"The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language"

Join IIJS and the Yiddish Languages Program for a special screening of the opera, The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language, on Thursday, March 5, at 6:00 p.m. ET, at 617 Kent Hall. Composer Alex Weiser and librettist Ben Kaplan will share an excerpt from the ambitious new opera, followed by a discussion on The Great Yiddish Dictionary and writing a 21st-century opera on Yiddish.

The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language tells the tragi-comic story of Yiddish linguist Yudel Mark’s unfinished effort to create the first comprehensive Yiddish dictionary. The Great Dictionary invites audiences to contemplate the surprisingly grand ambition of Yiddish culture after its decimation during the Holocaust and to consider the power of language to transform and shape us.

IIJS’s own Prof. Ofer Dynes reviewed the opera for In Geveb, describing “...an ambitious, larger-than-life spectacle befitting the dazzling ambitions of the creators of the Yiddish dictionary…Composer Alex Weiser and librettist Ben Kaplan endow enchantment and glamor… In recreating the Yiddishist polemics on stage, Kaplan and Weiser excel at capturing the paradoxical nature of postwar Yiddishism, which was simultaneously petty and visionary, cosmopolitan and parochial, messianic, but also highly pragmatic, lachrymose and uplifting, tragic and comic, and everything in between.”

Broad gestures and rich textures are hallmarks of the “compelling” (The New York Times), “deliciously wistful” (San Francisco Classical Voice) music of composer Alex Weiser. Born and raised in New York City, Weiser creates acutely cosmopolitan music combining a deeply felt historical perspective with a vibrant forward-looking creativity hailed as “personal, expressive, and bold” (I Care If You Listen). Weiser’s debut album, and all the days were purple, was named a 2020 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and cited as “a meditative and deeply spiritual work whose unexpected musical language is arresting and directly emotional.” Released by Cantaloupe Music in April 2019, the album includes songs in Yiddish and English. Active as an opera composer, Weiser is currently working on Tevye's Daughters with librettist Stephanie Fleischmann. A commission from American Lyric Theater, Tevye’s Daughters is based on Sholem Aleichem’s iconic Yiddish stories and explores the tragic death of Tevye’s lesser-known daughter, Shprintse. The opera also traces the lasting impact of Shprintse’s fate on her sisters, who are now elderly and living in New York.

Born in Brooklyn, NY, librettist Ben Kaplan studied literature and theater at Williams College. He currently serves as Director of Education at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where he directs programs that teach Jewish history and culture to a broad and diverse audience. These programs include the YIVO-Bard Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture and the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization. He is currently a Wexner Davidson Fellow and an MA-MPA candidate in the Dual Degree in Jewish Communal Leadership at NYU. As a librettist, he creates historically informed dramatic works that chronicle turning points in history lost to contemporary cultural discourse. Recent projects include the libretto for another collaboration with composer Alex Weiser: State of the Jews, based on the life of Theodor Herzl. He is currently writing his next libretto based on a story centered around the Jewishness of Jesus of Nazareth.

View the opera’s trailer below.

The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language trailer

*Guests must register by Friday, January 23, to be approved for campus access; unregistered guests will not be permitted on campus. Each guest must register individually using a unique email address

This event is co-sponsored by the Yiddish Studies Program in the Department of Germanic Languages.