In the Midst: Exploring Systemic Racism through the lens of Yiddish Culture
with Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell
In this three-part series, Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell will join a panel in exploring issues of systemic racism in the United States through the lens of moments in Yiddish culture: Leyb Malach’s play Mississippi, written in the wake of the infamous Scottsboro Boys trials; Yoysef Kerler’s poem Ven Kh’volt in Alabama Zayn, written in response to the American Civil Rights Movement, and the diverse engagements in the Yiddish language press with the phenomenon of anti-Black racism in the United States.
Anthony Russell is a vocalist, composer and arranger specializing in music in the Yiddish language. His work in traditional Ashkenazi Jewish musical forms led to a musical exploration of his own ethnic roots through the research, arrangement and performance of a hundred years of African American roots music, resulting in the EP Convergence (2018), a collaboration with klezmer consort Veretski Pass exploring the sounds and themes of one hundred years of African American and Ashkenazi Jewish music. Anthony also performs in a duo, Tsvey Brider (“Two Brothers”), with accordionist and pianist Dmitri Gaskin, composing and performing their original music set to modernist Yiddish poetry of the 20th century. An essayist in a number of publications including Jewish Currents and Moment Magazine, Anthony lives in Massachusetts with his husband of five years, Rabbi Michael Rothbaum.
Thursday, February 4, 2021, 7:00-8:30pm ET
Injustice and Interpretation: Leyb Malach’s Mississippi
Alyssa Quint and Eli Rosenblatt
What happens when an infamous miscarriage of American justice against nine Black teenagers is translated to the avant garde Yiddish stage of 1930s Poland—and beyond? Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, with guests Alyssa Quint and Eli Rosenblatt, will visit playwright Leyb Malach’s 1935 international hit Mississippi, along with other artistic Yiddish-language engagements with Black existence during the period in order to investigate the possibilities, perils and limitations of empathy played out in the artistic realm.
Alyssa Quint is Leo Charney Visiting Fellow at the Center for Israel Studies at Yeshiva University. She is the co-editor of Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon (Harvard University Press, 2013) and (with Miryem-Khaye Seigel) a two-volume collection of plays, essays, and translated documents called Women on the Yiddish Stage (forthcoming from Syracuse University Press). She is the author of The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater (Indiana University Press, 2019), a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and the Jordan Schnitzer Award. Besides numerous scholarly articles, Quint has written for The Forward and Tablet Magazine. She is at work on a critical edition of Avrom Goldfaden’s Shulamis (with Ronald Robboy and Nahma Sandrow) and Leyb Malakh’s Mississippi, a Yiddish play about the Scottsboro Boys.
Eli Rosenblatt received his PhD in Jewish Studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017. His dissertation, titled “Enlightening the Skin: Travel, Racial Language, and Rabbinic Intertextuality in Modern Yiddish Literature,” explored “Black-Jewish Relations” as an imagined and imaginative construct in Eastern European Jewish literature and culture. His writing and translations have appeared in Midrasz, In Geveb, CritCom, Tablet, and the Forward. An article and translation regarding modern Jewish attitudes towards wealth, poverty, and modern slavery is forthcoming from Brown Judaic Studies.
Other In The Midst Programs:
Familiarity and Distance: Yoysef Kerler’s Ven Kh’volt in Alabama Zayn
Thursday, February 18, 2021, 7:00-8:30pm ET
Report and Reverberation: Fault-lines of Race of in the Yiddish Press
Thursday, March 4, 2021, 7:00-8:30pm ET
Co-sponsors: Be'chol Lashon, Boston Workers Circle, Congregation Beit Simchat Torah, Congregation Kol Ami, Detroit Jews for Justice, Jewish Community Action, Jewish Community Relations Council of the Sacramento Region, Jewish Labor Committee, JFREJ, Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, National Council of Jewish Women, Reconstructing Judaism, Ritualwell, T'ruah, Yaffed, Yiddish Book Center, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.
