About UJA

Workshop 4- "Effective Stewardship"

Speaker: Rebecca Margolis
Our speaker will describe a 21 st -Century corpus of film and television created in Yiddish, a language that
few of its creators, actors, or viewers speak. She will examine this transnational cinema, the processes of
screen translation in its production, and the reception of cinema in a lesser-used language. She will also
demonstrate how the results of these creations resonate with non-Yiddish speakers.
Professor Rebecca (Rivke) Margolis is the Director and Pratt Foundation Chair of Jewish Civilisation at
the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University, Australia. She is a scholar of migration
and cultural history with a focus on the transmission and revitalisation of Yiddish. She is currently working
on a book entitled The Supernatural in New Yiddish Cinema: Dybbuks, Demons and a Haunted Jewish
Past as well as a study of the trope of Yiddish as funny on American television.

Speaker: Fred Ball
Join Fred on a whirlwind 55-minute ‘tour’ of Portugal’s Jewish history, although it promises to be a
bumpy road! The ‘tour’ is open to Sephardim and Ashkenazim alike. En route, you will be introduced to
some excellent as well as terrible individuals whose actions affected Jewish life in Portugal, whether for
better or for worse, and will come away convinced that the presence of practicing Jews in Portugal today is
nothing less than a miracle.
Fred Ball has made numerous JEM presentations over the years, many dealing with Jewish history and the
heroes or heroines who have contributed to our collective survival. Tonight’s presentation is no exception.