Fraytik tsu Nakht Cultural Shabbes & Potluck
Fri, Feb 20
|Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture
Our monthly Secular Humanist Shabbes celebration, potluck, and for this February's after-dinner learning, Jess Goldman brings us profound questions about culture, history, and the way we understand it with a discussion of "An-ski, Ethnographic Performance, and History's Phantom Limbs"
Time & Location
Feb 20, 2026, 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Peretz Centre for Secular Jewish Culture, 6184 Ash St, Vancouver, BC V5Z 3G9, Canada
Event Description
Fraytik tsu Nakht Cultural Shabbes & Potluck is open to all, beginning with our community's Secular Humanist Shabbes observance (songs and readings) followed by a potluck dinner and an engaging speaker to stimulate our after-dinner learning and discussion.
Friday, February 20, 2026 (6-9pm)
Gallia & Ben Chud Auditorium (Peretz Centre)
6184 Ash Street, Vancouver
➤ How to Get Here / Building & Accessibility Information
Free street parking and underground parking available (elevator access).
Doors close at 7pm: The front door and underground parking lot will be closed automatically at 7pm. If you are running late, please make sure you have a friend you can contact to come downstairs and let you in.
Admission: a contribution to the potluck OR pay $18.00 per person (children 13 and under are free).
Please register before Tuesday, February 17 so we can make sure there's enough food for everyone.
This community shabbes event is open to members and friends of all ages. There will be an alternative hang-out space for kids organized by the Peretz Kinder/Yugnt Committee.
This month's after-dinner topic:
An-ski, Ethnographic Performance, and History's Phantom Limbs
Much of what we now consider Yiddish culture (our songs, folktales, and even rituals) come from the preservation work of the famous Yiddish activist, writer, and ethnographer Sh. An-ski's Ethnographic Expedition of 1912 - 1914 into the Pale of Settlement. But what were the ethnographic strategies An-ski used to record the traditions of turn-of-the-century Ashkenazi Jews? And how does this ethnographic expedition shape our understanding of Yiddish culture now?
How, by exploring An-ski's strategies, might we complicate this cultural inheritance and imagine what might be missing from this history? In this brief talk, Jess Goldman will consider the role of performance and dissimulation in An-ski's Ethnographic Expedition.
This discussion is a fantastic beginning to a weekend of Yiddish cultural learning and community experience:
Saturday (Feb. 21): Christina & The Zamlers: The Lost Klezmer Music of the An-ski Expeditions
Or Shalom's Light in Winter Concert Series presents, in partnership with the Peretz Centre and KlezWest, a unique exploration of musical manuscripts from the An-Sky Expeditions, collected over 100 years ago and long thought to be lost, performed by Christina Crowder, Maia Brown, Jimmy Austin, and Mae Kessler in a special evening of music, history, dance and song. Get tickets (by donation, min. $18)
Sunday (Feb. 22): Klezmer & Yiddish Dance Workshops with Christina Crowder and Maia Brown
Deepen your connection to Yiddish culture through movement and music with two workshops, offered by celebrated klezmorim and teachers Maia Brown (Yiddish Dance Workshop, 1pm) and Christina Crowder (Playing for Yiddish Dance, 3pm). Register now (by donation)
Our Speaker: Jess Goldman is a writer, cartoonist, and amateur puppeteer based on the traditional, unceded lands of the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam peoples. A graduate of UBC’s Creative Writing MFA program, their writing explores that sweet spot where Yiddishkayt and queer culture joyfully collide.
(Bio buried beneath the bio: having written many of these little bios, Jess Goldman is less and less sure of who they really are — of the easy confidence of “is” versus “could be” or “in this current political climate”. Really, like every creature on this cruel and wondrous planet, they’re a million contingent things at once.)
Image: S. An-sky, 1915 (via Sheva Zucker’s Yiddish Materials and Programs blog)