The Shmooze, The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast

This week we visit with Sarah Aroeste. Sarah, American-born and trained in classical opera at Westminster Choir College and Yale University, was inspired by her family's Sephardic roots in Greece and Macedonia. She’s spent the last 15 years bringing her contemporary style of original and traditional Ladino music to audiences around the world. On July 15, 2018 she’ll be taking the stage at Yidstock...

Comic book creator and digital designer JT Waldman visited The Shmooze’s studio to answer our questions about his work, the intersection of comic books and Judaism, the graphic novel, and the roots of Jewishness in visual storytelling. JT also spoke with us about his landmark graphic novel Megillat Esther (an interpretation of the Book of Esther), as well as his collaboration with legendary comic...

This week we visit with Miriam Udel, Associate Professor of Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture at Emory University. Miriam talks with us about her research and her teaching, which focus on Jewish encounters with modernity in literature, as well as her work translating Yiddish children’s literature. Episode 0184 May 4, 2018 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

This week we talk with Ilan Stavans, Lewis-Sebring Professor of Humanities, Latin American, and Latino Culture at Amherst College, publisher of Restless Books, and host of the NPR podcast “In Contrast.” A busy man, we caught up with him to chat about his upcoming three-part series of talks taking place at the Yiddish Book Center May 1, 8, and 15: “People of the Picture Book: The History of Jewish...

Lisa Newman and podcast producer and Yiddish Book Center fellow Zeke Levine take The Shmooze on the road to Boston for a visit and tour of the Vilna Shul. Vilna’s Executive Director, Barnet Kessel, provides a private tour of this historic landmark—the last immigrant era synagogue building that exists in downtown Boston. Barnet talks about the Shuls’ history, the building’s unique architecture, sha...

Brooklyn-based writer and director Rachel Fleit shares the story behind her latest film, Gefilte. Each year, the Hermelin family of Detroit comes together to celebrate Passover, and central to their seder meal is the family’s homemade gefilte fish. As Fleit notes, “While simple on the surface, Gefilte is filled with history and meaning—just like the recipe itself, which includes a stuffing of fish...

Author Adrienne Sharp speaks with us about her latest novel, The Magnificent Esme Wells (April 2018). The story finds its voice in the perceptive and irrepressible Esme Wells—daughter of a two-bit gangster and a movie showgirl—as she grows up in the golden-age of pre–WWII Hollywood and postwar Las Vegas. Adrienne shares the Jewish roots of the story and the personal journey she took in writing thi...

Judith Thissen, a specialist of Jewish immigrant entertainment in New York City—especially film culture on the Lower East Side in the early twentieth century—talks about the Sunshine Theatre, one of the last of the iconic “vaud-pic” Yiddish theaters. Originally a Protestant Church, Judith shares the story of how a young Hungarian-Jewish immigrant named Charles Steiner purchased and altered the Low...

Larry Ruttman is the author of American Jews and America's Game: Voices of a Growing Legacy in Baseball. Selected by Sports Collectors Digest (among others) as the #1 baseball book in America for 2013, the work has been adapted into the musical play Jews on First. On this episode, we learn about Larry’s love of the game and hear a few stories of his most memorable interviewees. Episode 0178 March...

Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II is a new recording of music created during the darkest chapter of European Jewish history. During these years, a group of scholars attempted to preserve songs written by Jewish Red Army soldiers, refugees, victims, and survivors of Ukrainian ghettos. Following the war, the researchers were arrested during Stalin’s anti¬-Jewish purge and their works wer...

Mr. Alvin Lee Smalls first learned about rugelach in a newspaper article in the 1960s while he was working as an onion peeler in a New York City hospital kitchen. He was intrigued, having never heard of the Jewish treat, and began experimenting with the recipe. Some 40 years later, Alvin—who is affectionately known in his Harlem neighborhood as Lee Lee—sells what we think may just be the perfect r...

Zeke Levine takes The Shmooze into the Yiddish Book Center’s vault to explore the Center’s Yiddish sheet music collection. Zeke’s fellowship responsibilities include cataloguing the collection, and in the process of his work he’s uncovered some interesting finds, including two of his favorites—sheet music of Abi Gezunt, from the film Mamele starring Molly Picon, and a piece from the 1960s about De...

