Christmas in Yiddish Tradition
Sun, Dec 14
|Zoom
Join us for a talk with Jordan Chad on his recently released book Christmas in Yiddish Tradition
Time & Location
Dec 14, 2025, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM CST
Zoom
About the Event
Back in Europe, Yiddish-speaking Jews traditionally let loose on Christmas Eve with feasting, drinking, dancing, and gambling. Scholars have previously assumed that this Christmas Eve vacation from Torah study was some sort of antagonistic counterculture to Christians celebrating Christmas. But Jordan Chad’s recent book Christmas in Yiddish Tradition: The Untold Story (NYU Press, 2025) reveals that the Christmas traditions transmitted in Yiddish were very similar to those transmitted in other European languages. Drawing on a wealth of documents, Chad argues that while Jews never celebrated the birth of Jesus, their Christmas Eve celebrations were essentially what they looked like: Jews celebrating Christmas.
Jordan Chad is a multidisciplinary researcher based in Toronto. He has published on various topics, ranging from neuroimaging physics and brain development to Jewish intellectual attainment and Yiddish popularizations of physics.