Jacob Ben Ami and Post-Holocaust Yiddish Theater in Argentina

Max Weinreich Fellowship Lecture The Aleksander and Alicja Hertz Memorial Fellowship and the Samuel and Flora Weiss Research Fellowship in Polish Jewish Studies Admission: Free

Buenos Aires was once famous for Yiddish theater – crowds would leave the shows past midnight and retire to the Bar Internacional to compare notes until four. In this talk, Amy Kerner suggests a framework for understanding how Yiddish theater traveled from Europe to Buenos Aires and what was new about it after WWII. She will describe the remarkable fame of Jacob Ben Ami and the social and political contexts that made possible his reputation as one of the last great Jewish actors. His stardom recast Yiddish theater in Buenos Aires as a living museum of the Jewish past.

About the Speaker

Amy Kerner is a doctoral candidate in Modern European History and Modern Jewish History at Brown University. Her dissertation explores interwar Polish-Jewish Yiddishism, its travel to and legacies in Argentina. Last fall she worked in the YIVO archives as a Fellow in Polish-Jewish Studies.