By Danny Kraft and Samantha Shokin

From January 10-16, Richmond will host its first festival devoted entirely to Yiddish language, culture, and history.

But why a festival of Yiddish culture, and why now? We – the festival founders – wanted to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves, and our event. 

To most American Jews, Yiddish is a dead language, kept alive only in small, insular communities, in kitschy vocabulary words like schlep or kvetch, and in nostalgic imaginings of shtetl life like in Fiddler on the Roof. Although we are both grandchildren of native Yiddish speakers, we grew up without any understanding of the richness and diversity of Yiddish culture, or of the fact that Yiddish artistic expression continues to flourish to this day.

In our 20s, we separately discovered and began to engage with Yiddish – Samantha through music and Danny through literature.

This exploration introduced us to the world of contemporary Yiddish culture and connected us with an international community of Yiddishists dedicated to preserving, revitalizing, and celebrating the millennium-old story of Yiddish.

Like so many Jews who have come to discover and reclaim Yiddish in the generations that have passed since the Holocaust, we found that exploring this heritage deepened our lives in ways we could not have imagined, transforming our understanding of ourselves as Jews and giving us meaningful new ways of engaging with Jewish history and identity.

Yiddishkayt

When we were both new to Richmond a few years ago, we connected over this shared passion and later joined forces to launch Richmond Yiddish Week, building on the legacy of contemporary festivals like Yiddish New York, KlezKanada, and Yiddish Summer Weimar, which for years have challenged the notion that Yiddish culture is dead and gone.

Through concerts, workshops, a contemporary film screening, a children’s storytime, and more, our hope for Yiddish Week is to offer the entire Richmond community a meaningful way to connect with Yiddishkayt (Yiddish culture) and help sustain it for future generations.

At a time of rising antisemitism, when many Jews are eager for ways to connect with Jewish identity and community, Yiddish provides an alternative avenue into Jewish culture. Today, a global movement of young Jews is turning to Yiddish to reclaim the heritage that generations of assimilation had obscured or even rejected.

This is especially true among those who feel alienated from or uncomfortable with traditional Jewish institutions or religious practices. For learners of all ages, Yiddish provides a window into the vibrant world long inhabited by many of our ancestors – a world too often overshadowed by the catastrophes of the twentieth century.

We are so thrilled to celebrate Yiddishkayt with our community, and we hope to see you at some of our events.

A full schedule can be found at www.richmondyiddishweek.com. 

A groysen dank – thank you so very much – and see you at Yiddish Week!