Finding and Reading the Personal Narratives of Yiddish-speaking migrants to Canada, 1900–1930

AJL-Canada’s next event will take place on Wednesday, May 18, at 1:30 p.m. EDT on Zoom.
Our speaker is Vardit Lightstone, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Vardit's groundbreaking research focuses on the life stories of Yiddish-speaking migrants to Canada from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She will discuss how she discovered these documents, how the immigrants shaped their life stories, as well as what these stories reveal about how Yiddish-speaking immigrants assimilated to Canadian life.

Our moderator will be Dr. Anna Shternshis, the Al and Malka Green Professor of Yiddish studies and director of the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. Dr. Shternshis is the author of Soviet and Kosher: Jewish Popular Culture in the Soviet Union, 1923 – 1939. Together with artist Psoy Korolenko, she created and directed the Grammy-nominated Yiddish Glory project, which brought back to life forgotten Yiddish music composed in the Soviet Union during the Holocaust.