The UJA Committee for Yiddish and the California Institute for Yiddish Culture & Language Present
A Virtual Talk in English

 

 

On the Waves of Destiny: The Remarkable Life of Lili Berger

 

Vivian Felsen

 

Recorded live on Zoom, Sunday, February 22, 2026

Lili Berger was one of the most prolific and insightful Yiddish writers of the 20th century. In this talk, Vivian Felsen discusses how her fascination with Lili Berger since the 1990s led to a recently published volume of English translations devoted exclusively to Berger.

 

Vivian Felsen is an award-winning translator of both French and Yiddish into English. She began her career as a Yiddish translator by translating the Yiddish books by her maternal grandfather, Montreal journalist Israel Medres. Montreal of Yesterday was published in 2000, followed by Between the Wars in 2003. Since then, her published translations from Yiddish include short stories and Holocaust memoirs. Most recently they appeared in the 2025 books On the Waves of Destiny, the Selected Writings of Lili Berger, published by the University of Toronto Press, and Moshe Broderzon’s Idle Chatter: One of the Stories published by Harrassowitz Publishing House in Germany.

Vivian Felsen is a long-time and active member of Toronto’s UJA Committee for Yiddish.

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