Ruth R. Wisse to Deliver NEH Jefferson Lecture

Ruth R. Wisse, scholar of Yiddish literature and Jewish literature and culture, will deliver the 52nd Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities.

The lecture is the highest honor the federal government bestows for distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), a federal agency created in 1965, selects the lecturer through a formal review process. NEH awards grants that support the understanding and appreciation of cultural topics including art, ethics, history, languages, literature, law, music, philosophy, and religion. The Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities is the agency's signature annual public event.

Dr. Wisse will deliver the lecture, titled "A Message from the 'Blue and White' in the 'Red, White, and Blue,'" on Wednesday, March 25 at the Trump Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., at 7 p.m. In her lecture, Wisse will discuss the deep connections between Jewish culture and ideas and the founding and growth of the United States and speak to the lessons that 2,500 years of Jewish experience hold for the next millennium of American progress.

The lecture is free and open to the public and will stream online at neh.gov. Tickets to the lecture are free of charge and distributed on a first-come, first-served basis. Reserve tickets online here.

A renowned literary scholar, cultural critic, and one of the most influential voices in the study of Yiddish literature, Jewish political thought, and modern Jewish literature, Wisse is professor emerita of Yiddish literature and comparative literature at Harvard University and a senior fellow at Tikvah, a nonprofit foundation that promotes Jewish thought and the study of great Jewish texts.

Her scholarship spans both literary analysis and political commentary. Wisse is widely known for her works on Yiddish writers such as Sholem Aleichem, the dynamics of Jewish humor, and the political challenges facing Jewish civilization. Her books include The Schlemiel as Modern Hero(1970),The Modern Jewish Canon: A Journey Through Language and Culture (2000),No Joke: Making Jewish Humor(2013),If I Am Not for Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (1992), and Jews and Power(2007). Her memoir, Free as a Jew: A Personal Memoir of National Self-Liberation, was published in 2021.

Throughout her long career, Wisse has pioneered the academic study of Yiddish and Yiddish literature, making her a central figure in the establishment and growth of Yiddish and Jewish studies programs at colleges and universities in North America. Born in Czernowitz in what is now Ukraine (then part of Romania), Wisse grew up in Montreal, Canada, speaking Yiddish at home with her family. She earned a bachelor's degree in English literature at McGill University and a master's in comparative literature from Columbia University, where she studied with Yiddish linguists Max and Uriel Weinreich. She returned to McGill to complete a PhD in English, and as a faculty member there, helped found the university's Department of Jewish Studies. In 1993, she was named the first Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature at Harvard, where she taught until her retirement in 2014.

She has also written widely on cultural and political topics for the Wall Street Journal,Commentary,National Affairs, and other publications, and frequently contributes lectures and essays on modern Jewish politics, Israel, anti-Semitism, and the role of liberalism in Jewish life.

In 2007, Wisse was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President George W. Bush for her scholarship, and in 2004, an honorary degree by Yeshiva University. She is the recipient of the 2001 Herzl Prize from Tikvah. Her book The Modern Jewish Canon, which examines multilingual Jewish literature through a some of its greatest twentieth-century works, received the National Jewish Book Award for scholarship and criticism.

NEH's Jefferson Lecture is NEH's most widely attended annual event. Past Jefferson Lecturersinclude Andrew Delbanco, Martin Scorsese, John Updike, Harvey Mansfield, Tom Wolfe, Helen Vendler, David McCullough, Robert Conquest, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Sidney Hook, Barbara Tuchman, Robert Penn Warren, and Lionel Trilling.

This 52nd Jefferson Lecture is an external rental presented in coordination with the Trump Kennedy Center Campus Rentals Office and is not produced by the Trump Kennedy Center.

National Endowment for the Humanities:The National Endowment for the Humanities supports research and learning in history, literature, philosophy, and other areas of the humanities by funding selected, peer-reviewed proposals from around the nation. Additional information about the National Endowment for the Humanities and its grant programs is available at neh.gov.