Voices from the Yiddish Stage with Christa P. Whitney Zoom | Wednesday, March 12 @ 7 p.m. ET

Description

Join Christa P. Whitney, director of the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, as she shares video highlights from the project’s growing collection. We’ll hear from actors who began their careers on the Eastern European stage, familiar faces from American screens who got their start in Yiddish theater, avid Yiddish theater-goers who share memories of performances on New York’s Second Avenue, and artists currently contributing to the present and future of Yiddish theater. Christa Whitney, director, Wexler Oral History Project. Originally from Northern California, Christa discovered Yiddish while studying comparative literature, Jewish studies, and dance at Smith College. She has studied Yiddish at the Yiddish Book Center, Vilnius Yiddish Institute, and the Workers Circle. Through working at the Yiddish Book Center since 2009, she has traveled near and far in search of Yiddish stories, gained expertise in digital video archival processes, and produced several documentary films about Yiddish luminaries. Christa was named on the 2020 Forward 50 list of “people we needed in a year we definitely didn’t.” Her personal research focuses on Yiddish cultural transmission among descendants of Yiddish writers and Jewish history in the Samogitia region of Lithuania. Among other things, she is currently working towards an MBA from the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst.