The Institute hosted a webinar discussion with Prof. Saul Zaritt and Prof. Roni Henig on Wednesday, April 2, at noon. The talk, “Jewish Language Politics between Revival and Translation”, took place via Zoom
This event featured a dialogue between Saul Zaritt and Roni Henig around their two new books, one about Yiddish and the politics of translation and the other about Hebrew and the notion of revival. The event offered meditations on Jewish language politics, what marks a Jewish way of speaking and writing, and thoughts about the possible futures of Jewish cultural expression.
Saul Noam Zaritt is an associate professor of Yiddish Literature in the departments of Comparative Literature and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University. He studies modern Jewish writing and the politics of translation, examining how writers cross and inhabit boundaries between cultures. His most recent book is A Taytsh Manifesto: Yiddish, Translation, and the Making of Modern Jewish Culture, published October 2024 with Fordham University Press.
Roni Henig is an Assistant Professor of Modern Hebrew Literature in the Skirball department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at NYU. She researches modern Hebrew literature and Jewish literatures in a comparative context. Her recently published book, On Revival: Hebrew Literature between Life and Death (UPenn press, 2024) is a critique of the discourse of language revival in modern Hebrew literature. Her work has been awarded the ACLA Aldridge Prize and the Columbia University Baron prize for a dissertation in Jewish Studies.
The full discussion is available to view below.
Supported by the generosity of the Radov and Kaye families.