On Zoom, Sundays from 9 to 10:30 am, PST January 26th to February 16th. Suggested cost, $75.
The City of Angels promised paradise and relief to early Jewish migrants from New York, drawing newcomers at first with its tuberculosis sanitarium, fresh air, plentiful good jobs and cultural diversity. One by one, each promise became compromised — the sanatorium was kicked out of city limits by German Jews eager to limit the influx of their Eastern European brethren, the air became ruined by choking smog, and the jobs were not necessarily very different from the sweatshops of Manhattan. Perhaps most shockingly, Jews confronted the grave injustices done in the 50s and 60s to the minority populations of the city as federal government agents swept Boyle Heights for Mexican immigrants, and Black people rioted in Watts after facing horrific standards of living, ignored by the Anglo-Saxons in their wealthy neighborhoods.
All of these stories were documented in Yiddish, but most have never been translated. Luminaries of Yiddish literature like Sholem Asch and Peretz Hirschbein penned their observations from their travels, and others who settled in the city published in the famous Los Angeles literary journal Kheshbn among other places. In their stories, Downtown Los Angeles, Boyle Heights and West Adams, places where seeing Jewish traces require an expert eye, come alive as the Jewish centers of gravity that they once were.
Der Nister’s Rabbi Zach Golden, former Deputy Yiddish Editor at the Forward and LA area native, is taking on a project to collect and translate many of these writings in an anthology tentatively called “Immersed in a Sea of Light,” taken from a particularly beautiful line about gazing down at the city from the foothills. Alongside an upcoming talk at the Central Library in May about this subject, he is offering an online four-week course thematically going through these stories and poems, in the original and in translation.
If there are any questions about this course, please write to Zach at golden@dernister.org
Zoom links will be emailed upon registration. The class will be recorded.