In a live conversation at the Yiddish Book Center, award-winning photographer, filmmaker, and author Harvey Wang visits with "The Shmooze" to talk about his work and his recently opened exhibit, "Harvey Wang’s New York."In the early years of his career, in the 1980s, Harvey’s photographic beat was the New York City nightlife scene. Yet a very diffe…

David Mazower, chief-curator and writer of "Yiddish: A Global Culture," and Caleb Sher, the Yiddish Book Center’s Richard S. Herman Endowed Senior Fellow, join "The Shmooze" to share the news that the Center’s groundbreaking exhibition, "Yiddish: A Global Culture," is now live on the Bloomberg Connects app. The free, downloadable app allows users t…

Novelist Ben Gonshor joins "The Shmooze" to talk about his debut novel, "The Book of Izzy." The book’s main character, Izzy, is a writer at wit’s end in life and on the verge of a complete breakdown with his career in wedding planning. Following an encounter with a mysterious bird seemingly visible only to him, he agrees to take on the leading role…

Writer Joan Leegant joined "The Shmooze" to talk about her latest book, "Displaced Persons," a collection of rich, multilayered short stories, half set in Israel, half among Jewish families in the States. The fictional stories explore exile, belonging, and what it means to call a place home.Episode 378August 22, 2024Amherst, MA…

Rokhl Kafrissen—journalist, teacher, playwright, and 2022 winner of the prestigious Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish prize—sits down with "The Shmooze" this week to talk about her upcoming Yiddish Book Center online course “Sacred Time and Liminal Space: Ashkenazi Folk Magic at the Threshold.” Rokhl talks about the unique Eastern European women’…

Translator and adapter Weaver sits down with "The Shmooze" to talk about the drama group Theater Between Addresses and its upcoming immersive, staged reading of Sholem Asch’s "Shabbtai Tsvi," which Weaver translated and adapted. Never before performed in its entirety, the play shows the meteoric rise and tragic fall of Shabbtai Tsvi, the 17th-centu…

This week on "The Shmooze" we visit with Rebecca (Rivke) Margolis, author of "The Yiddish Supernatural on Screen: Dybbuks, Demons and Haunted Jewish Pasts." In conversation we talk about how the book traces the transformation of the figure of the dybbuk—a soul of the dead possessing the living—from folklore to 1930s Polish Yiddish cinema to global …

Avia Moore and Sebastian Schulman join "The Shmooze" for a lively conversation about all things Klezakanda. As Avia shares, KlezKanada “fosters a community where the vibrant living tradition of Yiddish culture and Jewish music continues to thrive.” This year’s lineup includes workshops on Yiddish song, dance, and language learning as well as a tran…

Filmaker Elan Golod visits with "The Shmooze" to talk about his documentary "Nathan-ism." The film tells the story of Nathan Hilu, the son of Syrian Jewish immigrants to New York who received a life-changing assignment from the U.S. Army: to guard the top Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials. This experience fueled a lifetime of artistic insp…

Kimberly Lazzeri joins "The Shmooze" to talk about the recently released "Yiddish Folksong Project Anthology." Kimberly shares the story behind this collection of Robert De Cormier’s folksong arrangements, which had been in a storage closet for over forty years. This is the first-ever publication of De Cormier’s arrangements of Yiddish folksongs an…

Piotr Nazaruk and Karla McCabe joined "The Shmooze" to tell the story of the thirty-six postcards that Karla recently hand-delivered to Pitor Nazaruk at a ceremony in Lublin, Poland. Karla explains how this collection of postcards were looted from the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva in the war and now, eighty years later, have found their way back home.Epi…

Writer Sivan Slapak visits with "The Shmooze" to talk about her debut collection, "Here Is Still Here." The stories provide a layered exploration of human connection and the complexities of identity. In conversation, Sivan shares how these stories—which take readers from Montreal to Jerusalem and back again as the main character navigates checkpoin…

