Dr. Diana Matut (D; Yiddish language)
 

Diana Matut is lecturer in Jewish Studies at Halle-Wittenberg University. In 1999, she earned her Diploma in Hebrew and Jewish Studies at Oxford University, followed by the MA in Yiddish Studies (2001) at SOAS, London. The same year brought her to New York, where she took part in the Advanced Seminar for Yiddish Studies at JTS – being only taught in Yiddish.

She has been a fellow at YIVO (New York) as well as at the Oxford Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (twice). From 2019-20 she was convenor of the Oxford research group on "Jewish Musical Cultures in Europe from 1500-1750".

Beside her academic career, Diana is singer and leader of the ensemble simkhat hanefesh (Joy of the Soul) which performs Jewish Music of the Renaissance and Baroque period (see http://www.simkhat-hanefesh.com/)

She regularely lectures and teaches at universities in the UK, Israel, the USA and Canada, France and Italy as well as at Jewish cultural festivals worldwide, such as Yiddish Summer Weimar, Klezkanada, Klezfest London and Maison de la Culture Yidish Paris, to name but a few.

At Yiddish Summer Weimar, she has been lecturing and teaching song workshops for ten years. Together with Alan Bern, she produced a CD with Yiddish songs for children (Far dem nayem dor - For the New Generation). Diana is also the translator of children's poems by Kadia Molodowsky and in 2017 conducted the "Young Kadya" choir, an Israeli-German girls' choir performing new choral settings by Alan Bern to poems by Kadia Molodowsky (https://vimeo.com/394287248).

In 2019 she was (together with Josh Horowitz), leader of the Henech Kon project that brought the only surviving pre-war Yiddish opera from Europe back on stage (https://vimeo.com/375097552)

 

Photo: Antje Seeger