The East End of the 1890s was buzzing with Jewish culture: markets and tailors workshops, street musicians and children everywhere, people touting the latest songsheet from the music halls and the cries of newspaper sellers.
And this hubbub of sound was in Yiddish.
The influx of Yiddish-speaking Eastern European immigrants created a vibrant culture with scores of newspapers, pamphlets and books, the popular Yiddish theatre and music halls.
One of the regular columns in the Yiddish press was a written sketch about daily life.
These urban sketches written by local journalists, describe the comic and curious, the poignant and mournful aspects of East End life.
This talk will consider a few of these sketches and track down the authors who wrote them, sometimes with surprising results.
About Vivi Lachs
Vivi Lachs is a historian of London’s Jewish East End, a Yiddish performer, and translator. She explores what London’s Yiddish popular culture of plays, songs and sketches in the Yiddish press tell of Jewish immigrant history. As part a Queen Mary University project, she directed and performed Secrets of the London Yiddish Stage and is currently working on a podcasts project. Her books include Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse and London Yiddishtown: East End Jewish Life in Yiddish Sketch and Story. She founded the Great Yiddish Parade to bring Morris Winchevsky’s songs of protest from the 1890s back onto London streets, is the co-founder of the Yiddish Open Mic Café, the vice chair of the Yiddish Café Trust and leads singing tours of the Jewish East End. She performs, records and composes tunes to archive Cockney-Yiddish music-hall lyrics with the bands Klezmer Klub and Katsha’nes.
After the talk, there will be an opportunity for Q&A on the talk. We will then take a 15 minute tea break, followed by an Anglo-Jewish workshop where you may share your successes and brick walls and ask any questions you might have.
If you have problems joining please email chair@jgsgb.org.uk, preferably in the 15 minutes before the meeting proper starts.
JGSGB members, please remember to log in to the members’ area of the JGSGB website before booking, and your £5 fee will be waived.