Early next month, as part of our Kristallnacht programming, Tucson Jewish Museum & Holocaust Center welcomes poet, educator, and Yiddish translator, Danny Kraft. Kraft’s presentation, “Facing the Holocaust Through Yiddish Poetry,” will explore how Yiddish poets expressed their grief and anger through words, both during and after the Shoah. Kraft will help us read and discuss work by some of the Yiddish language’s greatest poets and explore the ways they tried to express the inexpressible, using art as a means of reckoning with the destruction of European Jewish civilization. We’ll encounter Yiddish poets in English translation to examine both their specifically Jewish contexts and the broader questions they raise about how art can respond to catastrophe.
Kraft holds a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School, where he was a Harry Austryn Wolfson Fellow in Jewish Studies, and has taught at many institutions, including the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University, the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education, and the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in numerous publications and have been featured by the Academy of American Poets. His debut poetry collection is forthcoming from Slant Books. He is currently the program manager for the literary nonprofit organization Yetzirah: a hearth for Jewish poetry, and his work has been supported by a translation fellowship from the Yiddish Book Center.
TJMHC is a proud recipient of the Center’s 2025 Yiddish Arts & Culture Initiative for Jewish Communities (YACI) grant, a program that supports organizations interested in exploring and presenting Yiddish culture and helps foster a deeper understanding of Yiddish’s relevance to Jewish history. In the few short months since we’ve joined the YACI cohort, we’ve learned so much about the history of Yiddish in this country, its importance to Jewish art, culture, and politics, and the remarkable energy surrounding its resurgence, particularly among young adults.
Danny Kraft’s presentation is only the first piece of Yiddish programming at Tucson Jewish Museum & Holocaust Center this season, and we’re excited about other learning and entertainment opportunities in the months to come. Learn more by visiting our website: tjmhc.org.
YACI is made possible thanks to support from Debbie Mitzner and Wayne Miller in memory of Iris Mitzner.
