The Concept and Poetics of Do'ikayt with Mindl Cohen
Sat, Feb 19
|Zoom
Mindl Cohen, academic director at the Yiddish Book Center will be sharing her research on the influential political and cultural ideology of Do'ikayt ("here-ness") in the early 20th century.


Time & Location
Feb 19, 2022, 1:30 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. PST
Zoom
Event Description
Our final guest lecture in the 2021-2022 Zhargon Speaker Series will take place next Saturday, February 19 at 1:30PM (notice the time change!) on Zoom. We will meet Mindl Cohen, who is the academic director at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. Mindl (also known as Madeline) will be sharing her research on the concept and poetics of Do'ikayt ("here-ness"), which was an influential political and cultural ideology in the early 20th century.
Mindl has provided some materials for us to go over in preparation for her talk:
Excerpts from the novel The Zelmenyaners by Yiddish author Moyshe Kulbak. Please read the text from page 17 onwards (the previous pages are recommended if you want an introduction). In addition, check out Kulbak's poem Vilna, which we will be discussing during the session. (PDFs provided)
For some more background and in-depth discussion about Do'ikayt and the way it was imagined in Yiddish culture, literature and politics, check out:
Madeleine Cohen, "Do’ikayt and the Spaces of Politics in An-sky’s Novella Inshtrom," East European Jewish Affairs, 50, no. 1-2 (2020): 6-20.
Madeleine Cohen, "EEJA in Action: Excerpt from Sh. An-sky’s Inshtrom, pages 54–56," East European Jewish Affairs, vol. 50, no. 1-2 (2020): 21-23.
Image: Cover of The Zelmanyaners (Yale University Press, 2013) with illustration by Anatoly Kaplan, Based on a Jewish Folk Song 'Harvest,' 1956.