Date: 24 September 2026

Venue: Kadimah Jewish Cultural Centre and National Library, Melbourne

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the death of Jakub Waislitz, a key figure in Yiddish theatre whose artistic and organisational activity played a crucial role in shaping diasporic Jewish theatrical culture in Australia after the Second World War. As an actor, director, educator, and cultural organiser, Waislitz contributed to the creation of theatrical institutions that functioned not only as artistic spaces, but also as centres of memory, identity, and communal cohesion within the Jewish diaspora.

Waislitz’s work exemplifies the broader role of theatre in diasporic contexts: as a medium of cultural transmission, a site of negotiation between tradition and new social realities, and a form of symbolic leadership in migrant communities. His work connects European traditions of Yiddish theatre with new diasporic constellations, highlighting theatre’s capacity to sustain Jewish identity across displacement, rupture, and generational change.

On the occasion of this anniversary, an international academic workshop was organised to reflect on theatre and Jewish identity in the diaspora, using Waislitz’s legacy as a point of departure for broader, comparative and interdisciplinary discussions.

The workshop participants examined the complex relationships between theatre and Jewish identity in the diaspora, with particular attention to questions of language, memory, migration, trauma, gender, ideology, leadership and transnational cultural exchange. Participants reflected on theatre as a performative site where identities are re-imagined, contested, negotiated, and sustained across generations and geographical boundaries, as well as on forms of leadership that emerge from the experience of migration and diaspora, including:

• artists, directors and cultural organisers as community leaders and builders of institutions
• cultural leadership as a response to displacement, loss and trauma
• the role of women and younger generations in shaping and transforming diasporic cultural life
• intergenerational transmission and the renewal of leadership in migrant communities

The workshop was conceived as a space for in-depth discussion and exchange rather than formal presentations alone. Sessions were complemented by a closing roundtable on future research directions and informed the development of an academic book. 

See the program attached.

This event was organized in partnership with the Kadimah Jewish Cultural Centre and National Library, Melbourne, and with the support of the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence Jean Leadership Emerging from Migration, Ethnicity, Race and Gender in Australia and the EU, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.