The Shmooze, The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast

Hankus Netsky visits with The Shmooze to chat about "40 Years in Yiddishland: The Yiddish Book Center Celebrates the Klezmer Conservatory Band," a special, upcoming virtual public program celebrating two of the major players in the flourishing international Yiddish cultural resurgence, the KCB and the Yiddish Book Center, each of whom marked their fortieth anniversaries in 2020. Hankus talks about...

Co-editor Rachel Rubinstein talks with The Shmooze about "Teaching Jewish American Literature," a newly published collection of essays she co-edited with Roberta Rosenberg. The collection of essays addresses how to teach questions of personal identity and national boundaries. These questions can engage students in literature, writing, or religion; at Jewish, Christian, or secular schools; and in o...

This week we visit with author Rachel Rojanski to talk about her recently published "Yiddish in Israel: A History." The book tells the compelling and lesser-known story of the history of Yiddish language and culture in Israel, challenging commonly held views and offering a radical new interpretation of the interaction between Yiddish and Israeli Hebrew cultures. Episode 0284 January 7, 2021 Yiddis...

This week we're joined by Joanna Church, director of collections and exhibits at the Jewish Museum of Maryland, to talk about the newly opened exhibit "Jews In Space: Members of the Tribe in Orbit." We learn about the ways in which outer space has inspired Jewish artists, writers, comedians, and thinkers, both religious and secular, to boldly imagine realms beyond our Earth. And Joanna talks about...

Kenneth Turan, film critic for the "Los Angeles Times" and NPR, visits with "The Shmooze" to talk about the newly released "The Jewish Soul: Classics of Yiddish Cinema" (Blu-ray). Our conversation considers the ten classic films that make up this collection and the many ways that they both touch on and represent aspects of Yiddish culture. As it happened, the conversation was recorded on the 100th...

Acclaimed Yiddish actor Shane Baker, recipient of the 2020 Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Award, has brought Yiddish theater, classes, and cultural events to every continent—including Antarctica!—through his work as director of the Congress for Jewish Culture, a Yiddishist organization based in New York. He chats with "The Shmooze" about his work both on and off the Yiddish stage. Episode 028...

London-based singer Clara Kanter, the great-great-granddaughter of Yiddish writer Sholem Asch, and composer Alastair White visit with The Shmooze to talk about "The Drowning Shore," their newly released cantata, which threads together Asch's classic 1907 play "God of Vengeance" with an original Scots-English text. The piece, a 14-minute video monodrama scored for 'a mezzo-soprano in a screen,' is...

This week, we visit with Christa Whitney, director of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, to talk about the new enhanced features to the oral history collection made possible through the 2017–2020 National Endowment for the Humanities grant that was completed in September 2020. The Project's growing collection includes over 1,000 in-depth interviews with people of all ages and b...

Yiddish translator Zackary Sholem Berger visits with The Shmooze to talk about the forthcoming release of his translation of Avrom Sutzkever's prose writing. As noted in the book's introduction, Sutzkever the storyteller is inseparable from Sutzkever the poet. The publication of this volume, containing almost all of Sutzkever's prose in English translation, is a vital contribution and essential to...

The Shmooze asked Becca Kantor, editorial director of the Jewish Book Council, to share a few recommended reads. Her selections include a mix of genres and new releases—and she makes a compelling case for adding each of these books to your nightstand. Episode 0277 October 30, 2020 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

On call from her home in Vienna, Isabel Frey talks about her work as a Yiddish singer and social justice activist. She specializes in Yiddish revolutionary and resistance songs and reviving the tradition of left-wing Jewish activism by connecting it to contemporary political issues. Episode 0276 October 23, 2020 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Caraid O'Brien chats with us about the launch of the Yiddish Book Center's new radiocast series, "The Last Maximalist." Caraid is both the translator and the voice behind this twelve-part series, which takes the form of a weekly serialized reading of Klara Klebanova's memoir, telling the story of Klebanova's journey from a middle-class Jewish teenager to a Maximalist revolutionary fighting for the...

In her new book, "On the Roof," actor and author Samantha Hahn, the youngest cast member of "Fiddler on the Roof" in Yiddish, tells the story of how this ground-breaking, award-winning musical came to be. Hahn talks to The Shmooze about the book, for which she interviewed the cast, crew, and creative team--each offering a unique take on the show and the impact it has had on their lives--in order t...

