The World of our Great-Grandparents: Eastern European Jewry from Earliest Times to 1881
Ken Blady lecturing on The World of our Grandfathers at KlezCalifornia’s 2010 Yiddish Culture Festival in Palo Alto, CA.
In this informal lecture, supplemented with DVD documentary, Ken will portray Jewish life in Eastern Europe, specifically Greater Poland (which included Lithuania and Ukraine) up to the mass migration to New Worlds in the late 19th century. Topics will include origins theories of the Ashkenazim and the Khazar thesis; development of the Yiddish language and the difference between a shtut, shtetl and derfl; chafing under the czar in the Pale of Settlement; and “Was there a Russian Jewry before 1917?”
Biography:
(Berkeley) Educator, writer, and Yiddish translator, Ken Blady was born in Paris and grew up in Hasidic Brooklyn, where he attended yeshiva and rabbinical seminary. A Bay Area resident since 1972, Ken has a B.A. in History from the U.C. Berkeley, and an M.A. in Educational Psychology from Cal State University East Bay. He is author of The Jewish Boxers’ Hall of Fame and Jewish Communities in Exotic Places, and translator of The Journeys of David Toback and Remembrance. A popular lecturer on a variety of Jewish themes at colleges, synagogues, elderhostels, and adult educational institutions, Ken has been featured on radio and television talk shows, including the Voice of Israel and The History Channel documentary, Operation Magic Carpet. He is a lecturer in Jewish history on the faculty of American Jewish University’s Whizen Center, Bel Air; Cal State University East Bay, Concord, OLLI program; and Diablo Valley College’s Emeritus College, Walnut Creek.
