"The Freudian Lullaby Contest: How the Yiddish Press Covered Psychoanalysis"
April 27, 2023
Naomi Seidman, Chancellor Jackman Professor of the Arts in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto, presented this year's Manfred H. Vogel Lecture in Judaic Studies.
In her talk, Naomi Seidman discussed the influence of Sigmund Freud on the Yiddish Press in the first decades of the 20th century. Seidman opened with a fascinating and amusing review of a lullaby competition that took place in The Forward newspaper and revealed the deep and broad impact of psychoanalysis on Yiddish writers and scholars at the time.
As she examined the relationships between Freud and the Jewish writers, Seidman also exposed the psychoanalytic patterns in the Yiddish press of the time by analyzing the complexes of pride and shame manifested in the reports and articles in the Jewish newspapers.
Seidman concluded by sharing a moving story about a meeting between the poet Y.L. Teller and Freud in 1937, where Freud - sick, old, and disillusioned by the rise of Nazism - sees in the Yiddish writers and speakers his fellow brothers.