Who are we?
YUNG YiDiSH WIEN is a unique meeting space for Yiddish language and culture, and more generally for progressive Jewish culture, in Vienna’s ‘Matses Insel’, in the midst of the city’s current day Yiddish-speaking Ultra-Orthodox Jewish population. Our location is part of the Schraubenfabrik, an open-minded and sustainable co-working space.
Growing out of the ‘Jiddisch auf der Spur’ Festival in September 2023, we have built a diverse community of over 400 members of the public curious about this quintessentially Central European culture, whether they are themselves Jewish or not.
Where are we located?
Directions
Tram 2
Marienbrücke
Tram 5
Karmeliterplatz
U1 & U4
Schwedenplatz
U2
Taborstraße
What do we do?
The YUNG YiDiSH idea is to host cultural as well as pedagogical events about Yiddish language and culture bringing together current day Yiddish-speaking Hasidic speakers, Yiddish enthusiasts and the general public interested in Eastern Central European Jewish culture.
We also welcome experimental and progressive Jewish cultural projects more generally. We strongly believe that a library of old Yiddish books, each one bearing testimony to a thousand-year-old European history of a people, creates an intimate space where language and culture can be transmitted to the next generation thereby contributing to the continuity of Jewish cultural life in Vienna.
Voices of support
‘YUNG YiDiSH WIEN has made Yiddish culture accessible to Yiddishists of all stripes: Leopoldstadt Hasidim, old-time Viennese dandies, Jewish Studies students at Central European University, and all those who – to paraphrase Kafka – understand a lot more Yiddish than they think. It is a welcome addition to Vienna's Jewish studies and Jewish cultural scene, making this sleepy city a little more lebedik.’
Prof. Dr. Michael L. Miller
Academic Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Central European University
Voices of support
‘Warm appreciations!!!’
Univ.-Prof. dr. Gerhard Langer
Head of Department, Institut für Judaistik, University of Vienna
Voices of support
‘To me, YUNG YiDiSH WIEN is a place to learn, to interchange and to ask questions in a safe environment. Since some topics can seem very sensitive, people often fear to say something inappropriate or wrong. YUNG YiDiSH WIEN, however, has accomplished to create an extremely error-friendly environment to learn about Jewish culture and get to know new people with great minds. I’m so thankful to be a part of this project."
Lena Brunnmayr
university student, volunteer
Voices of support
“YUNG YiDiSH WIEN ist ein längst überfälliger Ort der Begegnung und Vermittlung der für Wien so wichtigen und prägenden jiddischen Sprache und Kultur. Für mich bietet er auch die Möglichkeit mit Menschen, deren Muttersprache Jiddisch ist, meine Sprachkenntnisse zu verbessern.”
Eva Tiefenbrunner
Jiddisch-Lernende
Voices of support
‘YUNG YiDiSH WIEN is another node on the map of Yiddishland, a border-crossing community of artists, scholars and students. But it is also a unique cultural space to the city of Vienna. It is a space where Yiddish is made accessible to a wide and diverse audience, where experimentation is possible, where ideas can be discussed, debated, challenged and reimagined. It is a space that Vienna sorely needed and which now firmly contributes to the rich cultural life of the city.’
Benjy Fox-Rosen
singer, composer and bassist
Voices of support
‘Yung Yiddish Vienna is a space Vienna was missing before- a deeply heymish place to dive into Yiddish language and culture, to go for a shmues and good company.’
Esther Wratschko
singer, musician and choir director
Our place
Our funding partners
Our plans
We would like to continue our rich cultural activities and club life. In addition, we would like to grow in three ways:
We want to be an incubator.
Our library space can host about 30 people as audience (bigger events are held in another room in the Schraubenfabrik building that we can rent on an occasional basis). This is an ideal venue for innovative musical and theatre projects, upcoming klezmer bands and informal singing circles and jam sessions. We are gradually building up a working relationship with progressive Jewish (in the widest cultural sense of the word) artists residing in Vienna and internationally. We hope to encourage and host new collaborations inspired by this unique space.
Our Partners
‘The testimonies that survivors gave to the Fortunoff Video Archive are filled with Yiddish language and fragments of a Yiddish culture that was destroyed by the war. It therefore seems self-evident that we would support Yung Yidish Wien as a new center for the transmission of Yiddish language and culture, as well as an ideal space to present scholarly and cultural work related to the Yiddish-language materials in our archive. Yung Yidish has already been the host of several lectures and concerts related to the Holocaust, Yiddish language and culture, and we intend to continue our support of this important, innovative contribution to the Jewish cultural scene in Vienna.’
Stephen Naron
Director, Fortunoff Video Archives for holocaust Testimonies
We are working together with YUNG YiDiSH ISRAEL on our library and we consult them also on the artistic concept of our activities.
‘It is astonishing how swiftly and skilfully you transplanted the YUNG YiDiSH seeds in Vienna, finding the perfect location, attracting the perfect volunteers to create this unique space for Yiddish conversation, learning, books and culture. The lively buzz which already emanates out of YUNG YiDiSH WIEN beholds much promise for cultural life in Vienna, as well as for the flow of Yiddish creativity in Europe.’
Mendy Cahan
Founding Director, YUNG YiDiSH TEL AVIV
We organise the yearly week-long intensive Yiddish language and culture school in collaboration with the University of Vienna.
‘Ich wünsche der Veranstaltung, die bereits im letzten Jahr mit so großem Erfolg abgehalten wurde, bestes Gelingen und bedanke mich bei Kollegin Szendröi für die vielversprechende Initiative.’
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Stephan Müller
Dean, Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna
We are planning to co-organise a joint exhibition about Yiddish language and culture once the museum building in Eisenstadt is renovated.
‘YUNG YiDiSH WIEN bietet die perfekte Gelegenheit mit Jiddischer Kultur und Sprache in Kontakt zu treten. Es vermittelt Wissen und bietet gleichzeitig die Möglichkeit sich in entspannter, gemütlicher Atmosphäre auszutauschen.’
Esther Heiss
Director, Jewish Museum of Austria in Eisenstadt
‘YUNG YiDiSH WIEN ist eine echte Bereicherung des jüdischen Kulturlebens. Sein Programm präsentiert eine moderne, wissenschaftlich und künstlerisch hochwertige Befassung mit jiddischer Sprache und Kultur. Bereits jetzt, nur wenige Monate nach seiner Gründung, ist es ein Ort, wo sich Menschen unterschiedlicher religiöser, weltanschaulicher, nationaler Herkunft treffen und gemeinsam jiddische Kultur kennen lernen können.’
Dr. Norly Lappin-Eppel
Jewish historian, Chairperson of Beit Deborah Wien,
Chairperson of Das jüdische Frauennetzwerk
We are proud to collaborate on various projects with OMA, the Other Music Academy. OMA has been organising Yiddish Summer Weimar since 1999. It started out as a weekend workshop. Since then, it has grown into an internationally renowned summer institute/festival for Yiddish and related cultures. Yiddish Summer is a creative, intergenerational and transcultural learning community that welcomes people of all backgrounds.