This week The Shmooze visits with Yiddish professor and translator Miriam Udel to talk about her translation of a newly released collection of Yiddish children's stories and poems. "Honey on the Page" features work written by both prominent and lesser-known Yiddish authors, and the anthology spans the Yiddish-speaking globe--drawing from materials published in Eastern Europe, New York, and Latin A...

This week we caught up with Heather O'Donnell of Honey & Wax Booksellers and Yiddish book collector Miriam Borden. Miriam Borden is the winner of the 2020 Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize. In announcing the prize, Honey & Wax noted, "Borden's collection represents an impressive effort of historical preservation and an inspiring example of how a collection that began as something personal becomes...

On a call with "The Shmooze" all the way from Scotland, Morgan Holleb and Joe Isaac talk about how they came to co-found Glasgow's new Pink Peacock Café--a queer, Yiddish-speaking kosher café operated by Jewish self-described anarchists where customers will "pay what they can." Morgan and Joe talk about the idea behind the café, which they plan to open later this year, as well as the roots of Jewi...

Yermiyahu Ahron Taub is a poet, writer, and translator. As a 2018 Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow, he translated three memoirs by Yiddish writer Rachmil Bryks (1912–1974): "Di vos zaynen nisht geblibn" ("Those Who Didn't Survive"), "Di antloyfers" ("The Fugitives"), and "Fun gsise tsum lebn" ("From Agony to Life"). The resulting book, "May God Avenge Their Blood: A Holocaust Memoir Triptych...

Asya Vaisman Schulman, director of the Yiddish Book Center's Yiddish Language Institute, visits with The Shmooze to talk about the forthcoming release of "In eynem: The New Yiddish Textbook" (White Goat Press, 2020). In conversation with Asya, we learn about the communicative approach to language learning, the role of the illustrated characters that are central to the book, and the companion websi...

KlezKanada was founded in 1996 to teach, nurture, and present to a broad public the best of Jewish traditional arts and Yiddish culture. Its goal is to foster Jewish cultural and artistic creativity worldwide as both an ethnic heritage and a constantly evolving contemporary culture and identity. The organization's executive director, Sebastian Schulman, visits with us to talk about the history of...

Internationally renowned essayist and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans spent five years traveling across a dozen countries in Latin America in search of what defines the Jewish communities in the region, whose roots date back to Christopher Columbus' arrival, for his latest book, "The Seventh Heaven." Our conversation touches on the book, a recipient of the 2020 Natan Notable Book Award from the...

Jack Berger has been working on the translation of Yizkor books since the early 1990s. Yizkor (memorial) books document the history of Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust. Written in Yiddish, Hebrew, or both, they are a crucial resource for research in East European Jewish history, Holocaust studies, and Jewish genealogy; often, they include necrologies (lists of those who died), making...

Rachel Mines' translation of "The Rivals and Other Stories" introduces nineteen of Jonah Rosenfeld's Yiddish-language short stories--stories that explore the limits of loneliness, social anxiety, and people's frustrated longing for meaningful relationships--to an English-reading audience. Rachel, a Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellowship alum, joins The Shmooze to talk about this newly released...

Lubomyr Luciuk spoke with The Shmooze about the recent release of his edited volume "How People Live in Soviet Russia: Impressions from a Journey." Newly translated from the Yiddish, the book chronicles journalist Mendel Osherowitch's account of his visit to Soviet Ukraine in 1932 at a time when millions of Ukrainians were dying of starvation in what historians have come to see as a direct result...

This week we decided to ask cultural critic, author, and music enthusiast Seth Rogovoy to share his recommendations on what to read, watch, and listen to--and the list surprised us! From a first review of Bob Dylan's new album to an obscure film and a classic novel, Seth makes the case for why these are his top picks. Episode 0263 June 26, 2020 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

"The Shmooze" visited with Adam Immerwahr, artistic director of Theater J, the nation's largest and most prominent Jewish theater, to talk about Theater J's Yiddish Theater Lab. In our conversation, we learn about an upcoming virtual performance from Yiddish Theater Lab--a reading of "One of Those," an epic, proto-feminist drama written by Paula Prilutski and originally presented in Warsaw in 1912...