2 minute read
Voices: Rescued Stories Brought to Life
An NPR Best Book of the Year
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year
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A Chicago Tribune Best Read
Monday, June 13, 2022 at 7 pm
Advance registration required. Visit spertus.edu/voices for program details and to reserve your spot.
Spertus Institute is thrilled to again be working with writer and New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein—and to be able to share his amazing latest project with you.
Several years ago, we worked with Krimstein on an exhibition of archival materials and drawings from his graphic biography of Hannah Arendt, which went on to be a finalist for the Jewish Book Award. In the middle of our work together, he left on a mysterious trip to Vilnius.
Sparked during that visit, his book When I Grow Up: The Lost Autobiographies of Six Yiddish Teenagers has us mesmerized.
In the 1930s, the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in Vilna (Vilnius), held a memoir-writing contest for Yiddish-speaking teens. They received 700 entries. The prize was to be awarded on September 1, 1939, the day Hitler invaded Poland.
Long thought to be lost to the Nazis, the teens’ essays were in fact heroically smuggled into hiding. In 2017, they were found.
Krimstein, notebook in hand, came to bring them to life.
In When I Grow up, Krimstein shares stories from six of the young men and women. Almost cinematic, the narratives are full of humor, yearning, ambition, and teen angst. It’s as if half a dozen new Anne Frank stories suddenly came to light, framed by the dramatic story of their rediscovery.
This is Spertus Institute’s 2022 Horwitz Family Presentation on Jewish History, generously endowed by the Horwitz Charitable Fund.
This program is free thanks to donor support.
Spertus Institute presents authors whose stories shed light on Jewish experiences and the broader human condition.
Ken Krimstein (who will join us this spring, see page 23) follows a pair of authors featured in December and January for live online streaming conversations.
Ayelet Tsabari (CBC/Sinisa Jolic)
December 2021 | Solomon Goldman Lecture
Ayelet Tsabari joined us from her home in Tel Aviv in December for a conversation spearheaded by Spertus Dean and Chief Academic Officer Dr. Keren E. Fraiman.
Speaking about Tsabari, an award-winning author of Yemeni descent, Dr. Fraiman said, “This year has brought conversations of diversity to the forefront in ways we haven’t seen in decades. With honesty and artistry, Tsabari explores what it was like to grow up Yemeni in Israel. Her stories are personal, but the themes are universal. What is it like to have immigrant parents? To negotiate multiple cultures? When there aren’t people that look like us doing things we dream to do, how do we forge new paths?”
The Solomon Goldman Lecture Series is endowed by the late Rose and Sidney Shure. Tsabari’s appearance was presented in partnership with the Consulate General of Israel to the Midwest and the Consulate General of Canada in Chicago.