"The Shmooze" visits with Sebastian Schulman for a chat about Yiddish culture in America as we celebrate American Jewish Heritage Month. In conversation he shares some of what he’s found on the Yiddish Book Center’s website related to the Jewish American experience—Yiddish writers in America, Jewish food, Yiddish film, immigration, activism, and mo…

Alex Weiser visits with "The Shmooze" to talk about his latest work, "in a dark blue night," consisting of two connected song cycles. The first, “in a dark blue night,” sets to music modernist Yiddish poetry about New York City at night, all written by Jewish immigrant poets at the turn of the 20th century. The second, “Coney Island Days,” transfor…

Sonia Bloom and Judith Liskin-Gasparro speak to "The Shmooze" about Yiddish-language learning, their work in the field, and their participation at the Yiddish Book Center’s upcoming Bossie Dubowick YiddishSchool. Episode 367March 11, 2024Amherst, MAAv Yiddish Book Center

Ross Perlin, the co-director of the Endangered Language Alliance, visits with "The Shmooze" to talk about his new book, "Language City: The Fight to Preserve Endangered Mother Tongues in New York." The book provides a portrait of contemporary New York City through six speakers of little-known and overlooked languages, diving into the incredible his…

Author Ruth Behar speaks with "The Shmooze" about "Across So Many Seas." Her latest book was inspired by Behar’s paternal grandmother’s side of the family of Sephardic Jews living in Spain up until the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. Behar used her background as an anthropology professor to make a thoroughly researched and powerful novel about religio…

Marvin Zuckerman and Ruby Elliot Zuckerman join "The Shmooze" to talk about their family’s story, which is featured in the Yiddish Book Center’s new core exhibition, "Yiddish: A Global Culture." As Marvin shares, “In our one-bedroom apartment in the Bronx we had world literature—Georg Brandes, Maupassant, Marx, Darwin, Jack London, Tolstoy—all in Y…

David Mazower, chief curator of the Yiddish Book Center’s core exhibition, "Yiddish: A Global Culture," and Caraid O’Brien, co-curator of the exhibition’s theater section, chat with "The Shmooze" about all things Yiddish theater. You’ll hear how they gathered rare artifacts and stories about the actors, the audiences, and the contemporary Yiddish t…

Mikhl Yashinsky is on "The Shmooze" to talk about his new drama "The Gospel According to Chaim," the strange tale of a Jewish writer’s quixotic attempt to publish a controversial book. The New Yiddish Rep, who is producing the play, says this is the first entirely original, full-length American Yiddish drama to be produced for a general audience in…

Yermiyahu Ahron Taub joins "The Shmooze" to talk about his latest translation, a collection of short stories by Yiddish writer Frume Halpern. These psychologically insightful stories present the lives of protagonists who are working-class poor, social outcasts, and experiencing illness, disability, and racism. Halpern worked as a massage therapist …

Ronald Robboy and Alex Weiser visit with "The Shmooze" to talk about their collaboration on the performance of the music of "Shir Hashirim (The Song of Songs)," a 1911 operetta by Joseph Rumshinsky and Anshel Shor. "Shir Hashirim" is a musical comedy that features several interlocking love triangles, including an aging composer along with his child…

"The Shmooze" visits with Anna Elena Torres, Kenyon Zimmer, and Ayelet Brinn, editors and contributors to an expansive new volume of essays exploring suppressed histories of Jewish anarchism. "With Freedom in Our Ears: Histories of Jewish Anarchism" is a rich collection of essays across radical politics, immigrant history, the Yiddish press, and is…

On "The Shmooze," Kristen Morgenstern, a senior studying history and theater at Middlebury College, tells the story behind her zine "Irena Klepfisz: The Life of the Fighter." The zine was selected for inclusion in the Yiddish Book Center’s core exhibition, "Yiddish: A Global Culture."Episode 358November 21, 2023Amherst, MA…

Avram Mlotek visits with "The Shmooze" to talk about the upcoming performance of Amid Falling Walls, for which Avram created the libretto. "Amid Falling Walls" (Tsvishn falnkike vent) is a groundbreaking musical that pays homage to the perseverance of the human spirit during one of the most devastating moments of history. The performance, presented…