On December 7, 2022, the Institute and the Naomi Foundation hosted bestselling author and scholar Dara Horn—and over 250 attendees—via Zoom for the Naomi Prawer Kadar Annual Memorial Lecture. Horn’s lecture discusses the works and style of writer Pinchas Kahanovich, who wrote under the pseudonym Der Nister (“The Hidden One”), a seminal figure in twentieth century Yiddish literature. By examining plot structures in Yiddish stories and the challenges Der Nister and many others brought to that tradition, Horn takes viewers for a deep dive into our own expectations for what stories should do, their role in Jewish life, and the disturbing possibility that stories actually can't save us. She highlights in particular the story “Fun mayne giter” (“From My Estates”), a powerful allegory for Der Nister’s firsthand experience of Jewish persecution in the Soviet Union in which a man’s home is overrun by bears who slowly eat his body away. Below is a summary clip from the conclusion of Horn’s discussion on Yiddish storytelling.
This lecture was made possible by the generosity of the Naomi Foundation.