Tune in! The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast

This week on The Shmooze, we visit with Kirsten Fermaglich, author of "A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America," a groundbreaking history of the practice of Jewish name changing in the 20th century. Episode 0239 December 6, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

The Shmooze caught up with literary translator Daniel Kennedy at his home in France to chat about the recently published "Warsaw Stories," a collection of short stories by the Yiddish writer Hersh Dovid Nomberg, newly translated by Kennedy. Nomberg's stories explore modern Jewish life in the growing cosmopolitan city of Warsaw: young intellectuals in pursuit of truth, beauty, and love; working class fathers tempted by schemes for easy money; teenagers divided between their traditional religious upbringings and the world of secular culture and political revolution. Episode 0238 November 26, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

This week, Brett Sokol, journalist, arts editor, and co-founder and editor of the recently published "Shtetl in the Sun: Andy Sweet's South Beach 1977–1980," visits with The Shmooze. In our conversation, he discusses what drew photographer Andy Sweet to document South Beach's vibrant Jewish community in the late 1970s, capturing the community's daily rhythms in all their beach-strolling, cafeteria-noshing, and klezmer-dancing glory. "A Shtetl in the Sun," an exhibit of Andy Sweet's photographs documenting South Beach's once-thriving and now-vanished Jewish world, is currently on view at the Yiddish Book Center. Episode 0237 November 21, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Daniel Ronfeld dropped by The Shmooze recording studio to chat about the Great Jewish Books Book Club. Over the course of a lively discussion, we learn what drew him to join the Book Club, some of his favorite selections, and how he came to create a monthly gathering of fellow Book Club members in his home state of Idaho. Episode 0236 November 7, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Recorded live at the Yiddish Book Center's Community Open House in October 2019, Lisa Newman, director of communications, and Mindl Cohen, director of translation and collections initiatives, discuss all things Yiddish translation. Episode 0235 October 31, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

This week we visit with Christa Whitney, director of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, to talk about the oral history interview she recorded with Harold Bloom shortly before his death. In his oral history interview the late, legendary, literary scholar--and native Yiddish speaker--Harold Bloom explores his connection with Yiddish language and literature. He also recalls his first experience seeing Shakespeare as a child and watching the towering Maurice Schwartz as Shylock in a Yiddish production of "The Merchant of Venice" on 2nd Avenue in 1938. Christa shares some of the highlights and insights from her interview with Harold Bloom. Episode 0234 October 24, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

This week we visit with Ann Toback, executive director of The Workmen's Circle in New York City, to hear about their program that brings owners and their trusty dog companions together in Central Park, where they learn some basic commands in Yiddish. By all accounts, both dogs and owners have a great time, and, yes, we learn that you can teach an old dog new tricks--in this case, Yiddish. Episode 0233 October 17, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Sarah Abrevaya Stein, professor of history and Jewish studies at UCLA, talks with The Shmooze about her new book "Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century" and the process of writing history through personal stories. Along the way, she discusses the challenges of reading historical documents against the grain, how her time in the Yiddish Book Center's summer internship (now Steiner Summer Yiddish Program) influenced her professional path, and the diversity of the modern Jewish cultural experience. Episode 0232 October 10, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Bob Schor chats with The Shmooze about his remarkable aunt Cipe Pineles. Born in Vienna in 1908 to an Orthodox Jewish family, Cipe immigrated to New York in 1923, where she studied art at Pratt Institute and went on to have an amazing career as the first female art director at Condé Nast and the first woman asked to join the legendary Art Directors Club. Her work and illustration continue to influence modern design. Episode 0231 September 19, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

