Jewish and Yiddish Reactions to the Destruction of Gaza: a Panel

About this webinar 

This panel brings together four papers that were presented at the 2025 International Oral History Conference in Krakow, each considering a different aspect of the Jewish past or Jewish present in light of Israel's onslaught on Gaza. Presenting our work just miles away from one of the death camps where Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, we asked ourselves what is our role as Jewish and Yiddish scholars at a time when the only Jewish state, claiming to act in the name of Jewish safety, is committing genocide.

The presentations will be followed by a Q and A and discussion.

This webinar is free, however attendees are invited to donate to the fundraiser for Mohammed Abdel Gatah Kamel Haggag and his family in Gaza. For more details and to donate go to https://chuffed.org/project/122725-support-mohammed-and-family-to-survive-and-rebuild?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link

This webinar is sponsored by Lark & Bloom Library and University of Edinburgh Jewish Staff Network. 

Who are the panelists?

Annabel Gottfried Cohen (PhD student, University of Edinburgh): Jewish volunteers in the International Brigades—nationalism and anti-zionism on the Yiddish Communist left

Annabel has an MA in Jewish Studies from the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) and an MRes in in history with distinction from the University of London, for which was also awarded Best Dissertation for her dissertation on the founding of the International Brigades. She is a Yiddish teacher and translator currently working at the Paris Yiddish Center and the Workers Circle. She has previously taught at Sorbonne Université, YIVO, Yiddish New York, Yiddish Summer Weimar and KlezKanada.

Tal Hever-Chybowski (University of Halle): The Devastation of Gaza: Historical Perspectives of a Yiddish Poem

Tal Hever-Chybowski has a Masters in History from Humboldt University, Berlin, and is also founder of Yiddish in Berlin: Summer Program for Yiddish Language and Literature. Tal launched Mikan Ve-eylakh: Journal for Diasporic Hebrew in 2016. In 2021 he directed the Yiddish play Jacob Jacobson at the Théâtre de l’Opprimé in Paris. In addition to working with theatre and cinema, Tal is a writer and translator and is currently working on his doctorate at the University of Göttingen. His Yiddish poem ‘The destruction of Gaza’ was published in January 2024 and has been translated into thirteen languages.

Joseph Finlay (Postdoctoral Fellow, Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism): Towards an Oral History of British-Jewish Engagement with Israel

Joseph Finlay has a PhD from the University of Southampton, on Jewish responses to race relations in postwar Britain, which he is currently adapting into a book for Manchester University Press. His history of the Jewish Council for Racial Equality Not Only For Ourselves will be published this year. He is beginning a postdoctoral fellowship, researching Jewish colonial governors in the British Empire. He writes the newsletter Torat Albion: www.toratalbion.org.uk

Samuel Solomon and Ben Rogaly (University of Sussex, UK): Facing the trouble: cultural workers in Yiddishland, political Zionism, and the movement for Palestinian liberation

Samuel Solomon is Associate Professor in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of Sussex where he co-directs the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence. Sam is the author of Lyric Pedagogy and Marxist Feminism (Bloomsbury, 2019), Special Subcommittee (Commune Editions, 2017) and co-translator from the Yiddish of The Acrobat: Selected Poems of Celia Dropkin (Tebot Bach, 2014).

Ben Rogaly is Emeritus Professor of Geography at the University of Sussex. His books include Stories From a Migrant City: Living and Working Together in the Shadow of Brexit (Manchester University Press, 2020); and Brighton Bound: Stories of Moving To, Around and Out of the City, 1920s-2020s (with Cath Senker and Amy Clarke, QueenSpark Books, 2024). Other works include a blog on Yiddish songs of struggle and resistance and an article (with Moushumi Bhowmik) exploring the power of Yiddish and Bengali songs to build transnational solidarity in the context of rising racial nationalism.