TORONTO — UJA Federation of Greater Toronto has stopped funding its Committee for Yiddish, effective July 1.
Sol Hermolin – a member of the Committee for Yiddish and president of the Yiddish Vinkl (an independent group) – has emailed 200 people affiliated with the latter group to decry the funding cut and urge recipients to protest the decision by writing to federation president and CEO Ted Sokolsky.
The federation, the committee’s sole funder, provided it with $36,000 annually, allowing for a part-time staff person – Ester Klimitz, who will continue as co-ordinator until September – and underwriting programs including Yiddish classes, lectures and concerts.
The federation’s campaign is down an estimated $3 million from last year, from $63 million to a projected $60.2 million.
Federation spokesperson Dan Horowitz told The CJN in an email that the organization’s leaders “worked tirelessly to ensure that this year’s budget provided extensive support for our community’s most vulnerable, including Holocaust survivors, Israel, and Jewish education in both day schools and supplementary schools… Consequently, program spending in the fields of arts, culture, and heritage were, unfortunately, reduced.”
He added that the federation would continue to fund “in the coming fiscal year, the cultural initiatives that the Committee for Yiddish (CFY) cares deeply about such as the Ashkenaz Festival and the Toronto Jewish Book Festival. In addition, UJA Federation will be offering the committee members other forms of assistance so that Yiddish language classes can be offered at our three JCCs across the city, in which space will be made available for CFY meetings as well.”
Hermolin, a Toronto native whose parents spoke Yiddish, said in an interview the cut is “a crushing blow to Yiddish culture.”
In an email to federation chair Elizabeth Wolfe, he wrote that Yiddish “has developed a culture abundant with music, literature, poetry and humour.”
Hermolin said he was thankful for the federation’s support of the committee but asked Wolfe to reinstate funding so that the committee can continue to provide the community with classes and cultural events.
