Today’s guests: Benny Mer , author of recent book, written in Hebrew, Smocza: A Biography of a Jewish Street in Warsaw (סמוצ׳ה: ביאגרפיה של רחוב יהודי בוורשה, בני מר https://www.magnespress.co.il/en/book/Smocza-4170 ) Kolya Borodulin , Director of Yiddish Programming at Workers Circle ( https://circle.org/what-we-do/yiddish-language/ ), 2020 Spring Yiddish Classes starting soon – info: https://theworkerscircle.salsalabs.org/nonmemberyiddishregistrationspring2020/index.html Both interviews are by...
Feb 14, 2020•1 hr
This week we observe Holocaust Rememberance Day as well as the 75-year anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, by hearing from three survivors of Auschwitz. Historian and Yiddish Voice cohost Sholem Beinfeld provides introductory remarks with a brief historical overview. Margaret (Martele) Friedman , originally from Groys-Kinyat (גרויס-קיניאַט), now Великі Ком’яти (Velyki Kom’yaty), Ukraine, who was deported to Auschwitz with her family from the Munkacs (Hungary) ...
Jan 23, 2020•1 hr
In honor of Avrom Sutzkever’s 10th Yahrtzeit: Richard Fein and Sholem Beinfeld read from and discuss the book The Full Pomegranate: Poems of Avrom Sutzkever (SUNY Press, 2019), which presents Sutzkever’s poems with Fein’s English translations. Remarks on Sutzkever’s 10th Yortsayt by Beinfeld Interview with Fein about his book. (Previously aired on the Yiddish Voice in September 2019) Readings of Sutzkever’s poems in English translation and Yiddish original by Fein and Beinfeld (recorded at their...
Jan 16, 2020•1 hr
Happy Hanukkah! אַ פֿריילעכן ליכטיקן חנוכּה Interview with Rav Moshe Kesselman , rabbi of Congregation Shaarei Tefila in Los Angeles. From our archive: חנוכּה greetings from current Yiddish Voice participants and supporters, tsu lange yor , Dovid Braun, Sholem Beinfeld, and Motl Murstein; and, in their memory from our dearly missed late participants: cohost and cofounder Hasia Segal ז״ל; cohost Iosif Lakhman ז״ל; and frequent contributor Rav Myer Loketch ז״ל. Excerpt from beginning of the radio ...
Dec 26, 2019•1 hr
Interview with Motl Didner , Artistic Director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene , Director of The Sorceress (די כּישוף־מאַכערין) , and Associate Director and Dialect Coach for the smash-hit production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish (פֿידלער אויפֿן דאַך) . As Yiddish coach for Fiddler , Didner was the main person responsible for training the mostly non-Yiddish-speaking cast to mount the USA’s first-ever Yiddish-language production of Fiddler on the Roof , resulting in a smash hit (wi...
Dec 19, 2019•1 hr
Yiddish New York preliminary events start this week, and our first two guests are here to talk about it! Josh Waletzky is on the organizing committee of Yiddish New York and is leading many sessions. He is a leading contemporary Yiddish songwriter and an award-winning documentary filmmaker. He co-produced the Grammy-nominated album of Jewish songs of resistance, Partisans of Vilna (1989), and performed his own Yiddish song compositions on his albums Crossing the Shadows (2001), and PASAZHIRN / P...
Dec 12, 2019•1 hr
Nechama Netali-Gonen talks about her childhood, first as a happy child in the city of Khelm (Chełm in Polish), and then about her family’s perilous survival and escape from the Holocaust in Poland, and their eventual settlement in wartime Soviet Union. (Recorded in West Palm Beach, FL, at the 2018 conference of the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust & Descendants.) Israeli Yiddish radio hosts Michael Felsenbaum and Avremi Zak discuss current events in Israel and arou...
Dec 05, 2019•1 hr
Dovid Katz talks about the Ukraine scandal from a Jewish and human rights perspective. Katz edits the web journal Defending History ( www.DefendingHistory.com ), which counters the Eastern European movement to obfuscate, without denying, the Holocaust. An internationally renowned expert on Yiddish, he is now working on a new online Yiddish dictionary ( www.YiddishCulturalDictionary.org ). His personal website: www.DovidKatz.net Esther Kampler is a Holocaust survivor originally from Czernowitz, R...
Nov 14, 2019•1 hr
NOTE: essentially a repeat of Oct. 4, 2017, and Oct 11, 2017, with host intro by host Mark David and Cafe Europa event notice by Tania Leffman. For additional Cafe Europa info: Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Greater Boston Waltham, Massachusetts Telephone: (781) 647-5327 Email: RZelfand@jfcsboston.org Website: https://www.jfcsboston.org/Our-Services/Older-Adults Gut Yontef, Gut Yor! גוט יום-טובֿ, גוט יאָר We thank those who have pledged or made financial contributions to the Yiddish Voi...
Oct 10, 2019•1 hr 1 min
A High Holidays mix of recent and past audio highlights. Enjoy! Holocaust survivor Motl Murstein gives this year’s New Year’s greetings and sings a Yiddish song, Afn Pripetshik . Recorded at Murstein’s Brookline home on Sept 18, 2019, and previously aired the same day. Archive: Eli Dovek , proprietor of Israel Book Shop: new year wishes (from 2009) Archive: the late Max Gelerman ז"ל , proprietor of The Butcherie: new year wishes (from 2005) Holocaust survivor Tania Lefman announces upcoming Grea...
Oct 04, 2019•1 hr
Leye Shporer-Leavitt joins regular host Mark David live in studio at WUNR in Boston. Holocaust survivor Motl Murstein gives New Year’s greetings and sings a Yiddish song, Afn Pripetshik . Recorded at Murstein’s Brookline home earlier the same day. Holocaust survivor Tania Lefman talks with Leye about Boston survivor community, past and present, and about upcoming events. Anna was speaking by phone live from Wellesley, MA. Holocaust survivors Anna Arbeiter and her husband Izzy Arbeiter talked abo...
Sep 25, 2019•1 hr
Anna Rozenfeld talks about Polish Yiddish radio and discusses Celia Dropkin and reads some of her Yiddish poetry. Rozenfeld is an artist, an independent researcher, and a teacher and translator of Yiddish, as well as a former Yiddish radio journalist and presenter. Until 2012 she hosted the Yiddish radio program Naye Khvalyes , broadcast by Polish Radio External Service. In the mid-2010’s, she presented her own research on Yiddish-language programming on Polish radio, 1945-1958. Her translations...
Sep 12, 2019•1 hr 3 min
Author and translator Richard J. Fein (Yiddish name: Ruvn-Yankev) , along with his friend, collaborator, and regular Yiddish Voice cohost Sholem Beinfeld , discuss Fein’s recently published book The Full Pomegranate: Poems of Avrom Sutzkever (SUNY Press, 2019), which features Sutzkever’s poems in their original Yiddish along with Fein’s English translations. Fein and Beinfeld also present three short poems from the book in both languages. Avrom Sutzkever (1913–2010) is widely regarded as one of ...
Sep 11, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Interview with Sara Feldman , who is the Preceptor in Yiddish at Harvard University. She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in Near Eastern Studies in 2014 and now teaches Yiddish language at Harvard at the beginning, intermediate and advanced levels. The interviewer, Sholem Beinfeld , is Professor Emeritus of History at Washington University in St. Louis, and is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary (Indiana University Press). From our archives: 2008 p...
Aug 27, 2019•1 hr 1 min
Today’s show continues our series of interviews with activists on the Yiddish scene around the Paris Yiddish Center-Medem Library , which began Wednesday June 12 2019. We previously presented interviews with Ri J. (Reyze) Turner and Yitskhok Niborski. Gilles Rozier was born in France in 1963. He began to learn Yiddish in 1987. From 1994 until 2014 he served as Director of the Paris Yiddish-Center/Medem Library. He wrote his Doctoral Dissertation about the Yiddish writer Moyshe Broderzon. He is a...
Aug 22, 2019•1 hr
Live show with Binyumen Schaechter, award-winning composer, arranger, conductor, musical director, and performer, live in studio; Motl Murstein (phone interview), holocaust survivor; Tania Lefman (live phone interview), holocaust survivor, and Sosye Fox (phone interview), host and producer of Vaybertaytsh: A Feminist Podcast, in Yiddish . Various topics discussed, including the JPPC , 4th-of-July, and the forthcoming season of Vaybertaytsh ....
Aug 18, 2019•58 min
khsidish Yiddish …. and good-byes Bonus for June 26 2019 broadcast - interview with Yitschok Niborski
Jul 22, 2019•5 min
Yiddish dictionaries Bonus for June 26 2019 broadcast - interview with Yitschok Niborski
Jul 22, 2019•13 min
Bonus 1 - using computer, especially Google Books, for research Bonus for June 26 2019 broadcast - interview with Yitschok Niborski
Jul 22, 2019•15 min
Yitskhok Niborski was born in Buenos Aires in 1947 and raised in a Yiddishist, secular family. He attended the Yiddish schools that then thrived in Buenos Aires and the Yiddish teachers’ training academy ( Lerer-Seminar ), specializing in Yiddish literature. He moved to Paris in 1979 to take up a position as Director of the Medem Library while also teaching at the prestigious Ecole Nationale des Etudes Orientales. He remained at the head of the Medem Library for over thirty years, helping to tur...
