Department of Germanic Languages & Literatures University of Toronto
You are warmly invited to an academic presentation by Jacob Hermant, PhD candidate in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures and the collaborative program with the Anne Tanenbaum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto. Lecture Title:Reading Diasporism in Yiddish Literary HistoryDate: Thursday, November 27, 2025Time: 4:00-6:00 PMLocation: Department Library, Room 323, 3rd Floor, Odette Hall About the Lecture: Jacob’s dissertation looks at nineteenth-century Yiddish literature and early twentieth-century radical Jewish politics in an attempt to locate and reveal an intellectual lineage between the two movements. The first wave of modern Yiddish literature, as part of the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), is often read as didactic and moralistic, aiming to educate and modernize the Jewish population of Eastern Europe in order to integrate into modern European life and culture, and away from perceived superstition and backwardness, especially with regard to the use of Yiddish as a vernacular. While this was certainly the goal of many authors, a close reading of the period’s Yiddish literary texts can highlight momentary breaks that reveal a far more complicated and nuanced relationship between the Jewish intelligentsia and folk, one which finds both utility and positive affective connections in traditional Jewish life, as well as anticipating threads of ... Read More »
Academic Presentation by Jacob Hermant | 4pm, November 27, 2025
