Tune in! The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast

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

This week "The Shmooze" goes transatlantic for a conversation with London-based Vivi Lachs, a social and cultural historian, Yiddishist, and postdoc research fellow at Queen Mary University of London. The author of several books including "White Chapel Noise," Vivi translated the newly released "London Yiddishtown: East End Jewish Life in Yiddish Sketch and Story, 1930–1950," a collection of previously untranslated short stories and sketches by Katie Brown, A. M. Kaizer, and I. A. Lisky. Episode 309 October 21, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

Cameron Bernstein, a 2021/2022 Yiddish Book Center Fellow, joined The Shmooze to talk about her early interest in Yiddish and how she’s taken Yiddish language, culture, and history to platforms like TikTok and Instagram. Episode 308 October 14, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

Ruth Zuckerbrod and Elliott Isban join The Shmooze to talk about their father Samuel Isban, a Yiddish writer and journalist and author of the newly translated “Illegal” Jews Part the Seas. Veteran newspaperman Samuel Isban accepts an assignment from the New York newspaper Der Morgn Zhurnal to report on Aliya Bet, the clandestine mission to smuggle Jewish refugees past the British blockade into Palestine. What follows is an eyewitness account from aboard a ramshackle vessel manned by a crew of young volunteers and packed with a human cargo of 1,500 Jewish refugees from the concentration camps. Episode 307 October 7, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, MA

The Shmooze caught up with Rachelle Grossman, the Yiddish Book Center’s Bibliography and Collections Manager, to speak about her new role at the Center. Rachelle is a specialist in Yiddish print culture and is completing a doctorate in comparative literature at Harvard University. Prior to joining the Center, she lived in Warsaw, where she researched postwar Yiddish publishing. Rachelle shared some stories about the Center’s rare books and new discoveries, and she spoke about her interest in Yiddish print culture and publishing as it relates to her work. Episode 306 September 15, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Translator and author Curt Leviant visits with The Shmooze to talk about this first English translation of Sholom Aleichem’s rediscovered novel "Moshkeleh the Thief". The novel has a riveting plot, an unusual love story, and a keenly observed portrayal of an underclass Jew, replete with characters never before seen in Yiddish literature. Episode 305 August 19, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

"On The Shmooze this week: Sebastian Schulman, executive director of KlezKanada, previews what’s in store for KlezKanada 2021 (August 23–29). KlezKanada was founded in 1996 to teach, nurture, and present to a broad public the best of Jewish traditional arts and Yiddish culture. In our conversation, we talk about how KlezKanada’s programs foster Jewish cultural and artistic creativity worldwide as both an ethnic heritage and a constantly evolving contemporary culture and identity. Episode 304 August 3, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

"Mindl Cohen speaks with The Shmooze about the 2021 Pakn Treger Digital Translation Issue. As she writes in the introduction to the anthology, “Yiddish literature is full of depictions of natural landscapes—though this is probably not the first thing most people expect of it.” Our conversation touches on the work of some of the many writers included in the issue from Mendele Mocher Sforim, Itzik Manger, and Rachel Korn to Sholem Asch, Rosa Gutman, and Avrom Sutzkever. Episode 303 July 29, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts "

The Shmooze speaks with author and cultural commentator Ilan Stavans about his latest book, "Jewish Literature: A Very Short Introduction". As Ilan explains, “In this volume is modern Jewish literature in the broadest sense. I am interested in the ways it mutates while remaining the same.” Episode 302 July 14, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

"This week on The Shmooze Seth Rogovoy talks about the upcoming (July 11) virtual YIDSTOCK: The Festival of New Yiddish Music. The 75-minute virtual event features Frank London, Lorin Sklamberg, Eleanor Reissa, Daniel Kahn, Cilla Owens, Sarah Gordon & Michael Winograd, Polina and Merlin Shepherd, and as Seth tell us “tons more groovy wonderful musicians.” Episode 301 July 8, 2021 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts "

From his Lower East Side studio, artist Steve Marcus joins The Shmooze to talk about his early work as an Underground cartoonist - and his latest work which is currently on exhibit at the Yiddish Book Center. Through the Hat, weaves together Steve’s childhood memories of bagels and bialys, pickles and green tomatoes from the barrel, and paper-wrapped whitefish chubs with his personal journey and passion for his own roots and culture. Tales from the Golden Medina is a series of work that expands on the Through the Hat exhibit, inspired by underground comics and Jewish wisdom from the shtetl.