The Shmooze, The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast

Daniel Ronfeld dropped by The Shmooze recording studio to chat about the Great Jewish Books Book Club. Over the course of a lively discussion, we learn what drew him to join the Book Club, some of his favorite selections, and how he came to create a monthly gathering of fellow Book Club members in his home state of Idaho. Episode 0236 November 7, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Recorded live at the Yiddish Book Center's Community Open House in October 2019, Lisa Newman, director of communications, and Mindl Cohen, director of translation and collections initiatives, discuss all things Yiddish translation. Episode 0235 October 31, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

This week we visit with Christa Whitney, director of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, to talk about the oral history interview she recorded with Harold Bloom shortly before his death. In his oral history interview the late, legendary, literary scholar--and native Yiddish speaker--Harold Bloom explores his connection with Yiddish language and literature. He also recalls his fi...

This week we visit with Ann Toback, executive director of The Workmen's Circle in New York City, to hear about their program that brings owners and their trusty dog companions together in Central Park, where they learn some basic commands in Yiddish. By all accounts, both dogs and owners have a great time, and, yes, we learn that you can teach an old dog new tricks--in this case, Yiddish. Episode...

Sarah Abrevaya Stein, professor of history and Jewish studies at UCLA, talks with The Shmooze about her new book "Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century" and the process of writing history through personal stories. Along the way, she discusses the challenges of reading historical documents against the grain, how her time in the Yiddish Book Center's summer internship (now...

Bob Schor chats with The Shmooze about his remarkable aunt Cipe Pineles. Born in Vienna in 1908 to an Orthodox Jewish family, Cipe immigrated to New York in 1923, where she studied art at Pratt Institute and went on to have an amazing career as the first female art director at Condé Nast and the first woman asked to join the legendary Art Directors Club. Her work and illustration continue to influ...

This week, The Shmooze visits with editor and author Stephen Shepard to talk about his literary memoir "A Literary Journey to Jewish Identity: Re-Reading Bellow, Roth, Malamud, Ozick, and Other Great Jewish Writers." Over the course of our conversation, we consider his encounters with a few writers who influenced his sense of Jewish identity, the idea of the Jewish-American writer, and what it's l...

Allen Lewis Rickman, producer, director, and performer of Yiddish theater, joins The Shmooze to talk about his work translating Yiddish for the stage and screen--from his work on the Cohen Brothers' "A Serious Man" to his recent translations and performances of two little-known Yiddish plays, "Breach of Promise" and "One of Those," to his production "Tevye Served Raw." Episode 0229 August 25, 2019...

Alexander Dickow visited with The Shmooze to talk about "Asymptote's" recently published Yiddish poetry in translation feature that he co-edited with Asymptote's Editor-In-Chief Lee Yew Leong. Alexander is a bilingual poet and translator who works in French and English and is a scholar of modern and contemporary French and Francophone literature and film. His poetic works include "Appetites," "Tri...

This week on The Shmooze we visit with Anita Norich to talk about the recently published "A Jewish Refugee in New York" by Kadia Molodovsky, translated by Anita Norich. Anita is Professor Emerita of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, where, in addition to translating Yiddish literature, she teaches, lectures, and publishes on a range of topics concerning modern Jewish cultur...

Caraid O'Brien joined us in the studio this week. Caraid is a writer, Yiddish translator, and performer who first began learning Yiddish as a Yiddish Book Center intern in 1994. Early in her career she received three new play commissions from the Foundation for Jewish Culture for her translations of classic Yiddish plays. Most recently, she translated the memoirs of Klara Klebanova, a Russian-Jewi...

Nadia Valman, Reader in English Literature at Queen Mary, University of London, visits with us to talk about her walking tour of Zangwill's Spitalfields, the Jewish immigrant neighborhood of Victorian Spitalfield. Nadia is the author and co-editor of numerous books including "The Jewess in Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture and the Routledge Companion to Contemporary Jewish Cultures" and...

