JFS Yiddish group attends international
Yiddish festival
By
Michael Regenstreif
Ottawa Jewish Bulletin, August 17, 2009 
Shaina Lipsey performing
in 1982
in the Yiddish Theatre productionof Gimpel the Fool.
(Photo courtesy of the
Segal Centre)
It was a homecoming
of sorts, earlier this summer, when Shaina Lipsey, seniors’
outreach co-ordinator at Jewish Family Services (JFS),
accompanied a group of 18 Yiddish-speaking – or, at least,
Yiddish understanding – Ottawans, ranging from their early-60s
to their early-80s, as they spent a day at the International
Yiddish Theatre Festival in Montreal.
The
festival took place at Montreal’s Segal Centre for
the Performing Arts – the former Saidye Bronfman
Centre – home to the city’s famed Yiddish Theatre,
now named in honour of the late Dora Wasserman,
its legendary founding director. Beginning at age
10 in 1970, Lipsey spent more than a decade working
with Wasserman and eventually served as the theatre’s
first Yiddish-speaking stage manager.
“It was a fabulous,
wonderful time,” said Lipsey, describing the day
trip to the Bulletin. “We saw the film Amerikaner
Shadkhn (American Matchmaker) and the play S’Brent
(It’s Burning), based on Sholem Aleichem characters,
attended a reception and were back in Ottawa in
time for dinner.
The bus trip to Montreal to attend the Yiddish theatre
festival was an outgrowth of Lomir Reydn Yiddish,
a Yiddish-conversation group that meets on the fourth
Thursday morning of the month at JFS to talk and
read stories like Sholem Aleichem’s Motl Peysi Dem
Chazn’s.
“It’s a good, motivated group,” said Lipsey, who
grew up in a Yiddish-speaking family and animates
their sessions, “and part of our efforts at building
Jewish community.”
Contact Shaina
Lipsey at 613-722-2225, ext. 325 or slipsey@jfsottawa.com for information on Lomir Reydn Yiddish and other
JFS outreach programs for seniors.
Some
of the group from Ottawa who attended the
International Yiddish Theatre Festival gathered
around the piano
singing Yiddish songs at
the Segal Centre in Montreal. (Photo: Shaina
Lipsey)
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