Events

Shtetl Berlin: Berlin Yiddish Cabaret Workshop (2025)
During a weekend of Yiddish cabaret featuring Daniel Kahn and Sarah Gordon, I led a reading and writing workshop that gave an overview of the history of Berlin’s Yiddish theater and cabaret, then guided participants through adapting eleven historical texts into new, contemporary versions.
Researcher, presenter, facilitator

Farbindungen: “Authenticity vs. Vitality: A Discussion of Linguistic Insecurities in Post-Postvernacular Yiddish Spaces” (2025) – Recording on YouTube (in Yiddish)
A workshop exploring how participants’ insecurities affect contemporary Yiddish-speaking spaces, with Yiddish language activists Meena-Lifshe Viswanath and Lily Weitzman and sociolinguist Magali Cécile Bertrand
Initiator, participatory moderator

Yiddish in Berlin summer program: “Yiddish in Berlin, 1920s and 2020s” (2024)
Presented two “golden ages” of Yiddish in our city to students at the three-week summer school, organized by the Paris Center for Yiddish Culture and hosted by the Freie Universität Berlin.
Researcher, presenter

UNESCO Erfurt: “Yiddish in Germany since 1900” (2024)
A brief history of Yiddish-speaking communities in Germany over the past 120 years, presented during a festival celebrating the UNESCO heritage status of Erfurt’s medieval Jewish sites
Researcher, presenter

Yiddish Summer Weimar: “Secular Yiddish Culture Today” (2024)
An multimedia exploration of Yiddish creativity and community across ten cities on four continents, drawing on extensive interviews.
Researcher, presenter

Parataxe Symposium XIV: “Yiddish Centers, Yiddish Futures” (2024)
A keynote talk I gave at the symposium of Yiddish and Hebrew literatures in Berlin, which I co-curated as part of the Parataxe series. Published here on Stadtsprachen Magazine. Recording of the German translation, which I read at the event, available here.
Speaker

Farbindungen: “Bashevis and the Shub Sisters-in-Law: Supporting Characters Talk Back” (2024)
A paper presented on the panel “Re/writing Legacies” at the 2024 Yiddish Studies conference
Presenter, independent researcher

KlezCalifornia: “Shmues un Vayn: How to Build a Yiddish Social Club” (2024) – recording here
A two-hour online workshop about strategies for informal language revitalization, using our Berlin social club as an example. Supported by a grant from KlezCalifornia’s Yiddish Culture Fund. See also this related article in the Forward.
Presenter

Paris Yiddish Center: “Dertsvishn” – Berlin’s Yiddish History (2023)
A virtual tour of Yiddish-speaking life and culture in Berlin during the Weimar Republic.
Presenter

Queer Yiddish (2022–ongoing, available in English, German, and Yiddish)
A multimedia presentation about the intersection of queerness and Yiddish from 1877 to the present.
Presenter

XXVI Symposium of Yiddish Studies in Germany: The Search for a Missing Manuscript by Isaac Bashevis Singer (2023)
A joint presentation with Ane Kleine-Engel (in Yiddish) about an archival research project
Researcher, presenter

Scolnic Institute: Flying with the Golden Peacock – Yiddish Literature & Migration (2023)
A six-session course (via Zoom) examining fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction by Yiddish-speaking immigrants to New York, Melbourne, London, Berlin, and Montreal
Instructor

Arbeit und Leben: Yiddish in Berlin, Past & Present (2023, conducted in German)
A 1.5-hour presentation for a continuing education course
Presenter

VdÜ (German Association of Literary Translators): “Translating Diaspora: Jewish Culture in Textual Practice” (2022, conducted in German)
A three-hour lecture and workshop on Jewish culture, tradition, and translation as part of the association’s annual conference. The workshop centered on a translation exercise using Russian, Italian, French, and English source texts.
Presenter and workshop leader

CIEE Berlin: Guest Lecture on Yiddish History and Germany (4 times in 2022–24)
A guest lecture for undergraduate students about Yiddish language and literature and the history of Yiddish speakers in Germany, featuring the work of the poet Moyshe Kulbak
Presenter

Yiddish Sof-Vokh UK: “On the Other Side of the Poem: A Yiddish Writing Workshop” (2022, conducted in Yiddish)
A generative poetry writing workshop as part of the weekend retreat
Workshop leader

Westopia Festival: “Sprachraum versus Doikayt: Berlin and the Case for Multilingual (Post)national Literature” (2021)
Burg Hülshof – Center for Literature, Germany
Keynote speaker

A-Festival (AJAR Press): “Translating the Untranslatable” Workshop (2017)
A collaborative, multilingual poetry translation workshop, Hanoi, Vietnam
Co-organizer and co-facilitator with Grace Nissan