This week, Lisa Newman talks to Smith College senior Abigail Weaver about "Grains of Wheat," her play about the Jewish intellectuals, known as the Paper Brigade, who worked to hide stores of cultural materials from Nazi forces in the Vilna ghetto. "Grains of Wheat" is the product of Weaver's years of interest in Yiddish, including a class visit to Vilna, and combines her Theater and Jewish Studies majors. Weaver discusses the tensions inherent in writing a work of historical fiction, the fortitude of the Paper Brigade, and what poet and Paper Brigade member Avrom Sutzkever called the "paper chain" of documents stretching from before World War II to modern day.

Episode 0215

March 21, 2019

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts