The Yiddish Folklife Festival of the Finger Lakes (YFFFL) is a new three-day arts and cultural festival in town taking place April 25-27, 2025 at the Lifelong Community Center downtown and other venues.
Featuring live klezmer music, folk dancing, a community potluck, cooking and cultural workshops, a nature talk, an academic lecture, an open mic, and other community events, this intergenerational, all-ages festival is open to the public, including those new to Yiddish music and culture.
SCHEDULE
FRIDAY, APRIL 25
04:30 PM - Not Written on Water: The Movement to Recover Women Who Wrote in Yiddish - A Lecture (Cornell U.)
It is an exhilarating time to be a feminist in Yiddish studies. As Rachel Rubinstein recently chronicled in a chapter on the translation Yiddish writing by women, we are in the midst of a “new wave” of translations and critical scholarship that is “accelerating with astonishing intensity.” Kirzane has been among the leaders of this wave through her translations of Yiddish writer Miriam Karpilove and her editorial work for In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. In this talk she will discuss her experiences recovering Karpilove, a brazen feminist writer at the turn of the twentieth century, and will place this translation work in the context of the history - and present day - of recovery and translation of women who wrote in Yiddish.
07:00 PM - Community Potluck, Instrumental Klezmer Jam, Shabes Songs (Lifelong)
SATURDAY, APRIL 26
10:30 AM - Yiddish Nature Walk (Stewart Park; leaves from Lifelong at 10am)
02:00 PM - Dough: Sweet & Savory - A Jewish Cooking Workshop (Lifelong)
04:30 PM - Zingeray - A Yiddish Song Workshop (Lifelong)
07:00 PM - Community Open Mic (Lifelong)
SUNDAY, APRIL 27
11:00 PM - Jewish Paper-cutting Crafts Workshop (Lifelong)
02:00 PM - Yiddish Folk Dance Workshop & Klezmer Dance Party (Library Place Community Room)
FESTIVAL SUPPORTERS
We thank our partners: Klezmer Ensemble at Cornell University and Jewish Studies at Cornell University for supporting Yiddish Folklife Festival of the Finger Lakes!
We thank our funder: This festival is made possible in part with funds from the New York State Council on the Arts,
administered by the Community Arts Partnership.
