The Yiddish Voice continues its series of interviews with Yiddish activitsts at the Paris Yiddish Center-Medem Library on Wednesday June 26 2019 at 7:30 PM with an interview with Yitskhok Niborski, airing in Boston on WUNR 1600-AM Wednesdays at 7:30 PM and live-streamed via yv.org.
Yitskhok Niborski was born in Buenos Aires in 1947 and raised in a Yiddishist, secular family. He attended the Yiddish schools that then thrived in Buenos Aires and the Yiddish teachers’ training academy (Lerer-Seminar) with specialization in Yiddish literature. He moved to Paris in 1979 to take up a position as Director of the Medem Library while also teaching at the prestigious Ecole Nationale des Etudes Orientales. He remained at the head of the Medem Library for over thirty years, helping to turn the Medem Library-Paris Yiddish Center into one of the most active Yiddish institutions in the world. He has devoted his entire adult life to Yiddish education: in elementary schools, in classes for adults, and in universities. He participated in publishing several Yiddish dictionaries and textbooks, nobably the “Verterbukh fun Loshn-koydesh shtamike verter in Yidish” (first edition 1997) and the “Dictionnaire Yiddish-Français” (“Yiddish-French Dictionary”) (2002), both published by the Medem Library-Paris Yiddish Center. He has also written and published over twenty poems in Yiddish.
Other interviewees in this series are Ri J. (Reyze) Turner, whose interview was aired on June 12 2019, and Gilles Rozier, whose interview will be aired on an upcoming program, to be announced.
The interviews are conducted by Sholem Beinfeld, He is Professor Emeritus of History at Washington University in St. Louis, and is perhaps best known as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the “Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary” (“Arumnemik Yidish-English Verterbukh”), as well as a translator of Yiddish texts and creator of new subtitles for classic Yiddish movies. The Dictionary is based on the “Yiddish-French Dictionary” edited by Yitskhok Niborski and published by the Medem Library/Paris Yiddish Center. Sholem’s connection with the Medem Library goes back many decades, beginning with his Fulbright Fellowship in Paris as a graduate student.
The Yiddish Voice (Dos Yidishe Kol / דאָס ייִדישע קול), Boston’s weekly Yiddish-language radio show, is heard in the Boston area every Wednesday on WUNR 1600 AM from 7:30 to 8:30 PM (Eastern) and live-streamed on the Internet at www.yiddishvoice.com, and via Apple Podcasts at the following URL:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-yiddish-voice-podcast/id915622071?mt=2
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