Naomi Seidman lecturing on The Yiddish Epitaph for KlezCalifornia’s 2010 Yiddish Culture Festival.
We will read a few self-authored epitaphs/poems, including Sholem Aleichem’s and Anna Margolin’s, exploring the Yiddish practice of composing one’s own epitaph as a distinctive genre. Texts will be available in both Yiddish and English translation, along with photos of the inscribed gravestones.
Biography:
(Berkeley) Naomi Seidman is the Koret Professor of Jewish Culture and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Her first book, A Marriage Made in Heaven: The Sexual Politics of Hebrew and Yiddish, appeared in 1997. Her second book, Faithful Renderings; Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation, was published in 2006.
