy received his Ph.D. from the Jewish Theological Seminary. His dissertation was on cartoons of the Yiddish press. He also holds an M.A in Yiddish Studies from Columbia, having written on artists/writers Zuni Maud and Yosl Cutler. His articles on Jewish popular culture phenomena have appeared in The Drama Review, Polin, and The International Journal of Comic Art. In addition to speaking on Jewish popular culture throughout Europe and North America, he has consulted on museum exhibits at the Museum of the City of New York, Musée d'art et d'histoire du judaïsme in Paris, and the Joods Historisch Museum in Amsterdam. He is Academic Advisor for the Max Weinreich Center at YIVO.