The Upside-Down World of Birobidzhan

The latest in our Youtube series “Gehert a Mayse!/Have you heard?” is live!
The Upside-Down World of Birobidzhan

In the summer of 2007, Sheva Zucker, editor of Afn Shvel from 2005-2020, was invited to teach Yiddish in Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East of Russia, where Yiddish is still an official language. There she found a kind of Yiddish Disneyland: menorahs on fences; buildings with Yiddish signs, where no one spoke Yiddish inside; Jewish restaurants where pork was the main dish; and government officials wanting to secure the teaching of Yiddish throughout the region, even in areas where not a single Jew could be found. In this recorded piece, she explores the tragic past and enigmatic present of this extraordinary, upside-down world.

The article, which appeared in Issue 342-343/Fall/Winter 2008 of Afn Shvel, published by the League for Yiddish, also appears in Sheva’s recent publication “Fun yener zayt shvel: Geklibene artiklen funem zhurnal Afn Shvel, 2005-2020” (On the Other Side of the Threshold: Selected Articles from the Magazine Afn Shvel), published by the League for Yiddish on the occasion of her retirement in March 2020.

Listen to Sheva read “A farkerte velt” at: https://youtu.be/tsUcsXqaRnI