Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond

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Ghil'ad Zuckermann's new book, Revivalistics: From the Genesis of Israeli to Language Reclamation in Australia and Beyond, tells the story of the Hebrew revival with new insights about modern Israeli Hebrew's connection to the Yiddish language. Introducing a new, trans-disciplinary field he calls revivalistics, Zuckermann's account also explores language revival more broadly and provides practical lessons for reclaiming and reviving languages with examples from the Barngarla Aboriginal language of South Australia. Join YIVO for a discussion of this new book featuring Zuckermann in conversation with Yiddish poet and linguist Dov-Ber Kerler.

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About the Speakers

Ghil'ad Zuckermann is Chair of Linguistics and Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is a chief investigator in a large research project assessing language revival and mental health, funded by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council. He is elected fellow of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, board member of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, and President of the Australian Association for Jewish Studies.

Dov-Ber Kerler is the Cohn Chair in Yiddish Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. He taught Yiddish as well as courses on Yiddish literature, culture and scholarship in Jerusalem, Oxford, Moscow, and Vilnius. A son of the noted Yiddish poet, Yosef Kerler, Dov-Ber has been publishing his own original Yiddish poetry since 1993, in addition to scholarly and general articles (mostly in Yiddish). To date, since 1996, six collections of his poetry have been published in Britain and Israel, including a joint volume of his and his father’s poems, entitled “Shpigl–ksav” (Words in a Mirror).