Clara Sumpf Yiddish Lecture Series with Anna Shternshis

This is an Archive of a Past Event

Red Star Over the Shtetl: Nostalgia in Post-Soviet Jewish Culture around the Globe

Anna Shternshis, Al and Malka Green Associate Professor of Yiddish Studies at University of Toronto

This lecture is in English. There is another lecture in Yiddish at 4:00pm.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many contemporary Russian musicians of Jewish origins turned to Yiddish language and culture in search of a meaningful connection to their past and identity. Richly illustrated with media clips, the lecture examines how post-Soviet Yiddish music addresses issues of Soviet nostalgia and Soviet government anti-Semitism, and how it reaches out to both Jewish and non-Jewish Russian-speaking audiences across the globe.