Dancing with Demons: The Singers
An international symposium on the Yiddish world and writings of Esther Kreitman, Israel Yehoshua and Isaac Bashevis.

Saturday, December 2, 19:00-21:00
Sunday, December 3, 10:30-17:00

The seminar examines the works of the Yiddish writers Ester Kreitman (1891-1954), Israel Jehoshua Singer (1893-1944) and Isaac Bashevis Singer (1903-1991). The Singer siblings, except for the youngest Moyshe (1906-1944), rejected their ultra-orthodox family and became Yiddish writers. They contributed prolifically to the transnational Yiddish culture as novelists and short story writers, journalists, and playwrights. Their works and lives provide a fascinating prism of Yiddish culture and literature in interwar Warsaw, London and New York, and in post-war America and Israel. With focus on the literary and personal relationships between the Singers in terms of gender, translation, aesthetics, and politics, the seminar includes presentations by world renowned scholars, a documentary film, readings from the Singers’ translated works and a theater performance.
The seminar will be held in English, with some parts in Yiddish with Swedish surtitles.

Participants:
David Roskies, New York
Vivi Lachs, London
Sonia Gollance, London
Jan Schwarz, Lund
Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska, Lublin
Dorotea Bromberg, Stockholm
Salomon Schulman, Malmö
Shane Baker, New York
Miryem-Khaye Seigel, New York
Online: Dan Miron, Tel Aviv

Presentations and panels
- The Yiddish Voices of the Singer Family
- The Singer Brothers and Jewish Literature
- The Singers in Warsaw, New York, and London

- Esther Kreitman’s London
- The Early Writings of Yitskhok Bashevis
- Dance as a Tool of Pleasure and Humiliation in I.J. Singer's "The Brothers Ashkenazi”
- In the Shadow of the Younger Brother: Reception of the Singer Siblings in Poland
- Isaac Bashevis: Singer and the Nobel Prize

Documentary Film
The Muses of I.B. Singer (2014)

Reading (in Swedish and Yiddish)
Ester Kreitman’s "Demonernas Dans", translated by Salomon Schulman (2021)

Theater performance (in Yiddish with Swedish surtitles)
"Der shpigl” – a monolog fun a shed
Shane Baker and Miryem-Khaye Seigel (New York) I.B.Singer’s play based on his short story "Der shpigl".

Arranged by Jiddischsällskapet i Stockholm och Judisk kultur i Sverige
Thank You Kulturrådet, Stockholms stad & Region Stockholm