Join us this April for an evening of poetry, film, and celebration honor of Yiddish Poet Ida Maze. 

Maze (1893-1962) was well known for her lyrical poetry, which was published widely in Yiddish journals and newspapers. She was equally well known for the central role she played in Montreal’s Yiddish cultural scene, including acting as a literary mentor to many young writers—a role that prompted some to dub her the “den mother of Yiddish Montreal.”

The evening will include a bilingual reading of Maze’s work and a screening of a new short film about Maze, produced by the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project. The film, which includes excerpts from the project’s 2013 interview with Irving Massey, Maze’s youngest son, is the first of a series drawn from the project’s Beyond the Books: Yiddish Writers and Their Descendants, interviews with the families of Yiddish literary figures.

Massey, professor emeritus of English and comparative literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo, will be at the event and will participate in a discussion with the audience after the screening.

The program is free and open to the public, although RSVPs are required. Please RSVP to tellyourstory@bikher.org.

This event is sponsored by the Yiddish Book Center and cosponsored by the Jewish Women’s Archive and the Boston Yiddish-Hoyz and takes place during National Poetry Month.