Gilles Rozier: Paris Yiddish Scene

Today’s show continues our series of interviews with activists on the Yiddish scene around the Paris Yiddish Center-Medem Library, which began Wednesday June 12 2019. We previously presented interviews with Ri J. (Reyze) Turner and Yitskhok Niborski.

Gilles Rozier was born in France in 1963. He began to learn Yiddish in 1987. From 1994 until 2014 he served as Director of the Paris Yiddish-Center/Medem Library. He wrote his Doctoral Dissertation about the Yiddish writer Moyshe Broderzon. He is also a translator from Yiddish, Hebrew, English, and French. In 2016, he and Anne-Sophe Dreyfus created “Les Editions de l’Antilope”, a French-language publisher devoted to Jewish literature, which has now published 20 books, either in translation from Yiddish, Hebrew, English, and Polish, or originally written in French.

The interviews are conducted by Sholem Beinfeld, who is Professor Emeritus of History at Washington University in St. Louis, and is perhaps best known as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary (Arumnemik Yidish-English Verterbukh), as well as a translator of Yiddish texts and creator of new subtitles for classic Yiddish movies. The Dictionary is based on the Yiddish-French Dictionary edited by Yitskhok Niborski and published by the Medem Library/Paris Yiddish Center. Sholem’s connection with the Medem Library goes back many decades, beginning with his Fulbright Fellowship in Paris as a graduate student.

See also: Medem Library-Paris Yiddish Center home page: http://www.yiddishweb.com

Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS, an instrumental track from the CD Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air date: July 24, 2019