Tune in! The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast

Erik Greenberg Anjou, director of the acclaimed documentary "The Klezmatics: On Holy Ground," talks about the making of the film and the upbeat message he hopes to spread to his audiences. Episode 0029 June 19, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

There’s no shortage of news from the Yiddish Book Center these days: classes have begun for the Steiner Summer Yiddish Program students, we’re gearing up for our Yidstock music festival and the 2012 alumni reunion, and Asya Vaisman, head of the Center’s Yiddish Language Institute, arrives in the fall. Emma Morgenstern visits with Aaron Lansky to hear it all firsthand. Episode 0028 June 19, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

The Fugs, a 1960s garage band, made frequent use of bongos, curse words, and protest poetry. They also used Yiddish songs and other Jewish source material. Music critic Seth Rogovoy, in conversation with Emma Morgenstern, plays clips from The Fugs' first album and ponders what makes their music Jewish. Episode 0027 June 12, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Aaron Lansky visits with Chana Mlotek. The ninety-year-old Mlotek works three days a week as the music archivist at YIVO, where she began working as Max Weinreich's assistant in 1944. She shares stories, reflects on Yiddish music and musicians, and ends the visit with a verse of her favorite song. The National Folksbiene Theater's gala, honoring Chana Mlotek, Neil Sedaka, and Jay Wisnicki, will take place on Tuesday, June 12, 7:30PM, at Town Hall (123 W. 43rd St.). Among the performers and speakers will be Elie Wiesel, Dudu Fisher, and Lorin Sklamberg. For information about the event visit www.nationalyiddishtheatre.org. Episode 0026 June 7, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Seth Rogovoy talks with Yiddish vocalist Eleanor Reissa about her upcoming performance at Yidstock. Reissa will be singing with Frank London's Klezmer Brass Allstars at Yidstock on Sunday, July 15th, 2012. Episode 0025 June 5, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Yidstock will bring some of the top names in klezmer to the stage at the Yiddish Book Center. Seth Rogovoy, Yidstock's program organizer, explains how the bands, which include the Klezmatics and Socalled, represent the many incarnations of klezmer. Episode 0024 May 30, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Jewish educator Fradle Pomerantz Freidenreich talks with Aaron Lansky about her work documenting every Yiddish school in North America. These schools, whose reach and influence were greater than Freidenreich imagined, are chronicled in her book, "Passionate Pioneers: The Story of Yiddish Secular Education in North America, 1910-1960." Episode 0023 May 22, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

When asked what's new at the Yiddish Book Center, Aaron Lansky had plenty to report: the opening of a new interactive exhibit, a recap of the recent Chaim Grade weekend program, new initiatives to jumpstart Yiddish translation, arriving students, and, believe it or not, there's more. Episode 0022 May 16, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Two years and four thousand pounds of Cor-Ten steel in the making, Simon Kogan's sculpture "Yiddish" has been installed on the grounds at the Yiddish Book Center. Kogan and Lee Hutt, the head of the Center's sculpture committee, talk with Aaron Lansky about what the sculpture represents and the massive effort - artistic and physical - of creating it. Episode 0021 May 9, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Fellow Josh Price reads an excerpt from Chaim Grade's poem "Ikh veyn af aykh mit ale oysyes fun dem alef-beys" ("I weep for you with all the letters of the alphabet") and discusses the context of this elegy for the Soviet Yiddish writers executed under Stalin's regime. Episode 0020 April 24, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Ilan Stavans sits down with Josh Lambert to answer questions about the concept behind his documentary-style fotonovela, Once@9:53am, a fictional meditation of the two hours before the 1994 terrorist attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. Once@9:53am, a collaboration between Ilan Stavans and photographer Marcelo Brodsky, is on exhibit at the Yiddish Book Center through October 2012. Episode 0019 April 18, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Aaron Lansky visits with Hankus Netsky, curator of the Lee and Alfred Hutt Discovery Gallery, to learn about the people, stories, artifacts, and interviews that have shaped this new interactive exhibit. The Gallery will open on April 29th, 2012 - the opening is one of the many scheduled events that will take place during the Center's 2012 Community Open House. Episode 0018 April 11, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Aaron Lansky and designer Alex Isley (of Alexander Isley Inc.) share the story of how and why the Yiddish Book Center's new logo evolved to include a tsigele - a little goat. Episode 0016 April 3, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Rick Brown and his team at Handshouse Studio are constructing an 85 percent scale model of a wooden synagogue inside the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw. Aaron Lansky visits with Rick to learn about the project and the history of these magnificent structures. Episode 0017 April 3, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Nora Feinstein, the woman behind the Maxwell House Haggadah Project, tells us how the coffee company's haggadah came to be a staple at the American seder and about her project to capture photos and memories related to the haggadah. Episode 0015 March 27, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

South African native Claudia Braude visits with Aaron Lansky to discuss the rich - and largely untold - history of South African Jewish culture in the 20th and 21st centuries. Episode 0014 March 20, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Naftali Ejdelman, co-founder of Yiddish Farm, talks with Emma Morgenstern about the resurgence of interest in Yiddish and the popularity of the "back-to-the-land" movement. Against this backdrop, Naftali has managed to create a place where students can speak Yiddish while toiling in the fields. Episode 0013 March 13, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

In a conversation with writer Sana Krasikov, Josh Lambert learns which books influenced Krasikov in high school and how literature came alive once she started reading outside the classroom. Then the two discuss some of the books they'll be co-teaching at this summer's Great Jewish Books program. Episode 0012 March 13, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Los Angeles Times film critic Kenneth Turan sheds some light on "Bar Mitzvah," — a 'shund' (lowbrow), yet culturally priceless, Yiddish film from 1935 starring Yiddish theatrical great Boris Thomashefsky." Episode 0011 March 6, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Philip Roth's short story "Defender of the Faith" - a work that poses some interesting questions about Jewish identity - is on the reading list for the Yiddish Book Center's Great Jewish Books summer program. Aaron Lansky and Josh Lambert engage in a lively discussion about how Roth's work relates to the themes that students will explore this summer. Do you know a rising senior or junior in high school who loves literature? Great Jewish Books is a free summer program at the Yiddish Book Center where students will read, discuss, argue about, and fall in love with some of the most powerful and enduring works of modern Jewish literature. To learn more visit http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/great-jewish-books/programs. Episode 0010 February 28, 2012 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts