The Shmooze, The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast

Debra Caplan, Yiddish theater historian and Assistant Professor of Theater at Baruch College, joins us this week to discuss her book, "Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy." We chat about the Vilna Troupe in its early years, their groundbreaking production of The Dybbuk, and more. Episode 0211 February 8, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Director Andrea Simon joins us to discuss her documentary, Angel Wagenstein: Art is a Weapon. This extraordinary film focuses on the life of Angel Wagenstein, Bulgarian anti-fascist fighter in his youth and film director and author in his later years. Simon speaks with us about Wagenstein, and how his story informs a larger narrative. Episode 0210 January 31, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Mass...

Eric L. Goldstein, professor of American and modern Jewish history at Emory University and the Judith London Evans Director of Emory’s Tam Institute for Jewish studies, joins us this week to discuss his current project focused on the reading culture of Yiddish-speaking immigrants to the United States from the late nineteenth century to the interwar period. He explains that, unlike a literary schol...

Yiddish Book Center Fellows Adah Hetko and Sophia Shoulson discuss their work with typewriters for the Yiddish Book Center's collection. As we put out the call for these special machines, they give us a peek into the world of Yiddish typewriters, explaining their past and present significance, the history of the keyboard layout, and how to distinguish between a Hebrew and a Yiddish typewriter. Epi...

We caught up with Ri J. Turner, a 2014 Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow, to chat about her translation of A.S. Lirik’s "A New Year's Eve State of Mind.” An M.A. student in the Department of Yiddish at Hebrew University, Ri is currently studying as a graduate exchange student at Medem Library in Paris, France. She joins us on the phone from Paris to discuss her work as a Yiddish translator, h...

Ted Merwin visits on The Shmooze this week to discuss his recently published book "Pastrami on Rye: An Overstuffed History of the Jewish Deli." Merwin, the founding director of the Milton B. Asbell Center for Jewish Life and associate professor of Religion and Judaic Studies at Dickinson College, goes against the grain (so to speak), considering the role of the deli for the second and third genera...

David R. Gillham, the New York Times bestselling author of "City of Women," joins us on "The Shmooze" this week to discuss his forthcoming novel, "Annelies." He shares a glimpse into the past six years which he has spent researching Anne Frank, recognizing her as the cultural icon whose diary painted a vivid picture of the Holocaust, and also as a person — a precocious young girl with a rich inner...

Gerri Chanel, a prize-winning freelance journalist, joins us this week to discuss "Saving Mona Lisa: The Battle to Protect the Louvre and its Treasures from the Nazis." In her compelling book, Gerri follows heroic efforts in France to protect the Louvre’s masterpieces during World War II. Episode 0204 December 6, 2018 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Jamie Bernstein joins us to talk about her recently published memoir "Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein." We hear from Jamie about her experience growing up in the mid-twentieth century with parents Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre. Our conversation touches on everything from life with the famous maestro to Jewishness, family traditions, and the story behind her memoir’...

Yiddish Book Center fellows Sophia Shoulson and Sarah Quiat searched the Center’s collection for Thanksgiving-related content. They join us on "The Shmooze" to share what they discovered, and from Yiddish cookbooks to a children’s story featuring a turkey, we learn how food, stories, and traditions figured into the Jewish immigrant’s experience. Episode 0202 November 21, 2018 Yiddish Book Center A...

Ilan Stavans stopped by the studio this week to discuss “My Mexican Shivah,” a film based on one of his stories. An exploration of family tensions, the film is set in Polanco, a Jewish quarter of Mexico City, and documents a man’s death and the celebration of his life that follows. The gentle comedy engages the complexity of Mexican-Jewish identity in the context of death rituals. Episode 0201 Nov...

Marvin Zuckerman joins "The Shmooze" this week to discuss his translation of Bernard Goldstein’s "Twenty Years with the Jewish Labor Bund: A Memoir of Interwar Poland." Along the way, he shares stories about his childhood in the Bronx, where he learned how to read and write Yiddish in the Workmen’s Circle afterschool programs and spent time in the company of figures like Chaim Grade, Naftali Gross...

