The Shmooze, The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast

This week on "The Shmooze," Ellen Cassedy, author of "Working 9 to 5: A Women’s Movement, a Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie," newly published by Chicago Review Press with a foreword by Jane Fonda. Ellen was a founder of the 9 to 5 movement in the early 1970s. In conversation we talk about how the Yiddish-speaking women activists of a hundred years ago inspired the women of the 9 to 5 movement. A...

On the "The Shmooze" this week, Piotr Nazaruk. Piotr is a researcher, educator, curator, and Yiddish translator at the Grodzka Gate–NN Theatre Center in Lublin, Poland. Piotr tells the story of the vanished Library of Yeshivas Chachmei Lublin, or Academy of the Sages of Lublin—one of the greatest mysteries from the postwar history of Lublin, if not from the history of Jewish heritage in Poland. Th...

Dorothée Rozenberg, daughter of Lena Jedwab Rozenberg, joins "The Shmooze" to talk about her mother’s wartime diary, "Girl with Two Landscapes: The Wartime Diary of Lena Jedwab." Lena wrote her diary in Yiddish not only because it was her mother tongue but also as a conscious effort to maintain her Jewish identity. Her writing has left us a moving testimony to some of history’s darkest days. The b...

"Sasha Senderovich, author of the recently published How the Soviet Jew Was Made, sits down with The Shmooze to talk about his latest work, which has been described as “a close reading of postrevolutionary Russian and Yiddish literature and film [that] recasts the Soviet Jew as a novel cultural figure: not just a minority but an ambivalent character navigating between the Jewish past and Bolshevik...

This week on The Shmooze, we talk to Asaf Galay, award-winning director of films that examine modern Jewish culture and creativity. He has explored the magical literature and complex life of Isaac Bashevis Singer, celebrated ultra-Orthodox and queer Swedish pop music, and traced the development of comics and cartoons in the United States and Israel. His documentary "The Adventures of Saul Bellow"...

"The Shmooze" visited with Jake Krakovsky, an Atlanta-based puppeteer, writer, actor, director, teaching artist, and as of late Yiddishist. In conversation, Jake recounted how he successfully turned the Yiddish story "Labzik" into a puppet film and how in the process he discovered the richness of Yiddish language, literature, and culture. Episode 331 August 4, 2022 Amherst, MA

Irving Massey, son of Yiddish writer Ida Maze, joins "The Shmooze" to talk about his mother, her writing, and the newly published "Dineh: An Autobiographical Novel" by Ida Maze, translated by Yermiyahu Ahron Taub (White Goat Press 2022). Irving shares a personal portrait of the writer, her role in Montreal’s Yiddish literary circles, and the story behind the posthumously published "Dineh." Episode...

"In conversation with Chuck Fishman we learn about his 45-year career as a freelance photographer whose work focuses on social and political issues with a strong humanistic concern. In 1975 he traveled to Poland to photograph the “dwindling remnant of a once-vibrant Jewish community on the brink of extinction,” and he has returned several times, most recently to photograph the Jewish community’s r...

In conversation with Yermiyahu Ahron Taub, we hear about his latest work of translation. "Dineh: An Autobiographical Novel," posthumously published, is a Yiddish-language novel by Ida Maze, a pastorale laced with beauty and sorrow and a bildungsroman told from the point of view of a young girl. Living in what is now Belarus, Maze’s heroine is fueled by her hunger for learning, connection to family...

On "The Shmooze" this week, we talk with Misha Schaffner-Kargman, a sophomore at Bard College studying Yiddish who hosts a spot on the school’s student-run radio station, WXBC. Every Monday from 6 to 8 p.m. Misha streams two hours of Yiddish music and hosts beginner Yiddish lessons on WXBC’s Mixlr page. Episode 327 May 5, 2022 Amherst, MA

This month the Great Jewish Books Club selection is a rich anthology of the interplay of Yiddish and American culture: "How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish." "The Shmooze" asked film critic Kenneth Turan to recommend films that speak to the interplay of Yiddish and American culture. His list included a range of films—and prompted a lively conversation. Episode 326 April 19,...

Annette Libeskind Berkovits visited with "The Shmooze" to talk about her latest book, "The Corset Maker." The novel tells the story of a Parisian count, a Moroccan arms smuggler, and an orphaned Spanish boy who test the convictions and tug at the heart of Rifka Berg, a young Jewish corsetiere from Warsaw. "The Corset Maker" is inspired by Annette Libeskind Berkovits' mother and her close friends,...

