Though the Yiddish language is associated with the Jews of Eastern Europe, Yiddish poetry is intertwined with the Mediterranean.
Ancient Greece and the Hellenistic period helped shape the Jewish creative imagination, while the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry in Spain influenced all Jewish poetry that followed. During the twentieth century, a number of Yiddish poets settled in Mandatory Palestine and modern Israel. This reading will include a selection of Yiddish poems connected to the Mediterranean, translated into English by Maia Evrona.
