“You can take a Jew out of a shtetl but you can’t take a shtetl out of a Jew.”   

On Sunday, April 6th, the Marbella Jewish Community hosted a unique lecture on Yiddish language and culture, given by Jana Mazurkiewicz. Jana is the founder and director of the non- profit organization Yiddish Arts and Academics Association of North America (YAAANA).

The lecture “What was and what is Yiddishland” included slides and music and dispelled the myth that Yiddish is a dead language, showing a captive audience that it is in fact very much alive.

In an overview of the language’s 1,000 year history, the audience was taken to its origins in the Alsace region of France and through the publication of the first Yiddish book Bovo-Buch by Elia Levita Bachur. Then, Jana explained how in 1908 Yiddish was voted “a national language of the Jewish people” at the Czernowitz Conference, elevating its status and leading eventually to Yiddishism, a cultural and linguistic effort which strives to preserve this language and the rich cultural heritage that surrounds it. (…)

Jana concluded her very informative lecture with a famous Yiddish song, “Bulbes” (poor people’s potatoes), inviting all those present to join in and experience the joy that is this truly expressive language.