The Shmooze, The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast

Author Julie Brill joined "The Shmooze" to speak about her recently released "Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia". As a child, Julie held two conflicting beliefs. She knew Germans had murdered her Jewish grandfather in occupied Yugoslavia, yet she somehow believed the Holocaust had never come to his hometown of Belgrade. The family anecdotes her...

Adi Mahalel visited with "The Shmooze" to speak about his translation of Hanan Ayalti’s "Boom and Chains". The novel provides a rare glimpse of the Jewish political left before the creation of the State of Israel and vividly illustrates the physical and mental toll of making a life in Mandatory Palestine. In conversation we discuss how author Hanan Ayalti’s own journey resembles that of Zalmen, th...

This week on The Shmooze we visit with Nicholas Lemann. A veteran New Yorker correspondent, Lemann grew up in New Orleans, the son of German Jews in a world of gilded privilege. Yet in contrast to his parents’ generation, which always sought to downplay their religious background, Lemann was intrigued by his roots, thinking he wanted to be like Jack Burden, the ever-curious reporter in Robert Penn...

Author Gil Ribak visited with "The Shmooze" to discuss his latest book, "Crude Creatures." The book draws on a mixture of previously unexplored Yiddish press, theater, and literature from Eastern Europe and the United States to examine how Black Africans and African Americans were depicted by Jews from the late nineteenth century through 1929. Episode 408 April 1, 2026 Amherst, MA

Author Judy Batalion visited with "The Shmooze" to talk about her latest book, "The Last Women of Warsaw." The historical novel follows two very different Jewish women in vibrant, stylish late-1930s Warsaw—the “Paris of the North”—as they grapple with the gathering storm clouds of war and unexpectedly come together in their search for love, meaning, and a sense of home. In conversation we discuss...

Writer and artist Molly Crabapple visited with "The Shmooze" to speak about her forthcoming book, "Here Where We Live Is Our Country", the first popular history of the Bund. Molly re-creates the Bundists’ extraordinary world through dramatic portraits of insurgent poets and antireligious rebels, clandestine revolutionaries and lovers on the barricades. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Sam Rothbo...

Librettist and playwright Stephanie Fleischmann and composer and playwright Alex Weiser sat down with "The Shmooze" to talk about their collaboration on "Tevye’s Daughters." Their opera is based on Sholem Aleichem’s iconic Yiddish stories, exploring the tragic death of Tevye’s lesser-known daughter, Shprintse. The opera also traces the lasting impact of Shprintse’s fate on her sisters as elderly i...

Author Jane Ziegelman joined "The Shmooze "to talk about her latest book, "Once There Was a Town." In conversation Jane talks about Yizkor (memorial) books and how she discovered the story of her family’s ancestral shtetl between the pages of the Luboml Yizkor book. Episode 404 February 12, 2026 Amherst, MA

Juliette Carbonnier joins The Shmooze to talk about her one-woman play, Polin. Polin is both a travel story and a ghost story, taking the audience through the Warsaw cabaret scene of the 1920s, the Lodz Ghetto in the 1930s, the Terezin concentration camp in the 1940s, and the Catskills Borscht Belt of the 1950s. Polin is also a love letter to New York City as homeland, so that is where we begin an...

Film director, film producer, and screenwriter Mark Jay spoke with "The Shmooze" about his 1993 documentary film "East Endings". "East Endings" documents a night at Bloom’s in May 1993—then one of the last remaining kosher restaurants in Whitechapel. Harry Blacker, renowned cartoonist and satirist of British Jewry, arrives to celebrate his 83rd birthday. Greeted by a group of old friends including...

Sebastian Schulman joined The Shmooze to talk about the Yiddish Book Center’s upcoming online course Speak the World! A Tour of Global Jewish Languages. Sebastian shared that the four-part online course will explore Jewish languages with scholars, activists, and artists who are working in the field today. Instructors will speak about the diversity, history, and the contemporary efforts to preserve...

Dr. Rachel Lichtenstein, one of the foremost chroniclers of Jewish East London, visited with The Shmooze to talk about A. N. Stencl, a native Yiddish speaker from Poland, who settled in London’s East End in 1936 and became an activist and campaigner for the continuation of Yiddish. His extraordinary life spanned the height and demise of contemporary Yiddish culture. Stencl’s literary journal, Losh...

Ellen Cassedy and Andrew Cassel joined The Shmooze to talk about their work translating So We Died: A Memoir of Life and Death in the Ghetto of Šiauliai, Lithuania, by Levi Shalit. Few accounts of the Šiauliai, or Shavl, Ghetto survived the war. Shalit’s work offers English-language readers a rare insight into a vital chapter of history. In conversation we learn about Levi Shalit the writer and ho...

