Deborah A. Green and Aaron Lansky: “The First Yiddish War Reporter”

Sponsored by The Grolier Club

Join The Grolier Club as Translator Deborah A. Green and Aaron Lansky, Yiddish Book Center founder and president, have a conversation to celebrate the release of a translation of writings by the poet, translator and literary journalist S. L. Shneiderman (1906-1996), Journey Through the Spanish Civil War: The Hinterlands (White Goat Press). Note: this is a live webcast. 

Shneiderman’s coverage of the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War earned him the moniker “the first Yiddish war reporter.” With his wife, Eileen, he became one of the 20th century’s most influential Yiddish journalists and a pillar of New York’s Yiddish literary and journalistic community. His book on the Spanish Civil War was published in 1938 (two years before he immigrated to the U.S.) as Krig in shpanyen: hinterland. White Goat Press is bringing out its first appearance in English.

For this event, some of Shneiderman’s rare editions and related archival material will be on display.

Register for the online event here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/virtual-lecture-on-yiddishenglish-language-journalist-sl-shneiderman-tickets-916587085647?aff=ebemoffollowpublishemail&ref=eemail&utm_campaign=following_published_event&utm_content=follow_notification&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eventbrite

Deborah A. Green is a native Yiddish speaker and translator, author, and attorney. Her research focuses on Jewish participation in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War and with Polish partisan groups during WWII. Her translations of Yiddish letters written by Jewish fighters have been featured in anthologies, magazines, and journals.

Aaron Lansky is founder and president of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., a nonprofit organization working to recover, celebrate, and regenerate Yiddish and modern Jewish literature and culture. White Goat Press, the Center’s imprint, publishes newly translated work in all genres of fiction and nonfiction. The Center grew out of Lansky’s discovery in the late 1970s of vast numbers of Yiddish books being discarded by younger Jews who could not read their ancestors’ language. Since his first public appeal for unwanted Yiddish books in 1980, when scholars believed just 70,000 volumes were extant and recoverable, more than a million volumes have been gathered at the Center. Lansky has earned degrees from Hampshire College, McGill University, Amherst College, the State University of New York, and Hebrew Union College; received a so-called “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation in 1989; and wrote a bestseller in 2005, Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books.

Grolier Club Members

If you are a Grolier Club member, please register yourself and your guests via the Club website. Do not register via Eventbrite.