ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this episode Jonathan Slater speaks with Miriam Borden, a doctoral candidate in Yiddish studies at the University of Toronto and contributor to the summer 2024 volume of Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes, which is devoted entirely to the field of Jewish education. Miram chats with Jonathan about her article, "Joshua, King David, and the Flying Nun: Doodles and Reader Annotations in Post-Holocaust Yiddish Primers for Children," which unpacks what the (often vulgar) marginalia that kids left behind in those textbooks reveals about the relationship between the Yiddish language and Jewish identity in a postwar Canadian context.
OUR GUEST
Miriam Borden is a PhD candidate in Yiddish Studies at the University of Toronto. Her research examines motifs of marginality within modern Yiddish discourse, analyzing the ways mediated, adapted, and sub-canonical texts like lullabies, children’s textbooks, and vernacular Bibles have been central to the continuity of Yiddish culture.
RECOMMENDED READING
"Joshua, King David, and the Flying Nun: Doodles and Reader Annotations in Post-Holocaust Yiddish Primers for Children," Miriam Borden, Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes
EPISODE ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Host: Jonathan Slater
Producer/Editor: Michelle Chang
Music: J.K. Bradley
Executive Producers: Joshua Tapper and David S. Koffman
Tête-à-tête: Conversations in Canadian Jewish Studies is made possible by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada’s Aid to Scholarly Journals program and the Israel and Golda Koschitzky Centre for Jewish Studies and J. Richard Shiff Chair for the Study of Canadian Jewry, both at York University.