Yiddish Folklore: Stories, Legends, and Magic

Part of our Yiddish Month Series! Pair this with our Screening of the Dybbuk on March 18th!

The Jews of Eastern Europe had a rich folk culture stretching back hundreds of years. In this lecture we will explore some different genres of Yiddish folklore, including folktales and magical practices such as incantations against the evil eye. We will discuss what makes the Yiddish language and Yiddish folklore unique, and gain a new understanding of shtetl life.

Doors 6:30 PM, Lecture 7 PM

All Ages, $5-$8 sliding scale/person, no one turned away for lack of funds.

About the Lecturer: Jerusalem-born Natan Meir is a New Jersey native, a New Yorker by temperament and education, and an Oregonian since 2008. From his groundbreaking research on the Jews of Eastern Europe to his work as a consultant for Moscow’s Jewish Museum, Meir has earned an international reputation as a scholar of Jewish social, cultural, and religious history. His latest book, Stepchildren of the Shtetl, recovers the histories of Jewish Eastern Europe’s social outcasts: the disabled, the mentally ill, orphans, and beggars, and he is currently engaged in a new project on folklore, magic, and gedern in European Jewish culture. Students praise his classroom as an inspiring intellectual space. He also speaks or reads eight languages, leads Jewish heritage tours of Ukraine, Poland, and the Baltics, and is probably pondering questions of historical causality—and what to make for dinner—while trail-running.