AACI Zoom Lecture
Traveling light at the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station - with 60,000 Yiddish books: One man’s crusade to keep Yiddish alive in Israel
Speaker: Mendy Cahan, Director of Yung YiDish
Tuesday, 1 June, 2021, 7:30 p.m. (12:30 p.m. NYC time)
AACI Members: NIS 25. Non-members: NIS 35
Registration & pre-payment essential: https://aaci.org.il/events/mendy-cahan-founder-director-of-yung-yidish/
Mendy Cahan will share with us his fascination with Yiddish culture, history, development, uniqueness, and surprising contemporary vivacity. He will present the Yung YiDish centers in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, talk about his amazing collection of thousands of Yiddish books, and about the manifold arts happening and developing there. Mendy will also discuss his work in Vilna, his experience as Yiddish translator and dialogue coach on the set of the Oscar-winning Holocaust movie “Son of Saul” (Best Foreign Film - 2015), and perhaps recite a Yiddish poem or song … however the schmooze will develop.
About Yung YiDish: What started out as a library for collecting, safeguarding, and disseminating Yiddish books, Yung YiDish soon developed into a core of cultural activism, a battery of production and a place for exhibitions, concerts, readings, commemorations, and artistic experimentation. All this in the most unlikely location imaginable – The Tel Aviv Central Bus Station!
Mendy Cahan was born in Belgium in 1963 in the traditional, yet cosmopolitan Yiddish-speaking community of Antwerp, and he now lives in Israel. He earned degrees in Philosophy and Yiddish Studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Mendy is the Founder and Director of Yung YiDish in Israel and the Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University. A multilingual and accomplished storyteller, singer, and actor (now at the Gesher Theater Company), Mendy performs Yiddish worldwide.
