Debra Caplan, “Yiddish Empire” and Alyssa Quint, “This Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater.”

Please join Professor Joel Berkowitz in conversation with Debra Caplan and Alyssa Quint for this celebration of two recent books by members of the Digital Yiddish Theater Project. This event is free and open to the public.

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During World War I, a motley group of amateurs, refugees, and out-of-work actors revolutionized the Yiddish stage. Achieving unlikely success, the Vilna Troupe would go on to earn the attention of theatergoers worldwide. Yiddish Empire tells the story of how these performers became the interwar equivalent of a viral sensation.

The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater focuses on the life and work of Avrom Goldfaden, one of the most colorful figures in the history of the Yiddish stage. Quint explores how the actors who performed his plays absorbed theater into their everyday lives, and paints a vivid picture of Jewish religion, politics, and daily life in late Imperial Russia.

Join us for Historian Victoria Smolkin of Wesleyan University on Soviet Atheism. Smolkin is the author of the book, A Sacred Space Is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism, published by Princeton University Press in 2018. She is a scholar of Communism, the Cold War, and atheism and religion in Russia and the former Soviet Union. Smolkin’s expertise also covers religious politics and secularism and the Soviet space program.

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