The 'Yiddish Voice' Podcast

Interview with Lily (ליליע) Weitzman and Jonah (יונה) Sidman , who recently led a workshop to teach songs created by them and others active in Yiddish language and culture activities around the Boston Workers Circle. The Yiddish Voice was on hand to record four songs sung by participants in the workshop they led, titled נײַע לידער פֿון באָסטאָן (New Songs from Boston), presented at the 2023 Yidish...

This week, interviews with Nick Underwood and Dovid Braun ! Interview with Nick Underwood on Yiddish Paris and Nick’s book Yiddish Paris: Staging Nation and Community in Interwar France (Indiana University Press, 2022), which describes the rich Yiddish-speaking culture of emigrants from Eastern Europe in Paris during the interwar years. The interviewer is Sholem Beinfeld , cohost of The Yidd...

This week, interviews with Yelena Shmulenson and Boris Sandler in memory of the August 12, 1952 tragedy known as Night of the Murdered Poets , when thirteen Soviet Jews, all leading intellectuals, five of whom were top Yiddish writers, were executed in the Lubianka Prison in Moscow on false charges of spying and treason. The charges were reexamined and admitted to have “no substance” b...

from our archive: Nathan Kasdan (נחום קאָזשדאַן), who died one year ago (JULY 14, 2022), gave us an extraordinary interview in 2013, which we’ve previously aired in 2013 and 2014 as well as in 2015. We recently learned that Nathan passed away, about a year ago. Considering Nathan’s yahrtzeit, as well as the fact that it’s erev Tisha B’Ov, we’re re-airing our interview...

This week, Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath and Rabbi Izchak Kin . Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath is chairperson of the League for Yiddish . She discusses the League for Yiddish’s Words of the Week, specifically the recent week devoted to the armed uprising in Russia. We reached her by Zoom on June 9, 2023. Rabbi Izchak Kin talks about various memories of his personal life, starting with memories of Pes...

This week, Sholem Beinfeld discusses the recent uprising in Russia, and Avremi Zak and Meyer Hirshman discuss Israeli society and politics. Sholem Beinfeld was recorded on the day of broadcast (July 5, 2023). The first interview with Avremi Zak was by The Yiddish Voice on April 26, 2023. The second interview of Meyer Hirshman by Avremi Zak was by Kan Yiddish and originally aired on Israeli radio o...

The Yiddish Voice was in Israel earlier in June 2023 and had the opportunity to interview Avrom Novershtern , who is professor emeritus from the Yiddish Program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and currently serves as the director of Beit Sholem Aleichem in Tel Aviv, a cultural center devoted to Yiddish and the Eastern European Jewish Heritage Topics discussed: About Beys Sholem Aleykhem - hi...

Highlights: interview with Kolya Borodulin , Director of Yiddish Programming at Arbeter Ring ( circle.org ), talking about the Summer 2023 Yiddish course offerings currently starting or about to start online now. interview, part 2, with Mary Ehrlich , a Boston-area Holocaust survivor originally from Gedrevitsh (Giedraiciai in Lithuanian), a shtetl near Vilna (and closer to the Vilkomir). In Mary E...

Encore from our archive, from 2019, but enhanced for 2023 with Fathers Day music at the end. See original show notes here: https://podcast.yv.org/episodes/nechama-netali-gonen Air date: June 14, 2023

interview with Daniel Galay ( דניאל גלאי ), an Israeli composor, musician, translator, writer, educator, and Yiddish community leader and activist. He is chairman of Leyvik House , which publishes and sells books, in Yiddish and other languages, and serves as a Yiddish cultural center in Tel Aviv, housing Israel’s Yiddish Writers Union. Born in Argentina in 1945 and raised in a Yiddish speak...

Encore from our archive, from 2019, but enhanced for 2023 with an announcement from our sponsor Boston Workers Circle: Boston Workers Circle presents FREEDOM IS A VERB: 25TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT : A Besere Velt Chorus with special guest Daniel Kahn. June 10, 2023, 7:30 PM ET - virtual and in person. Details at: circleboston.org/arts/ See original show notes here: https://podcast.yv.org/episodes/esi...

Encore from our archive, from 2017, but enhanced for 2023 with an announcement from our sponsor Boston Workers Circle: Boston Workers Circle presents FREEDOM IS A VERB: 25TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT : A Besere Velt Chorus with special guest Daniel Kahn. June 10, 2023, 7:30 PM ET - virtual and in person. Details at: circleboston.org/arts/ See original show notes here: https://podcast.yv.org/episodes/itz...

