Yiddish Vokh (Week) - Summer 2006

We spent an amazing Yiddish immersion week in Copake, New York organised by Yugntruf. Around 150 participants (ranging in age from around 4 months to over 80 years) ate, drank, spoke, sang and participated in many varied sporting, social, cultural and learning events - all entirely in Yiddish. Nili (known as Nilke in Yiddishland) wrote a diary of events during this week and wrote it entirely in Yiddish - presented here as a pdf file: YiddishVokh.pdf (53K).

Refoyl's son Asher took a beautiful sequence of candid photographs during Yiddish vokh which have been collated on a page of Refoyl's website.

We also took many photographs from this wonderful week and I have shown and described only a few representative ones below:

• Cultural and Learning Events:
  • The reading of Yossl Birshtein's delightful short stories by Sore Rokhl
  • Analysing a historic talk given by Rabbi Soleveitshik in 1961 presented by Meylekh
  • Creating a Yiddish folkslid (with music) in less than an hour by Refoyl. Both the lyrics and the music of this beautiful song "Malkele mayn lyalkele" are available as pdf files on Refoyl's website
  • A discussion on Perets by Eliye.
• Relaxation: Taking a walk in the woods (shpatsir in vald) (at much less than 15 mph!) with Tova'le from Argentina, Albert from France, and Nilke from Ohio; and again a walk in the camp with Meylekh and Shane in the background. Also Nilke and Srulik relaxing by the ozere (lake).
• Eating: A typical lunch (Mitog moltseit) with "unzer khaveirim": Lippe (from Argentina), Albert, Shaindl and Yossel (from Baltimore). It was amazing to see how the elegant polystyrene cutlery and leftover food was simply scooped up in the tablecloth after each meal.
• The sad (umetik) parting: A final tea in "Tel Aviv" after midnight - "freindshaft af eibik"
  
  Shaindl and Nilke (standing) Lippe, Albert and Tova'le (seated) and our well worn "Toyre" (Uriel's verterbukh) lying patiently in front on the table, waiting for us to look up that missing word.

Izzi (known as Srulik in Yiddishland))

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