This week, The Shmooze visits with editor and author Stephen Shepard to talk about his literary memoir "A Literary Journey to Jewish Identity: Re-Reading Bellow, Roth, Malamud, Ozick, and Other Great Jewish Writers." Over the course of our conversation, we consider his encounters with a few writers who influenced his sense of Jewish identity, the idea of the Jewish-American writer, and what it's like to re-read some of these authors. Episode 0230 September 12, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Allen Lewis Rickman, producer, director, and performer of Yiddish theater, joins The Shmooze to talk about his work translating Yiddish for the stage and screen--from his work on the Cohen Brothers' "A Serious Man" to his recent translations and performances of two little-known Yiddish plays, "Breach of Promise" and "One of Those," to his production "Tevye Served Raw." Episode 0229 August 25, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Alexander Dickow visited with The Shmooze to talk about "Asymptote's" recently published Yiddish poetry in translation feature that he co-edited with Asymptote's Editor-In-Chief Lee Yew Leong. Alexander is a bilingual poet and translator who works in French and English and is a scholar of modern and contemporary French and Francophone literature and film. His poetic works include "Appetites," "Trial Balloons," "Rhapsodie curieuse," and "Caramboles." Episode 0228 August 18, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

This week on The Shmooze we visit with Anita Norich to talk about the recently published "A Jewish Refugee in New York" by Kadia Molodovsky, translated by Anita Norich. Anita is Professor Emerita of English and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, where, in addition to translating Yiddish literature, she teaches, lectures, and publishes on a range of topics concerning modern Jewish cultures, Yiddish language and literature, Jewish American literature, and Holocaust literature. Episode 0227 August 9, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Caraid O'Brien joined us in the studio this week. Caraid is a writer, Yiddish translator, and performer who first began learning Yiddish as a Yiddish Book Center intern in 1994. Early in her career she received three new play commissions from the Foundation for Jewish Culture for her translations of classic Yiddish plays. Most recently, she translated the memoirs of Klara Klebanova, a Russian-Jewish revolutionary maximalist. Over the course of our conversation, we learn that Caraid studied Yiddish theater and performance with Luba Kadison Buloff, the last surviving member of the Vilna Troupe, and we hear about her current work translating "Sholem Asch: Plays of My People," a collection of four dramas that explore Jewish identity from the acclaimed playwright of "God of Vengeance." Episode 0226 July 31, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Nadia Valman, Reader in English Literature at Queen Mary, University of London, visits with us to talk about her walking tour of Zangwill's Spitalfields, the Jewish immigrant neighborhood of Victorian Spitalfield. Nadia is the author and co-editor of numerous books including "The Jewess in Nineteenth-Century British Literary Culture and the Routledge Companion to Contemporary Jewish Cultures" and is currently researching the literature of east London. Episode 0225 July 18, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Seth Rogovoy, Yidstock's artistic director and the author of "The Essential Klezmer," joins us to talk about Yidstock 2019, the Yiddish Book Center's annual summer music festival. In conversation, Seth talks about the 2019 line-up, the roots of Jewish music, and how he found his way to klezmer. Episode 0224 June 27, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Mindl Cohen joins us on The Shmooze to talk about the "2019 Pakn Treger Digital Translation Issue," a collection of letters and stories about letters. The pieces included in this year's anthology provide a window into the personal lives of Yiddish writers; illustrate aspects of day-to-day communications; and remind readers of the great distances across which relationships can stretch. Episode 0223 June 20, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Chava Rosenfarb's daughter and translator, Goldie Morgentaler, visits with us this week to talk about the recently released "Confessions of a Yiddish Writer and Other Essays." The book is a collection of personal and literary essays by Chava Rosenfarb, translated by Goldie Morgentaler, ranging from autobiographical accounts of her childhood and experiences before and during the Holocaust to literary criticism that discusses the work of other Jewish writers. Goldie Morgentaler is a Canadian Yiddish-to-English literary translator and a professor of English literature. Episode 0222 June 13, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Hankus Netsky joins us to share the finds that he and Yiddish Book Center staff unearthed as they cleared out a closet at the Yiddish Book Center. Known to staff as "Hankus's Closet," the closest has served as an archive for Yiddish sheet music, Yiddish records, and other music-related treasures. Episode 0221 May 30, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

Detroit-born, Berlin-based singer/songwriter, polyglot poet, translator and activist Daniel Kahn joins us on The Shmooze for an expansive conversation about his work as a songwriter, Yiddish culture, klezmer, and Yidstock. We also have a chance to talk about cultural transmission, artistic collaborations, and some of what informs his work. Episode 0220 May 22, 2019 Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts