On Sunday, April 19, the Lawrence Jewish Community Congregation (LJCC) will bring a little bit of Yiddish culture to northeast Kansas.
The doors of the Lawrence Art Center’s 10th & Mass Studios will open at 7 p.m. for an evening of poetry and song devoted to the work of celebrated poet Avrom Sutzkever.
Lawrence-based poets will present original pieces in response to and as explorations of Sutzkever’s writings. Presenting that evening will be Kansas Poet Laureate Emeritus Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg; local poet and KU mathematician Judy Roitman; award-winning fantasy author and poet RB Lemberg; author, translator and poet Bogi Takacs; Marina Jaffe; Peter Wright; and Josyln Rose.
Avrom Sutzkever was a prolific author and poet whose work spanned over 30 years. Sutzkever was born in 1913 in what is now Belarus. His work blurred the lines between poetry, memoir and fiction and chronicled his childhood in Siberia, his life in the Vilna ghetto during World War II and his eventual escape.
The “literary café pop-up” is the creation of Lawrencian and LJCC member Michael Hennecke.
“This project is the result of taking a deep dive into Yiddish language and culture,” Hennecke said. “When I stumbled across Sutzkever’s writing and life story for the first time, I couldn’t believe I'd never heard of him before. It feels like such a privilege to share this with my community. I am also excited to be able to showcase the work of so many talented local writers and performers.”
Inspired by the diversity of talents and expertise within the Lawrence Jewish community, Hennecke brought this project together with support from the Yiddish Book Center’s 2025 Arts & Culture Initiative for Jewish Communities. The initiative supports “communities seeking to deepen and enrich their engagement with Yiddish literature, art and culture.” As part of the seed grant, Hennecke and LJCC Director Lara Giordano traveled to the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, for a three-day workshop that provided cohort-based learning about the origins, development, multiplicity, decline and contemporary resurgence of Yiddish culture.
The Yiddish Book Center was founded in 1980 by Aaron Lansky. At the time, Lansky was a graduate student studying Yiddish literature. As part of his studies, Lansky came to discover that the Yiddish archive was in danger of disappearing because contemporary Jews, unversed in the language of their grandparents, were prone to simply discard these volumes. Lansky organized a nationwide network of book collectors to salvage and uplift this material legacy of a thousand years of Jewish life in Eastern Europe.
The Yiddish Book Center now houses more than 1.5 million Yiddish volumes, which come from all over the United States and across the globe — Mexico, Venezuela, South America, South Africa, Australia, Russia and beyond. The collection is still growing.
As part of the 2025 Yiddish Arts and Culture Initiative, the LJCC will also be hosting a second Yiddish cultural event, which Hennecke describes as a take on the Yiddish-inflected vaudeville tradition.