Rebecca Lepkoff (1916-2014) was one of the great twentieth century photographers. Her work particularly chronicled the life of New York City’s Jewish neighborhoods. Her husband Eugene and son Daniel dropped by our studio to talk about Rebecca’s life and work from their unique vantage point. Episode 0199 November 1, 2018 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

The Shmooze caught up with David Stromberg over dinner at an outdoor café in New York where we learned about his latest book, "In the Land of Happy Tears: Yiddish Tales for Modern Times," a collection of newly translated Yiddish stories for readers of all ages. David is a self-described Yiddish-activist who worked hard to bring these largely overlooked works to publication. In our conversation, he...

Professor Deborah Dash Moore, who will lead the Yiddish Book Center's upcoming weekend course (October 26-28, 2018), discusses the cluster of New York Jewish photographers who pictured the city, their home, in the middle decades of the 20th century. As young men and women, mostly the children of immigrants, they picked up cameras and walked the streets, capturing its human drama. Episode 0197 Sept...

In a collection of stories newly translated from the Yiddish by Ellen Cassedy, prize-winning author Yenta Mash traces an arc across continents, upheavals and regime changes, and the phases of a woman’s life from girlhood to old age. Cassedy speaks with us about Yenta Mash – a master chronicler of exile, Mash’s work brings much to the literature of immigration and resilience. Episode 0196 September...

Steve Weintraub left the dance floor long enough to join us in studio to talk about Yiddish dance. Steve teaches dance workshops around the world, including at the annual Yidstock: The Festival of New Yiddish Music. In our conversation, we learn how Steve found his way to Yiddish dance, how he studied its roots, and how he documented its elements. Episode 0195 August 23, 2018 Yiddish Book Center A...

Hankus Netsky, chair of New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Improvisation Department and founder and director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, dropped by the studio to chat about the roots of Yiddish music and his work as a musician, teacher, and ethnomusicologist. As always, our conversation with Hankus is expansive, insightful, informative, and peppered with some great anecdotes. Episode 01...

In a conversation with Shachar M. Pinsker we learn about the place of coffeehouses in the creation of modern Jewish culture from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Shachar’s newly published book, "A Rich Brew: How Cafes Created Modern Jewish Culture," tells the story of the role of the coffeehouse as central to the modern Jewish experience in a time of migration and urbanization, from...

This week we visit with Yiddish vocalist Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell and pianist/accordionist Dmitri Gaskin. Together they explore diverse idioms and styles to create their signature contemporary and idiosyncratic new music - set to the works of some of the greatest poets in the Yiddish language. In a lively conversation, we learn about what drew them to Yiddish music and how they’ve been drawi...

Podcast Producer and Yiddish Book Center Fellow Zeke Levine caught-up with a few of the many performers at Yidstock 2018. Hankus Netsky, Steve Weintraub, and David Krakauer each stopped by our studio to talk all things Yiddish music related, from 78s to Yiddish dance moves. Episode 0191 July 13, 2018 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

Producer Zeke Levine and host Lisa Newman take The Shmooze on the road to Studley Press in Dalton, Massachusetts, where the summer issue of Pakn Treger, the Yiddish Book Center’s English-language magazine, is being printed. On the visit, Zeke asks the questions on many readers’ minds: How does the magazine come together from start to finish? Zeke and Lisa take us behind the scenes of the press, wh...

Vivi Lachs joins us to talk about her newly published book, Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London 1884–1914. Vivi is a social and cultural historian, Yiddishist, and associate research fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. Drawing from archival material from the London Yiddish press, songbooks, and satirical writing, Whitechapel Noise offers a fascinating w...

This week on The Shmooze, the second in our series of visits with Yiddish Book Center alumni to get an insider’s guide to Jewish and Yiddish culture in their hometown. Aga Ilwicka fills us in on the many Yiddish goings-on in San Francisco and shares a number of suggestions for those interested in contemporary Jewish culture, food, music, and more. Episode 0188 June 8, 2018 Yiddish Book Center Amhe...

The Shmooze is launching the first in what will be a series of visits with Yiddish Book Center alumni to get an insider’s guide to Jewish and Yiddish culture in their hometowns. This week, we visit with Samuel Zerin, a musicologist, music theorist, composer, and pianist, who provides a guide to Jewish Rhode Island. A specialist in early-twentieth-century Jewish musical nationalism, Sam has broader...