What are we?
YIDDISH.BERLIN is a community of artists, scholars, activists, and enthusiasts based in Berlin and dedicated to Yiddish — as a language, as an expression, as a statement, as a way of life. We embrace the sense of freedom and the non-hierarchical approach embodied by the Yiddish language and culture. Hence, we don’t have a strict structure or a formal status.
From the very beginning, YIDDISH.BERLIN events have been combining different forms of art. Literature, visual arts, music, and theatrical performances intertwine to reflect Yiddish culture as a holistic, vibrant, and living phenomenon. We organize thematic art exhibitions, literary events, talks, reading groups, conversation circles, salons, film screenings, and other activities that sustain living Yiddish culture and both remember and transmit its rich legacy.
Apart from exhibitions and other cultural events, there are ongoing projects affiliated with YIDDISH.BERLIN, such as the Yiddish reading circle (coordinated by Arndt Beck), the workshop for contemporary Yiddish poets (coordinated by Katerina Kuznetsova), and the local Yiddish-speaking social club Shmues un Vayn (coordinated by Jake Schneider).
Who are we?
Since 2018, more than fifty people have taken part in YIDDISH.BERLIN events as performers and organizers. Some frequent participants have included contemporary visual artist Ella Ponizovsky Bergelson, singers Sveta Kundish and Sasha Lurje, musicians Patrick Farrell, Luise Fakler and Zhenja Oks, actresses Hilde Haberland and Anna Rozenfeld, poets Jordan Lee Schnee and Yael Merlini, translators Horst Bernhardt, Iryna Zrobok and Hanna Żarska, scholars Guli Dolev-Hashiloni, Irad Ben Isaak and Janina Wurbs, to name just a few.
YIDDISH.BERLIN unites permanent residents of Berlin with our neighbors and visitors who are passing through for a shorter time. Our community includes many immigrants, particularly from Israel, Poland, the US, Ukraine, and Russia, and we speak many different languages in addition to Yiddish.
The organizational core of YIDDISH.BERLIN today includes three people:
How did we get here?
YIDDISH.BERLIN grew out of the collaboration between Arndt Beck and Katerina Kuznetsova, who organized their first joint event in August 2018. They both shared the vision of Yiddish culture as an organic and essential part of Berlin’s multi-faceted cultural landscape. In the first events that were dedicated to 20th-century Yiddish literature, they aimed to recreate the vivid atmosphere of Yiddish literary salons from the 1920s. Yiddish is not a museum artifact and does not belong solely to university halls or libraries. It is a living language that should be heard in the polyphony of other languages spoken in Berlin today.
The name YIDDISH.BERLIN was first used in August 2019 for the exhibition Di farbloyte feder — Berliner zeydes. This simple name symbolizes the inherent connection between Yiddish culture and the city. Many exhibitions and other events followed. In 2022, Jake Schneider initiated Shmues un Vayn as a Yiddish social club, which grew quickly as a new and independent element.
Our grassroots approach fits into an ecosystem of self-organized Yiddish cultural projects in the city, notably the regular Klezmer Sessions Neukölln and Yiddish culture festivals by Shtetl Berlin.
Where are we based?
Yiddish.Berlin does not have an office or headquarters. We are based around the city of Berlin. We have collaborated with multiple venues and organizations in Berlin. Galerie Zeitzone in SO 36 hosted five out of our six exhibitions so far. NOVILLA Center for Arts hosted one more, as well as The Night of the Murdered Poets in 2021. We have held our events at PANDA Platforma, Art.City.People Creative Space, Hillel Berlin, Der Schnapphahn in der Babinischen Republik, and B-Lage, among other venues.