On this episode, we talk with Seth Rogovoy, Yidstock artistic director, about the lineup for Yidstock 2018, which will include performances by David Krakauer, Anthony Russell, the Heather Klein Duo, Socalled, and Sarah Aroeste—and those are just a few of the performers who will take to the stage. Seth gives us a preview of everything that’s in store for this year’s event—from workshops to talks to...

This week, we speak with author, actress, and educator Beth Kaplan. Beth graduated from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, one of Britain’s foremost drama schools, at the age of 22, and worked for a decade as a professional actress. She then left the stage to earn an MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and has since gone on to teach and write. She is the autho...

Josh Lambert, the Yiddish Book Center’s academic director, sits down to discuss all things “Great Jewish Books” related, including the Center’s latest program, which will bring educators together for a month-long summer seminar. From a summer program for teens to a teacher seminar and a book club, modern Jewish literature continues to inspire and engage readers and students of all ages. Episode 01...

“How can I donate some Yiddish books?” That was the question Mindy asked David Mazower, bibliographer and editorial director at the Center, hoping to find a new home for her partner’s books. As it turned out, Danny’s library consisted of several hundred volumes, including many key works of fiction and reference. Listen in as the Yiddish Book Center team visits Manhattan to meet Mindy, pack up Dann...

Shannon Sarna, editor of the Jewish food blog “The Nosher,” and author of Modern Jewish Baker, joins us to discuss her new takes on challah, babka, bagels, and more. Shannon makes the case for hamantaschen and talks about some of the unexpected recipes included in her book—from Tomato-Basil Challah to Everything-Bagel Rugelach. Episode 0170 January 19,2018 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusett...

From pocket-sized Yiddish books to on-my-night-table English-language works, The Shmooze's producer Zeke Levine and host Lisa Newman sit down to discuss and recommend some of the titles from their recent reading lists—it’s an eclectic and surprising handpicked collection that will provide you with some great reads during the winter months. Episode 0169 January 12, 2018 Yiddish Book Center Amherst,...

2017–18 Yiddish Book Center Fellows Miranda Cooper, Raphael Halff, and Zeke Levine join us to answer our many questions about the paths that brought them to the Center after college, how they’ve contributed to the Center’s major projects in Yiddish language and Jewish cultural work, and how their experiences as full-time staff members have shaped their future plans. Episode 0168 December 21, 2017...

This week, we talk with New Yiddish Rep director David Mandelbaum as he discusses the theater’s current production, Clifford Odets' 1935 masterpiece Awake and Sing!, as well as their past performances of Rhinoceros and Death of a Salesman. He also explains how the theater seeks to “educate a new generation of Yiddish actors and to illuminate for the public the diversity, cutting edge creativity, a...

This week, we visit with photographer and documentary filmmaker David Kaufman to learn what draws him to the architectural and historic Jewish sites that he’s traveled the globe to photograph. “I see myself working in the spirit of Eugene Atget,” he says when asked about the visual narrative central to his work, “who, before World War One, photographed the Paris that was already old when he was yo...

Photographers Janet Russek and David Scheinbaum started photographing New York’s Lower East Side in 1999, chronicling the neighborhood at a time of extraordinary transformation. In the newly published Remnants (Radius Books), Scheinbaum and Russek’s photographs document the remnants of history that have defined the Lower East Side for generations. Episode 0156 November 20, 2017 Yiddish Book Center...

Der Yidisher Idol stars Leah Reis-Dennis and Michael Yashinsky visit to talk about how they made the cut to perform their original Yiddish songs at the 2017 Der Yidisher Idol—an international singing contest in Mexico City. Leah is a singer-songwriter based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Michael is currently a Yiddish education specialist at the Yiddish Book Center. Both are alumni of the Center’...

Annie Polland, author, public historian, and senior vice president of programs and education at the Tenement Museum in New York, joins us on The Shmooze to talk about “The Jewish Ghetto in Postcards: From Eastern Europe to the Lower East Side”, an exhibition of early 20th-century postcards from the Blavatnik Archive Foundation. Episode 0163 November 10, 2017 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachuse...

Ruby Elliott Zuckerman, a student at Macalester College, tells us about her newly launched Yiddish radio show. An alumna of the Yiddish Book Center’s Great Jewish Books Summer Program, she returned to the Center last summer to attend the Steiner Summer Yiddish Program. The seven-week Yiddish program inspired her to host a live Yiddish radio show. Episode 0162 November 2, 2017 Yiddish Book Center A...