A Language That Refuses to Die: Yiddish — Spoken Daily, Read Widely, Seen Globally

Tuesday, 21 April 2026   |   13:30 – 17:30

Goethe Instituut, Herengracht 470, Amsterdam  (1st floor)

Convened by Dr. Daniella Zaidman-Mauer (Universiteit van Amsterdam), Organized by the Menasseh ben Israel Institute

The symposium will be held in English and Dutch

Tickets €15  |  students and friends (donateurs) of MbII €5

Please order your ticket in advance by sending an email to mbii@jck.nl upon which you will receive a confirmation and payment request. 

Yiddish has long been framed as a language in mourning — a casualty of the Holocaust and of assimilation, preserved more in memory than in use. This symposium challenges that narrative. Bringing together three speakers from three distinct corners of the contemporary Yiddish world, it maps a language that is not retreating but reinventing itself: spoken daily in Hasidic homes, sustained in modern print, and transmitted to global audiences through the screen.

Dr. Chaya R. Nove traces the sociolinguistic roots of Hasidic Yiddish from the Carpathian Mountains to the New York metropolis, showing how postwar refugee communities rebuilt a functioning Yiddish-speaking world through schooling, print, and economic networks — and how that world persists today as a compelling case study in minority language vitality. Nikolaj Olniansky offers a counterpoint from the secular world: the story of how Sweden, through a combination of policy, coincidence, and personal commitment, became an unlikely center for modern Yiddish literature, home to dedicated publishers, university programmes, and an internationally renowned annual seminar. Naftali Moskowitz brings a third dimension — the embodied, performed life of language — recounting his role as Yiddish coach for the Netflix series Rough Diamonds (2023), where the transmission of Antwerp Hasidic Yiddish to Flemish actors became an act of cultural preservation as much as professional craft.

Together, these three perspectives reveal Yiddish not as a relic but as a resilient, plural, and productively contested vernacular — one that continues to find new communities, new forms, and new voices in the twenty-first century.

Program

13:30 Opening
Daniella Zaidman-Mauer, Lecturer in Yiddish Language and Literature, Universiteit van Amsterdam

13:45 New York Hasidic Yiddish: Migration, Maintenance, and Belonging
14:15 discussion
Chaya R. Nove, Fordham University/ New York Public Library

14:30 An Unexpected Journey: Sweden as a Contemporary Center for Yiddish Literature
15:00 discussion
Nikolaj Olniansky, Olniansky Tekst Farlag, Malmö

15:15 tea/coffee

15:45 S’past nisht — and Yet: Coaching Living Yiddish on Rough Diamonds (Netflix, 2023) [Lecture will be held in Dutch]          
16:15 discussion
Naftali Moskowitz, Yiddish Language Coach, Religious Studies Educator Antwerp)

16:30 Closure
Daniella Zaidman-Mauer, Universiteit van Amsterdam

Drinks