Whether through kilts, whisky, pipers or poetry, Jews have been embracing Scottish culture with a Jewish twist for over 200 years. In our summer issue, we travel from Shetland to the Borders to investigate this distinctive history, delving into the immigrant communities of Edinburgh and Glasgow and exploring the work of refugee artists, factory-worker poets, kilt designers and Yiddish actors. We also hear from the present-day writers, artists and activists who are carving out a distinctive identity in places as far afield as Inverness, St Andrews and Aberdeen. We’ll be meeting some of them, alongside other Scottish contributors, featuring:
Joe Goldblatt, author and emeritus professor of events management in higher education at Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, a field of study that he founded. He is also chair of the Edinburgh Interfaith Association and vice chair of the Shanghai Jewish Refugee Museum in China.
Ellen Galford, American author and poet, whose work often explores Jewish, Scottish and LGBTQ+ themes. Her 1993 novel, The Dyke and the Dybbuk, won a Lambda Literary Award.
Mia Spiro, senior lecturer in modern Jewish culture and Holocaust studies, as well as head of theology and religious studies at the University of Glasgow.
Plus poet David Bleiman, who’ll treat us to a reading. Based in Edinburgh, Bleiman writes in English, Scots, Spanish and the largely lost Scots-Yiddish dialect, which he incorporated and reimagined in his poem The Trebbler’s Tale, which won the 2020 Sangschaw Prize.
Hosted in partnership with the Lyons Learning Project.
Please register below to receive the Zoom link, which will be sent out a few days before the event.*
*Please check your spam folder as sometimes group emails end up there. Contact us if you haven’t received the link by the morning of the event.
Header photo: Kosher haggis being piped into the hall on Burns Night at Glasgow’s reform synagogue, 2011 © Judah Passow