Interview with Elena Luchina (עלענאַ לוטשינאַ), who is the Yiddish instructor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI, discussing her interesting background and current career at one of the leading Yiddish-language and Jewish-studies programs in the United States. Originally from Moscow, Yelena received her PhD in linguistics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She has taught Yiddish a...

We observe יום העצמאותּ Yom Haatsmaut with Avremi Zaks, whom we reached in Jerusalem, Israel, today: Avremi Zaks is the host of Kan Yiddish , which is sponsored by the National Authority for Yiddish Culture in Israel , and which is broadcast in Israel on public radio at frequencies 104.9 FM and 105.3 FM every Friday at 4 p.m. and on 101.5 FM at midnight from Saturday to Sunday. Audio archives of t...

Ben Lesser , a Holocaust survivor born in Cracow in 1928, describes his many ordeals and nearly miraculous survival of the Holocaust as a boy, from the beginning of the war in 1939 to liberation in 1945. Ben founded and runs, with his family, the The ZACHOR Holocaust Remembrance Foundation , dedicated to preserving the memory and spreading awareness of the Holocaust. He published his memoir Living...

Happy Passover! ‫אַ זיסן און כּשרן פּסח!‬ Happy Passover and thanks to friends, participants, and sponsors of this show: Israel Book Shop ( Eli Dovek ז״ל recorded Mar 28 2007) American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Greater Boston (member and Holocaust survivor Mary Erlich ), co-sponsor of Boston’s 2023 In-Person and Virtual Community Holocaust Commemoration of Yom HaShoah , Su...

Happy Passover! ‫אַ זיסן און כּשרן פּסח!‬ Happy Passover and thanks to friends, participants, and sponsors of this show: Israel Book Shop ( Eli Dovek ז״ל recorded Mar 28 2007) American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Greater Boston (member and Holocaust survivor Mary Erlich ), co-sponsor of Boston’s 2023 In-Person and Virtual Community Holocaust Commemoration of Yom HaShoah , Su...

Happy Passover! ‫אַ זיסן און כּשרן פּסח!‬ Happy Passover and thanks to friends, participants, and sponsors of this show: Israel Book Shop ( Eli Dovek ז״ל recorded Mar 28 2007) American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Greater Boston (member and Holocaust survivor Mary Erlich ), co-sponsor of Boston’s 2023 In-Person and Virtual Community Holocaust Commemoration of Yom HaShoah , Su...

Sholem Beinfeld , Professor Emeritus of the Department of History at Washington University in St. Louis, and a co-host of The Yiddish Voice , talks about the Ukraine war after one year This week’s featured interview is with Morris (Moyshe) Schwartz , a child of Holocaust survivors, a computer scientist, who speaks a very good Yiddish, talks about his personal and family history and his curre...

This week’s featured interview is with Perla Karney , discussing her journey from childhood in the Jewish displaced persons community around Bavaria, Germany, to finally settling as a young woman in Los Angeles, where she studied at UCLA and had a career as a theater producer before taking on her current role as artistic director of the Dortort Center for Creativity in the Arts at UCLA Hille...

Highlights: interview with Mary Ehrlich , a Boston-area Holocaust survivor originally from Gedrevitsh, a shtetl near Vilna. She talks about her childhood years up through the arrival of the Germans in 1941. We reached Mary by phone in late February, 2023. We plan to continue with a second interview with Mary in the next few weeks. from our archive: Purim with Miriam Libenson ז״ל, originally record...

Tonight’s show aired just a couple of days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day. We present our second interview with Naftali (Tuli) Deutsch , an Auschwitz survivor. The interview was recorded at his home in July, 2022. The previous interview is available here: https://podcast.yv.org/episodes/naftali-deutsch-auschwitz-survivor-for-yom-hashoah Naftali Deutsch was born in 1931 in the...

Our featured interview this week is with David (Dovid) Lenga , who recently turned 95, is originally from Łódź, Poland (לאָדזש), and now lives in Los Angeles. He survived the Lodz Ghetto as well as Auschwitz. He recently wrote an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times on anti-semitism: As a Holocaust survivor, the most important thing I can do is share my story He frequently talks about his history as a s...

Interview with Jeffrey Shandler , discussing his book Yiddish: Biography of a Language (Oxford University Press, 2020), which describes Yiddish from its origins to the present. Shandler is Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers and holds a PhD from Columbia University. He has had a big influence on Jewish studies, particularly for his concept of Yiddish as a “post-vernacular la...

Our second interview with Gennady Estraikh ( first interview aired in March, 2022) discussing the war in Ukraine. Estraikh, who was born in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, is a professor at NYU who specializes in Jewish intellectual history, Yiddish language and literature, and Soviet Jewish history. He has written numerous books, academic papers, and journal and newspaper articles in English, Russian, Ukr...