Crossing the Ocean: When Yiddish Left Home | Dr. Yael Levi скачать в хорошем качестве

Crossing the Ocean: When Yiddish Left Home | Dr. Yael Levi

What happened when millions of Yiddish speakers crossed the Atlantic? The ship was more than a vessel – it was a space where time dissolved, borders blurred, and language began to fragment. Through close reading of Y.D. Berkowitz’s haunting story Fun Beyde Veltn (“From Both Worlds”), we’ll follow Devorah, an elderly immigrant woman whose journey to America becomes a descent into silence and isolation. Comparing the Yiddish and Hebrew versions of the story reveals how language itself fractures under the pressure of migration. The ocean crossing marks the moment when Yiddish began its transformation from a rooted communal language to something more precarious and hybrid. This series explores how Yiddish culture navigated the massive spatial and temporal upheavals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through the lens of movement and displacement, we’ll examine how Yiddish speakers created meaning while crossing oceans, borders, and generations, and how the language itself transformed in the process. The organizing principle is transit as both literal movement (immigration, trains, ships) and metaphorical transformation (linguistic change, cultural adaptation, generational shifts). Dr. Yael Levi Senior Lecturer in the Department of Jewish History and Contemporary Jewry and in the Yiddish Program of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem -- For more: https://www.bac.org.il/en/videos