Yiddish Language and Culture is the topic at SUNY Orange

MIDDLETOWN — “Before the Holocaust, Yiddish was spoken by 15 million Jews all over the world. Today, 3 million Jews are speaking the language. Yiddish is considered not only a Jewish language, but an entire Jewish civilization and culture,” states Miriam Hoffman, lecturer at Columbia University and columnist and feature writer for the Jewish Forward.

On Thursday, April 25, Hoffman will lecture on this topic, Yiddish Language and Culture, in SUNY Orange’s Orange Hall Room 23, from 11 a.m. to 12:15 p.m.

Her first-hand narrative sprinkled with humor immediately engages her audience. The program is free and open to the public, and registration is not required.

Born in Siberia, she lived in slave labor camps in Russia during World War II, escaping at the end of the war with her family and finally reaching Germany in 1946 where they lived in a displaced persons camp until being able to immigrate to the USA in 1950. Since then, she received BAs from Jewish Teachers Seminary and the University of Miami and an MA from Columbia University. In addition to teaching at Columbia, she has written over 2,000 published articles for the Jewish Forward, a series of Yiddish children’s books, 10 Yiddish plays of which five were very successful and have been produced and performed at the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Joseph Papp Theater, off-Broadway at the Astor Theater, the John Houseman Theater, the 92nd St. Y, and in major American, Canadian, and European cities. In 1992, her translation into Yiddish of Neil Simon’s "Sunshine Boys" got a Tony Award.

Hoffman received a Fellowship award from the Holocaust Memorial Foundation. Her compilation of songs in four languages - Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, and Polish - which, as a 10-year-old, she collected while living in the displaced persons camp in Ulm, Germany, is housed at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. She has also won literary awards from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the Dora Teitelbaum Foundation, and the New School.

Fluent in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English, she has a speaking knowledge of Russian, Polish, and some German.

Orange Hall is located at the corner of Wawayanda and Grandview Avenues, Middletown.

For more information, call 845-341-4891, email cultural@sunyorange.edu or go to www.sunyorange.edu/culturalaffairs.