“Shmues un Vayn”: A Yiddish Social Club
Here in Berlin, Yiddish is alive and kicking. In early 2022, as the pandemic was subsiding, I started the “Shmues un Vayn” group, which has met twice per month ever since to socialize and drink wine while speaking only Yiddish. By now, the group – which is affiliated with Yiddish.Berlin – includes more than 100 Berlin-based Yiddish speakers from a variety of backgrounds, and about a dozen of us show up to an average gathering.
We have also co-hosted special events such as Third Seders on Passover, picnics and lake swims, Yiddish brunch, open mics, a “pub crawl” station during the Shtetl Berlin festival, and a street party during the Yiddish in Berlin summer program.
I have also taken the format on the road when traveling, and have organized similar meetups in New York, Tel Aviv, Kraków, Warsaw, and Stockholm.
Basics
- An ongoing series of Yiddish-speaking evenings around Berlin
- “Shmues un Vayn” means “conversation and wine”: the wine is optional, but the Yiddish is mandatory
Dates
- Twice per month on irregular evenings, usually weekdays but occasionally on a weekend
- Usually begins at 7 pm, often goes on until midnight or later
- You are welcome to arrive and leave at any time
Join Us
If you are a Yiddish speaker who lives in or plans to visit Berlin, contact me and I will let you know the upcoming dates.
We welcome Yiddish speakers of all levels, but from experience, you should have at least basic conversational Yiddish to attend, as we will not switch languages to explain things.
Press
An article in the Forward in February 2024 profiled our group under the headline: ”You can now hear people speaking Yiddish in bars all over Berlin: A Yiddish conversation group meets biweekly at locations around the city.”
The group has also been covered in the Yiddish Forverts as an example of “post-post-vernacular” (or “neo-vernacular”) Yiddish, and mentioned twice in In Geveb as a manifestation of both the language’s “steady revival” in contemporary Berlin and its transcendence of national and geopolitical boundaries.
Podcast episode
I have also given a podcast interview about our group with Esther Diamond of the fantastic Proste Yiddish podcast. The podcast and the interview are in easy Yiddish, aimed at learners.
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts (Proste Yiddish, season 3 episode 8).
Workshops and Presentations
I have given presentations about Shmues un Vayn several times in the hope of sharing strategies with Yiddish speakers living in other citiesL
- In January 2024, thanks to a grant from KlezCalifornia‘s Yiddish Culture Fund, I presented an online workshop describing the Shmues un Vayn project and offering advice for Yiddish speakers interested in organizing similar groups. You can watch the recorded workshop (in English) here on YouTube.
- In August 2024, I presented a second webinar (also in English) for Sweden’s Isof institute of language and folklore. This was focused more on how to analyze a local context to determine the best format and approach for such a club. The webinar was also attended by a representative of Sweden’s Meänkieli-speaking community. The recording is available here on Isof’s Yiddish website and the presentation can be downloaded here.
- I have also presented on our group twice in person, both times in Yiddish: at the Yiddish Sof-Vokh UK in June 2024 and the annual symposium of Yiddish Studies in Germany that September.
Digital Flyers
To announce each meeting of Shmues un Vayn to the group, I design a unique digital flyer. Occasionally, another member or guest artist will design one, not displayed below. Here are a selection of my favorites, with most of the meeting locations removed:
A Yiddish Street Party
In summer 2022, during the Yiddish in Berlin summer program coordinated by the Paris Yiddish Center, we co-organized a collaborative Shmues un Vayn gathering that attracted many Yiddish students from the program and grew into a Yiddish-speaking street party (see below).
