Interview with Ros Horin / Welcome to Yiddishland

What audience are you hoping will attend Welcome to Yiddishland at SFF?

I’m really hoping for a diverse audience. I want a lot of non-Jewish people to see it. You know, I don’t want it to just play to people who know about it. I really think it’s so important to kind of come back into the middle ground and see something of normal Jewish life and see a different aspect of Jewish identity, because it is a complex and multi-layered scene. I really wanted to reach non-Jewish people very much but also, even within the Jewish community there’s a lot of still negative attitudes to Yiddish, you know. People think “Oh, I’m not interested in Yiddish. It’s old, you know, my grandparents spoke it.” But this revival is not a nostalgia trip, you know, people aren’t getting into it because their grandfather spoke it. They’re getting into it because they’re finding something in it that seems really relevant to their lives today.

What was it like for you to create a documentary about an endangered language with low accessibility when you simply can’t just google translate if you’re stuck?

I’m lucky that, you know. There’s always been a kind of a deep bed of Yiddish in Melbourne, which is accessible which is kind of grown from the Bundes (Workers Federations). A lot of post-World War II migrants in Melbourne were from Poland and were members of the Jewish Workers Party and a lot of Bundes were Yiddishers. I knew people from that group that I could interview and expand my general knowledge really cause.

You know, people ask me “Do you speak Yiddish?” [I’d say] “No!” I’m sort of an outsider. I’m Jewish, but really, I don’t know much at all. But I had Arnold Zable and Tommy Polinsky using the film, and Freddie Baraki, that really could give me a sense of the waves of Yiddish. I started in 2020 during COVID and all of our meetings were online. I think that was incredibly helpful, you know, beginning on zoom.

But I also sent before the film was finished, set kind of blocks of material, that we had [for people in the Community] to review, to sort of make sure we were misrepresenting them, or if they were comfortable with everything.

Have you experienced any change in attitudes towards the Yiddish language and/or the documentary since the attacks in Israel on October 7th?

Certain things [in the documentary] feel more resonant. The last thing i filmed was the caravan orchestra in Haifa and it was a peace project and it was so beautiful and that was five weeks before [the attacks on] October 7th. [While I was there] I saw these beautiful friendships forming between Palestinians, Jews, Germans and Arabs. I almost want to make another [documentary] about how those connections have been affected since October 7th.

It was marvelous to watch the German kids so respectful about Jewish culture, they’re also lovely and one of them particularly was so taken by Jewish music. That’s going to be his major musical study now. He said “I’ve only heard it once before, but now it’s in my body and in my soul.”

Why focus on Yiddish & not Hebrew?

Well, I was interested in why a revival was happening. That’s what got my interest – that suddenly young people, who did not grow up with it, who don’t know anything about it, are getting into it. It’s also happening in Argentina and Mexico and Montreal and so many countries not like Hebrew.

In the documentary, speaking Yiddish on the street historically was associated with class level or may even be dangerous. Today, what does hearing Yiddish on the street mean to you?

I heard younger people, groups walking around speaking, and I’d be absolutely delighted, I think. Isn’t that, hip and cool? Isn’t that wonderful?

What’s your favourite Yiddish word?

“Toya voya” meaning total chaos.

What film made on an impact on her in her youth?

Well, I loved all the French and Italian new wave films [by Francois] Truffaut, and in Hollywood those golden age romantic films. To be ultimately kind of uplifting and hopeful. I like sort of quirky and and satire, too, partly why I thought I wanted to put some animation in my film. I wanted to be playful, to as soon as you think you’ve got it, for it to suddenly become something else.