ACTIVIST SPOTLIGHT: OLIVE BENITO
Olive (right) at the Selma Summit
Shalom aleykhem! My name is Olive Benito and I’m a student at Smith College, majoring in Jewish Studies, Ethnomusicology, and Theatre. I am passionate about sharing Yiddish culture through performance. I enjoy singing with Adrianne Greenbaum’s Mount Holyoke Klezmer Kapelye, leading Yiddish singalongs, composing Yiddish music with my friends, and making performance art. To me, creating in Yiddish is a way of honoring my heritage, celebrating Jewish resilience through diaspora, and embracing doikayt, or hereness: the idea that Jews can build community and thrive wherever we are. I also appreciate that Yiddish is the language that so many Jewish women lived, prayed, and wrote in.
I was only recently introduced to Yiddish, through a course on Yiddish women authors taught by Mindl Cohen last year, and have since found my place in Yiddish academia and activism. I’ve studied the language at the Steiner Summer Program, attended events like Yiddish New York and KlezCummington, and have written for In Geveb and the Jewish Womens’ Archive (forthcoming). From the start, the Worker’s Circles’ many resources have supported me in my Yiddish journey. The Yosl and Chana Mlotek Yiddish Song Collection has been essential for all of my work with Yiddish songs, providing free online access to hundreds of digitized Yiddish songs, including sheet music and translations. The Workers Circle also has given me the wonderful opportunity to learn from the renowned Jewish lesbian poet and socialist activist Irena Klepfisz through the College Network Radical Reading program.
When I was looking for ways to engage more with Jewish activism this past semester, I knew that I could trust the Workers Circle to provide an educational experience rooted in over a century of effective changemaking. I joined The Workers Circle and Black Voters Matter Young Adult Summit in Selma, where we learned from experts how to canvas and organize towards increased voting rights for the local community and participated in the commemorative march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I felt incredibly honored to represent the Workers Circle at the march, which has been present there since the original protest in 1965. Taking part in the Summit connected me with peers and mentors who were involved in Jewish activism, and I left feeling empowered that so many others were invested in the fight towards a multiracial, multicultural democracy.
I am so grateful for the ways that the Workers Circle has supported me in my Yiddish creativity, learning, and activism so far, and I look forward to continuing to utilize all of their resources as I continue on my life’s journey. I can’t wait to participate in this summer’s Workers Circle’s Trip to Yiddishland!