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Dear Friend of Yiddishkayt,
We are excited to announce the return of the long-awaited, oft-requested KUGL KUKH-OFF on Sunday, June 1, 2008. Join our panel of celebrity judges - including Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Gold - in tasting dozens of kugl entries. Or if you're up for the challenge, put your best kugl to the test in this afternoon celebration of all things kugl. Read on for more details and a preview video. Also, this is a last-minute reminder for Yiddish Soul, documentary film screening and live music performance. Tuesday, May 13, at the Laemmle Music Hall. More information below. Read on for information of other Yiddish-related events in May and the continuation of The Story of Chernowitz. The vortsman is busy this month, but will be happily back in your inbox next month. mit vareme vuntshn, The Yiddishkayt Staff |
REMINDER: YIDDISH SOUL - 5/13
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Documentary Screening: Yiddish Soul
+ Live Musical Performance by Cindy Paley
 Tuesday, May 13
Begins at 7:30 pm
at Laemmle's Music Hall
9036 Wilshire Blvd.
Beverly Hills, CA 90211
click here for a map
$10 General Admission
$8 Seniors/Students/JCC members
Purchase tickets online or by calling (800) 838-3006.
Join us this Tuesday for a screening of the charming documentary, Yiddish Soul, followed by a live music sing-along with Cindy Paley. The film tells the story of artists, some Jewish and some not, who are reviving Yiddish music in today's Europe. From Amsterdam to Berlin, Paris
to Prague, the performances and the enthusiastic audiences are a
tribute to the power of Yiddish song, transcending the destruction of
the Holocaust. (Yiddish Soul: 54 minutes, 2006, French/German with English subtitles.)
 After the film, enjoy a live music performance with Yiddish Folk Singer Cindy Paley.
Cindy will teach several songs that are performed in the film, giving
you the unique opportunity to learn these songs for yourself. Sing
along with the crowd and go home whistling your (new) favorite Yiddish
tunes.
 Yiddishkayt
Los Angeles is sponsoring Yiddish Soul (Screening + Sing-Along) as part
of the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival (May 8-15). More info about
the film festival available at www.lajfilmfest.org. |
6/1 - KUGL KUKH-OFF
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The 2nd Ever, Non-Annual
KUGL KUKH-OFF
Back by Hungry Demand!
You don't know kugl until you do the Kugl Kukh-Off!
Sunday, June 1st, 2008 - 1 to 4 pm
On June 1st, Yiddishkayt Los Angeles invites you to put your kugl to the test. Bring your best kugl (or bring your favorite tasting fork) and prepare for a day that will make you question everything you thought you knew about kugl.
Join Pulitzer Prize winner Jonathan Gold (Gourmet & LA Weekly), Evan Kleiman (host of KCRW's Good Food), Amy Albert (Bon Appetit), Marvin Saul (Junior's Deli) and other celebrity judges for kugl tasting, live entertainment, oral history recording, and a family workshop.
at Valley Cities Jewish Community Center (VCJCC)13164 Burbank Blvd, Sherman Oaksclick here for a map$10 admission$8 Yiddishkayt LA or VCJCC members/seniorsIncluded with admission price: 3 free kugl tastingsAdditional kugl tastings: 2 for $1Children under 12: free admission + 1 free kugl tastingChefs: your kugl entry earns you free admission!
More info at www.yiddishkaytla.org
Co-sponsored by VCJCC.
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MORE YIDDISH EVENTS IN MAY
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Visit us at the Israel Independence Day Festival
Sunday, May 18, 2008
10am - 10pm
Woodley Park (between Burbank Blvd. & Victory Blvd. adjacent to the 405 FWY)click here for a map
$10 admission; children under 2 get in free
Free parking
Join Yiddishkayt Los Angeles at the Israel Independence Day Festival, commemorating Israel's 60th Anniversary. Visit our booth for Yiddish books, music, and culture. If you're interested in helping out, you can volunteer at our booth for an hour and kibitz with visitors. Email events@yiddishkaytla.org. Lecture at the Los Angeles Yiddish Culture Club
Sunday, May 18, 2008
2pm
8339 West Third Street
(310) 275-8455 or (323) 655-1341
Members free, Guests $4
Refreshements afterwards
The Los Angeles Yiddish Culutre Club invites you to a lecture by Lilke Majzner, The Legacy of a Writer: Franz Kafka. On the 84th anniversary of his death. With musical interlude.
Lecture in Yiddish.
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THE STORY OF CHERNOWITZ
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We
continue to explore the story of the famous Chernowitz Conference of
1908, where the great Yiddishists of the day proclaimed that "Yiddish
is a national language of the Jewish people."
In this yidbits, we profile Nathan Birnbaum, one of the central figures behind the Chernowitz Conference.
 One of the most accomplished thinkers in Jewish history, Nathan Birnbaum played a critical part in several Jewish nationalist movements. Born in 1864 to an Orthodox family in Vienna, Birnbaum would come to coin the terms Yiddishism and Zionism, leaving an eternal footprint on modern Jewish vocabulary.
Although Birnbaum was born into the German cultural sphere and not even a native speaker of any Jewish languages, he surprised many when as a young man he deduced that Austrian Jews weren't nationally German, but rather nationally Jewish. Birnbaum soon came to the realization that Jews need to recognize themselves as a nationality, and seek to regain the land of Palestine.
His activism began at the University of Vienna, where Birnbaum and two others founded Kadimah (forward and eastward) in 1883. Kadimah was the first student organization of its kind, and it preached for settlement of Palestine and against assimilation. After Herzl's Judenstaat was published in 1896, Birnbaum embraced political Zionism, speaking at the first Zionist conference at Basle in 1897. Soon enough, Birnbaum was elected Secretary-General of the Zionist Organization, but a year later personal disagreements with Herzl led him to leave the world of political Zionism.
"Israel geht vor Zion", Israel comes before Zion, became his new motto. He wrote, "It is arbitrary to regard all cultural beginnings in the Golus [Diaspora] simply as valuable cultural manure for just one potential culture on a soil which is not yet ours." Upon analysis of Eastern European Jewry he noted, "I found them to be a people with all the signs of a live, separate nation, it became more and more clear to me that a nation that already exists does not have to be created again...thus I developed Golus-Nationalism."
This spiritual nationalism, led Birnbaum to the language of the nation he had become infatuated with. Not a native speaker, Birnbaum studied hard to master Yiddish. He was unique in that he promoted the Yiddishist movement primarily in German (or often in poor Yiddish).
On a fundraising trip to the United States, Birnbaum met with Zhitlovsky and publisher A.M. Evalenko in the home of writer David Pinksi. It was here, in the spring of 1908, that he presented his plan for the Chernowitz Yiddish language conference. Zhitlovsky was chosen to write the invitations and Evalenko pledged his office staff for mailing operations.
Things were getting underway...
-- Warner Bass, Yiddishkayt LA Intern
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Source:
Emanuel S. Goldsmith, Modern Yiddish Culture (New York: Fordham UP, 2000).
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Yiddishkayt Los Angeles
www.yiddishkaytla.org
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