This week "The Shmooze" visited with Ilan Stavans, co-editor of "How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish"—a Great Jewish Books Club 2022 selection. In conversation we talk about this momentous and diverse anthology of the influences and inspirations of Yiddish voices in America—radical, dangerous, and seductive but also “sweet, generous, and full of life.” Episode 324 March 27,...

Award-winning author Shirley Vernick joins "The Shmooze" to talk about "Ripped Away," her latest book, which is based on real historical events, including the Jack the Ripper crimes, the inquests, and the accusations against immigrants. The story’s main character, Abe Pearlman, wanders into fortune teller’s shop for a little diversion. The fortune teller reveals that Abe may be able to save someon...

On "The Shmooze" this week we visit with "Farbindungen" Conference organizers Sarah Biskowitz and Carolyn Beard to learn about the two-day virtual conference, for early career Yiddish scholars, which aimed to build connections with by considering Yiddish networks – past and present. In conversation we learn that networks have deep roots in Yiddish culture—and we discuss how such networks might pla...

Yiddish Book Center bibliography and collections manager Rachelle Grossman sits down with "The Shmooze" to share news of the digitization and addition of the 100-volume "Musterverk fun der yidisher literatur" to the Yiddish Book Center’s Steven Spielberg Digital Yiddish Library. The addition of the Musterverk series to the Center’s Digital Yiddish Library was made possible in partnership with La F...

This week we visit with Dr. Sheva Zucker to talk about her latest book. "The Golden Peacock" is a bilingual edition that includes the work of Yiddish writers Yankev Glatshteyn, Celia Dropkin, H. Leivick, Aron Glanz-Leyeles, Yente Mash, Kadya Molodowsky, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, Sholem Aleichem, Yekhiel Shraibman, and Avrom Sutzkever. The print edition includes companion digital recordings of th...

Literary translator and editor Peter Constantine joins "The Shmooze" to talk about his work translating Isaac Babel’s "Red Calvary"—a 2022 Great Jewish Books Club selection. In conversation we learn about the roots of "yiddishkeit" in Babel’s work, his artful writing style, and the stories that thread together in "Red Calvary." Episode 0319 January 26, 2022 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

This week Jeremy Dauber joins "The Shmooze" to talk about his recently published "American Comics: A History." The book tells the sweeping story of cartoons, comic strips, and graphic novels and their century-long hold on the American imagination. Episode 318 January 20, 2022 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

On "The Shmooze," Daniela Smolov Levy and Mark Kligman talk about their five-part lecture series that reveals how popular Italian opera was aimed not only at Italian immigrants and native-born Americans but also the Yiddish-speaking public, who were then emerging as an integral part of the American cultural scene. Episode 317 January 13, 2022 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

Melissa Weisz, Malky Goldman, and Rachel Botchan join us on "The Shmooze" to talk about their upcoming performance of "Di Froyen (The Women)," based on the play "Women’s Minyan" by Naomi Ragen, adapted for the New Yiddish Rep by Weisz and Goldman, and directed by Botchan. The play is a one-act drama of an abused Orthodox Jewish wife who is being kept from her children. In conversation the women ta...

Justin Cammy visited with "The Shmooze" to talk about his newly published translation of Avrom Sutzkever’s "From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg." Justin’s translation is based on two extant versions of the full text of Sutzkever’s memoir, diary notes, and full testimony at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. Episode 315 December 16, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

"The Shmooze" visits with Frank London to chat about the upcoming “Celebrate Hanukkah with the Klezmatics” taking place at Symphony Space December 5, 2021. The performance will feature Hanukkah-themed songs, many written by American folk singer Woody Guthrie, who was inspired by the Jewish culture he encountered while living in Coney Island in the 1940s. Episode 314 December 2, 2021 Yiddish Book C...

We visit with translator Helen Mintz to speak about how four stories from her translation of "Vilna My Vilna: Stories by Abraham Karpinowitz" (Syracuse University Press) have been adapted by Stephen Aberle and will be presented as a staged reading by Western Gold, a Vancouver theater company, November 28 to December 6, 2021. Episode 313 November 18, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

This week we visit with cartoonist Ken Krimstein to talk about his new graphic novel, based on six of hundreds of newly discovered, never-before-published essays by Eastern European Jewish teens written on the brink of World War II, and found in 2017 hidden in a Lithuanian church cellar. Episode 312 November 11, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA