Why? Because Wisconsin — through the two biggest campuses in the University of Wisconsin System — is poised to become a major center for the study of the language and culture of Yiddish, the great mama-loshn (mother tongue) of the Jews of Eastern Europe.
First, the University of Wisconsin-Madison officially announced in April (though news reports began appearing in January) that it will be creating the Mayrent Institute for Yiddish Culture and will be hiring as director Henry Sapoznik, renowned performer, scholar and teacher of klezmer music.
Second, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee announced in May that it has hired Berkowitz to be the new director of that institution’s Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies — and Berkowitz is an expert on Yiddish theater.
But as distinctive as will be each institutions’ offerings and work, these developments also constitute examples of a world-wide “explosion of interest” in Yiddish and its culture, according to Aaron Lansky, director of the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass.
“Kids are growing up in a more multi-cultural world than their parents ever knew,” Lansky said in a telephone interview on May 11. “They want to bring their own identity to the table.”
And “when they ask questions about Jewish identity,” they ask “social-cultural-historical questions” about such things as books, songs, and language and are seeking “a more holistic understanding of Jewish identity.”
The UW-Madison project began when one professor in the art department, filmmaker Douglas Rosenberg, met Sapoznik at a conference, according to a telephone interview with Sapoznik.
Sapoznik is founder and executive director of Living Traditions, the organization founded in 1994 and “dedicated to the celebration and continuity of community-based traditional Yiddish culture,” according to its Web site.
Among its other activities, it created and runs KlezKamp: The Yiddish Folk Arts Program that has held sessions every winter in a Catskills Mountains resort for the past 25 years.
At Rosenberg’s urging, UW-Madison brought Sapoznik to the campus last year as artist-in-residence (see Chronicle Jan. 28, 2009). He taught a class and brought to Madison the KlezKamp Road Show, a traveling version of KlezKamp.
Not only was there a “wonderful reception” for his work, said Pamela Potter, director of UW-Madison’s George L. Mosse/Laurence A. Weinstein Center for Jewish Studies, but people began to consider a permanent collaboration.
At UW-Madison, “for a long time, there have been numerous faculty members working on different areas of Yiddish and teaching classes in aspects of Yiddish,” said Potter, who is also a musicologist.
“But there was never any consolidated effort to bring it all together,” she said. This new institute “is going to be a catalyst to get us moving in that direction.”
Both Sapoznik and Sherry Mayrent, associate director of KlezKamp and president of Living Traditions’ board of directors, also perceived opportunities.
UW-Madison “is a perfect location for intensive work” in Yiddish culture “because of its interest in interdisciplinary studies” and its interest in “a progressive and activist approach to education.” Therefore, “the idea of having a world-renowned university become the home of a world-renowned Yiddish studies institute seemed a perfect fit,” said Sapoznik.
Mayrent in addition was looking for a home for her collection of old 78 rpm recordings of Jewish music. She has some 10,000 of them, of which 6,000 have been digitally transferred. This collection will be donated to the UW-Madison’s music library.
Mayrent visited Madison with the KlezKamp Road Show in April 2009, and she got the impression that UW-Madison is “filled with people who recognized the potential of the institute and the collection to bring about a new wave of excitement in Jewish studies, and Yiddish studies in particular,” she said in a telephone interview.
Mayrent and her wife, Carol Master, have a donor advised fund, the Corners Fund for Traditional Cultures, in the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Boston. They directed the fund to make a $1 million endowment for the new institute.
Potter said the institute will be “up and running” by the time Sapoznik moves to Madison in January 2011. Plans for the institute include holding conferences on Yiddish studies and sponsoring visiting artists and scholars.
And while the winter KlezKamp sessions will continue to be held in the Catskills, a summer version will be held in Madison. Potter and Sapoznik said that could begin in 2011.
Meanwhile, UW-Milwaukee has spent “almost a year” looking for a new director for its Center for Jewish Studies, according to Stacey J. Oliker, a sociologist and the center’s current director.
Berkowitz currently is director of the Center for Jewish Studies and chair of the Judaic studies department at the State University of New York at Albany. He has been there for nine years, and been department chair for four.
Born in Philadelphia, he was raised in the New York City suburbs. His father’s family had fled Poland after it fell to the Nazis at the beginning of World War II, so he had heard Yiddish spoken and “always wanted to learn it,” he said.
He majored in English, became interested in the history of theater, and entered graduate school at the City University of New York. After a year, he got his chance to learn Yiddish at a summer program at Oxford University in Great Britain. “I completely fell in love.”
Ultimately his interests in Yiddish and theater “came together” and he wrote his doctoral dissertation on Yiddish theater.
“As a theater historian, there are many things I love” about Yiddish theater, he said, “but if I had to boil it down to one idea, it would be how vital it was to people’s lives in its heyday.
“The fact that sweatshop workers would skip lunch to save money for a ticket… was just remarkable.… It was not a theater for the elite. These were hard-working people who had a hunger for something beyond their immediate horizons.”
Once he graduated, Berkowitz’s teaching broadened into other areas of Jewish studies in addition to Yiddish theater.
He discovered he liked teaching as well as scholarship — “I get fidgety at the end of summer; I want to get back in front of students” — and that he also likes administration — “the opportunity to make a mark on a program, lead initiatives, develop that side of things.”
He also likes to work outside academia in the general community, he said, noting that his post in Milwaukee will allow that broader engagement.
“There is a vibrant and diverse and interested Jewish community,” he said, and his new role will provide “opportunities to create programs that are going to enrich that community.”
Moreover, “Milwaukee is an exciting theater town,” he said. “One of the things I do is translate Yiddish plays, and I would love to present some of that.”
In speaking about Berkowitz, Oliker said, “I think it is rare to find a combination of distinguished scholarship and a real feeling for the local community, including people who are interested in Jewish studies but are not necessarily scholars.”
During his visits to the UW-Milwaukee campus, Berkowitz “appealed to members of the community and of the community advisory board” and “impressed scholars in several departments,” she said. “We’re really happy he made this decision and I think he’s going to love it here.”
Berkowitz will begin in August. One of the first things he will do is preside over the opening of the new building devoted to Jewish studies on the campus, said Oliker. (See Chronicle May 2009.)
Loading ...