Shakespeare & Company’s Artistic Director Allyn Burrows and the co-chair of the upcoming Celebrating Jewish Plays program Greg Lipper sat down with "The Shmooze" to talk about the weekend-long event. Celebrating Jewish Plays runs October 10–12, 2025, and will feature four staged readings—"The Price," by Arthur Miller; "The Sisters Rosensweig," by Wendy Wasserstein; "Here There Are Blueberries," by...

"In geveb"’s board president Mindl Cohen and the journal’s editor-in-chief Jessica Kirzane visit with "The Shmooze" to talk all things "In geveb." "In geveb" is a subscription-free digital forum that publishes peer-reviewed academic articles and translated and annotated Yiddish texts; it also serves as an exchange platform for pedagogical materials and as a blog of Yiddish cultural life. In conver...

Scholar and translator Anita Norich talks to "The Shmooze" about her work translating the work of Yiddish women writers. Anita is the translator of Celia Dropkin’s "Desires," Kadya Molodovsky’s "A Jewish Refugee in America," and Chana Blankshteyn’s "Fear and Other Stories." She co-translated with Ellen Cassedy the forthcoming release of Rashel Veprinski’s "Hand in Hand." Anita reflects on the fiel...

Sarah Biskowitz and Ruby Zuckerman joined "The Shmooze" to talk about the Great Jewish Books Summer Program. Sarah and Ruby, alums of the program, are back at the Yiddish Book Center as RAs for this year’s program. In conversation we talk about their experiences as participants and as RAs and learn about how Great Jewish Books lead them in new directions, personal and professional. And we hear wha...

Andrew Jacobs, president of the board of the Borscht Belt Museum, joins us on "The Shmooze" to talk about the Borscht Belt Museum and the annual Borscht Belt Fest. The museum is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Catskills resort era and celebrating its history as a refuge from bigotry, the cradle of stand-up comedy, and a cultural catalyst that changed America. The annual festival includes...

Editors Altie Karper and Todd Portnowitz sat down with "The Shmooze" to talk about Chaim Grade’s novel "Sons & Daughters" (Knopf)—newly translated into English by Rose Waldman. Originally serialized in the 1960s and 1970s in New York–based Yiddish newspapers, Grade’s "Sons and Daughters" tells the story of a way of life that is no longer. In conversation Altie and Todd tell the incredible backstor...

Co-authors Sheila Baslaw and Karen Levine joined "The Shmooze" to talk about "The Light Keeper," their illustrated children’s book that tells the story of ten-year-old Shmuel Saslovsky’s life in an early-twentieth-century shtetl. At 92, this is Sheila’s first published children’s book. In collaboration with Karen Levine, she worked to tell the story of how Sheila’s father Shmuel helped when electr...

When Albert Chasan (1930–2024) retired from the marketing communications firm he founded, “It hit me: I had to do something with the stories my parents told.” He took up painting and commemorated the formative years of his parents’ lives through a series of expressionistic, boldly hued acrylics. A selection of color prints of many of these historically poignant works are on exhibit at the Yiddish...

This week on "The Shmooze," writer, translator, and literary scholar David Stromberg. In a wide-ranging conversation, David talks about his recently released translation of "Isaac Bashevis Singer: Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: A Spiritual Reappraisal, 1946–1955" (White Goat Press) and sheds light on Bashevis’s lesser-known nonfiction, which he has translated and edited for this collection o...

Hankus Netsky joined "The Shmooze" to talk about his upcoming Morris Hollender 100th birthday concert. In conversation we spoke about how interest in Eastern European Jewish musical traditions has experienced an unprecedented resurgence in recent years and how the melodies that Morris Hollender brought over from his birthplace in a small farming village in the Carpathian Mountains have become a ma...

Deb Krivoy, director of the annual Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival, joined "The Shmooze" to talk about this year’s lineup. Now in its nineteenth year, the Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival continues its tradition of showcasing award-winning films from around the globe. This year’s festival kicks off at the Yiddish Book Center on April 3 with the screening of "Midas Man." Episode 388 March 26...

Translator Mel Konner and Professor Justin Cammy sat down with "The Shmooze" to talk about the release of "Elephants by Night," a collection of newly translated poems by Abraham Sutzkever. The poems, a result of Sutzkever’s travels to South Africa, are meditations on place, memory, and renewal. Episode 387 January 16, 2025 Amherst, MA