** IN YIDDISH ** Zackary Berger, Der takhles fun poezie in umruike tsaytn: notitsn fun a meshoyrer
When and Where
Speakers
Description
Himel Family Yiddish Lecture Series
Co-sponsored by the Al and Malka Green Fund in Yiddish Studies
Zackary Berger (John Hopkins University)
"Der takhles fun poezie in umruike tsaytn: notitsn fun a meshoyrer"
A Yiddish poet must not be apolitical, but must also not be the tool of any given political movement. I'm neither a prophet nor a legislator, neither a Leivick nor a Naydus; I am trying to square the circle by drawing on sublime texts while, God forbid, not looking away from the suffering God and human beings cause on this earth. I want to create solutions and problems, with language that sears itself, or insinuates itself, if only for a moment, into the anxious consciousness of the reader. The same responsibilities that everyone must carry out are on the poet too - but more so. And, in Yiddish, they sorta-kinda have to rhyme (but not really any more?).
Dr. Zackary Berger is Associate Professor of Medicine in the Johns Hopkins Division of General Internal Medicine and Core Faculty at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, with joint appointment in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He has an active practice in primary care internal medicine, teaches residents and medical students, and teaches bioethics to trainees in a number of Johns Hopkins specialty programs. He is also staff physician at the Esperanza Clinic Health Center, a free clinic serving undocumented Spanish-speaking immigrants. Other special clinical interests include the care of transgender people and the particular needs of cancer survivors.
Dr. Berger is the author of two books for the lay public on doctor-patient communication and on patient preference in the context of medical evidence. Most recently, he is the editor of Health for Everyone (2022), a collection of essays on making our health systems progressive. His current interests include advocating for a just pandemic response; understanding the Covid-related experience of disadvantaged groups; and comparative historical analysis of community-based healthcare and its interactions with biomedical expertise. In a parallel life, he is a Yiddish poet and translator.
This event is conducted entirely in Yiddish.