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The purpose of the seminar is to explore the tragedy of lost cultures, languages, and histories – those of other people and those of our own families – and to consider how much of our own culture and linguistic heritage has survived.
This seminar is organized around a text, Outwitting History by Aaron Lansky, who, at the age of 23, found his life purpose in rescuing and disseminating 1,500,000 Yiddish books. In the process, he learned from the people who gave him the books and from the books themselves about 1,000 years of Yiddish worldwide culture that was being lost as the last generation that remembered it or could read the language was dying.
As we read and discuss the issues raised in this book, participants will have the opportunity to consider their own or another culture, lost or preserved, and to think about the challenges to our culture and linguistic heritage posed in today’s multi-national world. Examples include: the resurrection of “dead languages” (Hebrew and Irish), the loss of indigenous languages and cultures, the loss of our parents’ and grandparents’ languages, the survival of minority languages and identities within nations (Catalan, Basque, Roma, Breton, and Welsh)
The only required text is Aaron Lansky’s Outwitting History, (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005). The class will schedule one session to tour The Yiddish Book Center in Amherst. Optional: some participants may be interested in reading parts of Language City, by Ross Perlin, (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2004), which discusses the hundreds of “endangered languages” some of whose only surviving speakers live in New York City. The moderator will provide other resources later in the Fall of 2024 and will be available to suggest possible topics.
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