In-Person
Sunday, December 11, 2022
2:45 PM – 3:45 PM (ET)
Seating is first come, first served and requires general registration.
Join Yiddish/English actress, singer, Tony nominated director, author, and daughter of Holocaust fighters Eleanor Reissa and poet/activist Irena Klepfisz, trailblazing lesbian poet, child Holocaust survivor, and political activist, in a reading and conversation, connecting the past to the present and their relationship to the world of Yiddish and their Jewish heritage.
Eleanor Reissa is Brooklyn born and bred; a victim/beneficiary of the public school system from K through college. In spite of that (or because of it) she has had a life beyond her own imagination - as a Tony nominated director, a Broadway/TV actress, a singer in every major venue in New York, a playwright, artistic director of the Folksbiene, and a published author of The Letters Project: A Daughter’s Journey. She hosts the podcast Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust and narrates the visitor’s guide to The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do at the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
A trailblazing lesbian poet, child Holocaust survivor, and political activist whose work is deeply informed by socialist values, Irena Klepfisz is a vital and individual American voice. Her Birth and Later Years: New and Collected Poems, 1971-2021 is the first complete collection of her work. For fifty years, Klepfisz has written powerful, searching poems about relatives murdered during the war, recent immigrants, a lost Yiddish writer, a Palestinian boy in Gaza, and various people in her life.