Tune in! The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast

"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 response to the Ukrainian refugee crisis occurring there now. Chuck Fishman’s visiting exhibit "Roots, Resilience and Renewal—A Portrait of Polish Jews, 1975–2016" is on view at the Yiddish Book Center through fall 2022. Episode 329 June 13, 2022 Amherst, MA

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 and community, and love of the natural world. Episode 328 May 19, 2022 Amherst, MA

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, 2022 Amherst, MA

Annette Liebeskind Berkovitz 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 Liebeskind Berkovitz’s mother and her close friends, all women of immense courage and integrity. Rifka’s personal struggles and dilemmas go to the heart of the major ethical issues and challenges of our times. Episode 325 April 10, 2022 Amherst, MA

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, 2022 Amherst, MA

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 someone’s life— and from there readers time travel to the world of Jewish Victorian London. Episode 323 March 6, 2022 Amherst, MA

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 play out in today’s digital realm. Episode 322 February 28, 2022 Amherst, MA

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 Fundación IWO Instituto Judío de Investigación in Buenos Aires. Published between 1957 and 1984, the series demonstrates the impressive breadth of Yiddish letters. Episode 321 February 10,2022 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

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 the writers reading from their poetry and prose. Presented as part of the Yiddish Book Center’s 2022 Decade of Discovery: Women in Yiddish. Episode 320 February 3, 2022 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

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 talk about the role of Yiddish in their work and the universality of the story. Our conversation touches on their work as actors, co-writers, and director of the one-act drama and the role of Yiddish in their work. Presented as part of the Yiddish Book Center’s 2022 Decade of Discovery Women in Yiddish. Episode 316 January 6, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

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 Center Amherst, MA

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

The Shmooze visits with curator Sam Sackeroff to talk about Afterlives: Recovering the Lost Stories of Looted Art, currently on exhibit at the Jewish Museum in New York. The exhibit of paintings, drawings, and Judaica focuses on the seizure and movement of artworks as they traveled through distribution centers, sites of recovery, and networks of collectors before, during, and after World War II. Episode 311 November 4, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

Alex Weiser and Ben Kaplan sit down with The Shmooze to talk about their forthcoming collaboration, "The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language." The new full-length opera is based on the true story of Yiddish linguist Yudel Mark, who in 1950s postwar New York City set out to write the world’s first fully comprehensive Yiddish dictionary—an effort of linguistic preservation, and a memorial to the dead. The opera invites audiences to consider the extent to which a language and a culture can be saved, the nature of grief, and the power of language itself to transform and shape us into who we are. Episode 310 October 28, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA