Activist Spotlight: Yasha Giner

                                                               Yasha in action at YUNG YiDiSH library in Tel Aviv

    My name is Yasha Giner, and I am the Yiddish Cultural Activism Fellow at the Workers Circle. In May, I finished a Master’s Degree at Columbia University, where I wrote my thesis on Yiddish modernism, psychoanalytic theory, and the poetry of Yude-Leyb Teler. I joined the Workers Circle in September.

    My role here is broadly concerned with historical research, writing, and program development that unites Yiddish culture and social justice activism, with a special eye on continuing to cultivate our College Network involvement at this intersection to foster engagement for generations to come. 

One of the major tasks of my position is to continue the work of my predecessor, Yoshke Horowitz, by creating resources for our Democracy Circles initiative that stress the continuity of progressive activism that the Workers Circle embodies in all of its work – the causes which our activists fight and organize for in 2024 often have connections to the very earliest days of our organization’s history, nearly 125 years ago. Our founders, who struggled for women’s rights, democratic freedoms, and the dignity of working people, often made observations and insights in their written work that can resonate with us generations later. In the spirit of the Yiddish poet Shmerke Kaczerginski’s Yugnt-himen (Youth Hymn), my work seeks to “farbindn undzer nekhtn mitn haynt” (“to connect our yesterday with our today”).

Another way in which I attempt to fulfill that goal is through the cultivation, updating, and creation of a number of public-facing resources for the Workers Circle, including our Lower East Side Walking Tour, as well as various opportunities for young people to write (in English or in Yiddish) about social justice topics with a connection to the Workers Circle.

    For the College Network, I seek to strengthen students and young people’s commitment to the Workers Circle as the most vital and lebedik (vibrant) space in which we can envision progressive, Yiddish-inflected futures; I see the College Network as incubating the kind of Jewish life and community that more and more young people demand, while also fighting unswervingly for social justice in a way that benefits all people. 

With so many thousands more people attracted to our social justice work, we are cultivating an “outward facing,” invitational approach to being rooted in Yiddish culture. Many people coming to us are not deeply familiar with their own roots or may not be Jewish at all. We see our Yidishkayt as a springboard for sharing our values in a way that is deeply connected to our stories and history and invite others who do not share our heritage to share the cultural roots of their activism in return. 

     The Workers Circle has been fighting for a shenere un besere velt far ale (a better and more beautiful world for everyone) for nearly 125 years, and the creation of my position represents an exciting (re)commitment on behalf of the organization to its history, and to the expansive vision of Jewish and progressive futures that forms the core of its values. If you’d like to be in touch, please email me at yginer@circle.org!