Seth Rogovoy, Yidstock's artistic director and the author of "The Essential Klezmer," joins us to talk about Yidstock 2019, the Yiddish Book Center's annual summer music festival. In conversation, Seth talks about the 2019 line-up, the roots of Jewish music, and how he found his way to klezmer. Episode 0224 June 27, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Mindl Cohen joins us on The Shmooze to talk about the "2019 Pakn Treger Digital Translation Issue," a collection of letters and stories about letters. The pieces included in this year's anthology provide a window into the personal lives of Yiddish writers; illustrate aspects of day-to-day communications; and remind readers of the great distances across which relationships can stretch. Episode 0223...

Chava Rosenfarb's daughter and translator, Goldie Morgentaler, visits with us this week to talk about the recently released "Confessions of a Yiddish Writer and Other Essays." The book is a collection of personal and literary essays by Chava Rosenfarb, translated by Goldie Morgentaler, ranging from autobiographical accounts of her childhood and experiences before and during the Holocaust to litera...

Hankus Netsky joins us to share the finds that he and Yiddish Book Center staff unearthed as they cleared out a closet at the Yiddish Book Center. Known to staff as "Hankus's Closet," the closest has served as an archive for Yiddish sheet music, Yiddish records, and other music-related treasures. Episode 0221 May 30, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Detroit-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter, polyglot poet, translator and activist Daniel Kahn joins us on The Shmooze for an expansive conversation about his work as a songwriter, Yiddish culture, klezmer, and Yidstock. We also have a chance to talk about cultural transmission, artistic collaborations, and some of what informs his work. Episode 0220 May 22, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Mas...

Meredith Lewis, director of content, education, and family experience for PJ Library in North America, visits with us during Tent: Children's Literature - the week-long retreat for emerging and mid-career writers and author-illustrators of board books, picture books, early chapter books, and middle-grade fiction. She talks about her work with PJ Library, Jewish children's literature, and what's be...

Episode 0218: "Dr. Pamela Nadell on 'America's Jewish Women'" by Yiddish Book Center

This week on The Shmooze, Lisa Newman talks to Mikail Krutikov, Professor and Chair of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Preston R. Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies at the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Professor Krutikov discusses the life and work of enigmatic Yiddish writer Der Nister (“The Recluse”). Professor Kruitkov will b...

This week on The Shmooze, Lisa Newman speaks with Alana Newhouse, Founder and Editor of Tablet Magazine about her book, "The 100 Most Jewish Foods: A Highly Debatable List." Newhouse speaks powerfully to the role that food has always played in the religious, cultural, and political lives of Jews throughout the world. She also shares some of the background about the book’s essays, recipes, stories,...

This week, Lisa Newman talks to Smith College senior Abigail Weaver about "Grains of Wheat," her play about the Jewish intellectuals, known as the Paper Brigade, who worked to hide stores of cultural materials from Nazi forces in the Vilna ghetto. "Grains of Wheat" is the product of Weaver's years of interest in Yiddish, including a class visit to Vilna, and combines her Theater and Jewish Studies...

Alyssa Quint joins us this week to talk about her new book, “The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater.” Quint, a senior scholar at YIVO Institute and a contributor to the Digital Yiddish Theater Project, examines the beginnings of Yiddish-language theater and delves into one of Yiddish theater’s brilliant and polarizing figures, Avrom Goldfaden. Born in 1840, Goldfaden came from humble beginnings to...

This week we visit with Ira Fuchs. Ira began writing plays in college. After graduating from college Ira spent 45 years working in computer technology. In 2016, he returned to writing plays and enrolled in a six week play writing workshop at Hollins University. One assignment was to write a full-length play, in three days, based on a news article published that day. In the "New York Times" was a s...

Heather Valencia joins us from Scotland to talk about her newly published translation of "Seeds in the Desert." Available for the first time in translation, Mendel Mann’s stories follow his life in reverse, from Israel in the 1950s to his experiences in the post-War Soviet Union and his childhood in Poland. Heather talks about Mann’s indelible portraits of survivors as they confront the past and s...