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2006-11-05
2006-2007 Yiddish Reading Circle at the Institute

The Vilnius Yiddish Institute has launched its 2006-2007 Vilnius Yiddish Reading Circle (Vílner yídisher léyenkrayz), which meets in the Richard Maullin Study Hall each Wednesday at 5 PM sharp during academic term time.

Visitors to Vilnius are always welcome to come and sit in on the Léyenkrayz. Reading segments of the text revolves around the seminar table. Reading aloud is strictly voluntary!

Founded in 1999 at the Center for Stateless Cultures, in cooperation with the Jewish Community of Lithuania, the Reading Circle was further institutionalized in 2001, when it was incorporated into the program of the new Vilnius Yiddish Institute at Vilnius University. The Reading Circle was founded by, and is led by Professor Dovid Katz, the VYI’s Director of Research.

This session’s participants include about a dozen Vilnius residents ranging from students of Yiddish in their twenties and thirties to seniors from the survivors’ and veterans’ Jewish communities. The regulars include Ms. Fira Bramson, director of Judaica at the Lithuanian National Library; Dr. Israel Lempertas, academic advisor to the Jewish community; Dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, who not long ago completed his Vilnius University doctorate on the cultures of Vilna in the early twentieth century; Ms. Regina Kopilevich, the well-known tour guide and genealogist; Ms. Indre Joffyte, a young businesswoman who continues her study of Yiddish; this year’s visiting Fulbright fellow at the institute, Mr. Michael Caspar of Boston; Ms. Eveline Poppe of Belgium, who has studied Yiddish in Antwerp with Ms. Jennifer Bell, a VYI educator program (and summer course) veteran, is on a one year study program in Vilnius.

This session’s text is a novelette by Yiddish prose master Chaim Grade (1910-1982). Called Shífrele (Yiddish diminutive of Shífre - the female forename Shifra), it is included in the collection Der shúl-hoyf (The Great [Vilna] Syngagogue Courtyard), which was published in New York in 1958. The story is set on the streets and alleyways of prewar Vílne, enabling participants to identify various of the nooks and corners of their daily walks in town with the places cited in Grade’s text.

In Spring 2005, the Reading Circle was dedicated to the beloved memory of one of its founding participants, Dr. Sheine Sideraite (Sheyne Sider, 1921 - 2005), a vivacious, caring person with a rare sense of humor. Dr. Sideraite, a native of Lazdéy (now Lazdijai, in southern Lithuania) was a noted endocrinologist, and the proud keeper of the literary remains of her late husband J. Josde (Yankl Yosade). She had attended Hebrew and Yiddish schools in her shtetl before the war, and reveled in the hidden and semi-hidden nuances of many of the Yiddish gems in the texts read over the years. In the autumn of 1998, a portrait of her life by Dovid Katz appeared in the Fórverts in that year’s series called Vílner tipn.

The administrator of the Léyenkrayz, who dedicatedly sees to its needs, is the VYI’s assistant director, Ms. Ruta Puisyte.

Visitors to Vilnius are always welcome to come and sit in on the Léyenkrayz. Reading segments of the text revolves around the seminar table. Reading aloud is strictly voluntary!