Jun 27, 2019•1 hr
Sebastian (Zekharye) Shulman recently joined KlezKanada, the annual Yiddish summer festival, as Executive Director and is a translator of Yiddish and Esperanto. See also KlezKanada home page: https://klezkanada.org Forverts article (in Yiddish): With a New Director KlezKanada Looks to the Future : http://yiddish.forward.com/articles/208420/with-a-new-director-klezkanada-looks-to-the-future/ Also: an update on YIVO’s Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture by Academic Director...
Jun 21, 2019•1 hr
This show starts a series of interviews with activists on the Yiddish scene around the Paris Yiddish Center-Medem Library starting Wednesday June 12 2019 at 7:30 PM with an interview with Ri J. (Reyze) Turner. Ri J. (Reyze) Turner Ri J. Turner is a translator and Yiddish language teacher at the Paris Yiddish Center-Medem Library, as well as an MA candidate in Yiddish Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is a three-time alumna of the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program at YIVO in New Yor...
Jun 15, 2019•59 min
Jana Mazurkiewicz-Meisarosh is a Ph.D. candidate in the Slavic Department of University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her dissertation research is on Yiddish Theater in Communist Warsaw. Originally from Poland, Jana holds a Master of Arts degree in Polish Philology and Jewish Studies from the University of Wrocław. Jana combines her Yiddish academic research with theater and community activism. Professionally experienced in acting, directing, and playwriting, she wrote the play “Hiltserne Milkhomes” (...
Jun 06, 2019•1 hr
Enjoy a wonderful new presentation by Mikhoel Felsenbaum just aired on Israel’s Yiddish broadcast on broadcaster Kan . Kan Yiddish : https://www.kan.org.il/radio/program.aspx?progId=1136 - Michael Felsenbaum Soundcloud : https://soundcloud.com/michael-felsenbaum Presentation for Shavuos by Miriam Libenson z"l , originally aired on the Yiddish Voice in the 1990’s A short interview with Rav Izchak Kin : his personal memories of Jerusalem Music happenings were discussed, FYI: in Bostoner gegnt: mor...
Jun 01, 2019•1 hr
אַ פֿריילעכן יום העצמאות (Happy Yom Ha’atzmaut (Israel Independence Day))! We re-air some more or less recently aired interviews with Israelis in honor of Yom Ha’atzmaut: Michael Felsenbaum and Avremi Zak discuss latest Israeli news, and Bella Bryks-Klein and Avremi Zak discuss upcoming Yiddish events in Israel. Previously broadcast, May 5 2019, by Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation’s Kann Yiddish , archived here: https://soundcloud.com/michael-felsenbaum/03052019a and here: https://www.kan...
May 09, 2019•59 min
Interviews for Yom HaShoah Rokhl Zicherman lives in Los Angeles and is an Auschwitz survivor from Carpathian Czechoslovakia. She loves to sing with her two sisters who don’t live very close, but they often talk by phone. Here she sings In Auschwitzer Lager , describing a fate common to many the many teenagers from this region who were deported to Auschwitz in 1944: being separated from their mothers who were killed at Auschwitz, often due to holding on to younger children of theirs. She also sin...
May 02, 2019•1 hr
פּסח באַגריסונגען Pesach music and greetings from sponsors and friends, some new, some old *, some ז״ל מיר ווינטשן אײַך אַ זיזן כּשרן פּסח טאַניע לעפֿמאַן Tania Lefman, from the The American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants of Greater Boston, Inc. לאה שפּאָרער-לעוויט Leye (Lillian) Shporer Leavitt שלום ביינפֿעלד Sholem Beinfeld ליבע גריץ פֿון באָסטאָנער אַרבעטער-רינג Linda Gritz for Boston Workmens’ Circle מאָטל מורשטיין Mark Murstein Mark (Motl) Murstein - excerpt of hi...
Apr 25, 2019•1 hr
פּסח באַגריסונגען Pesach music and greetings from sponsors and friends, some new, some old *, some ז״ל מיר ווינטשן אײַך אַ זיזן, כּשרן פּסח לאה שפּאָרער-לעוויט Leye (Lillian) Shporer Leavitt שלום ביינפֿעלד Sholem Beinfeld ליבע גריץ פֿון באָסטאָנער אַרבעטער-רינג Linda Gritz for Boston Workmens’ Circle מאָטל מורשטיין Mark Murstein Mark (Motl) Murstein - excerpt of him singing Ekhod Mi Yodea Hasia Segal * חסיה סיגעל ז״ל Iosif Lakhman * יוסף לאַכמאַן ז״ל Celebs יעקבֿ באָדאָ * Yankele Bodo https://en...
Apr 25, 2019•1 hr
Interview with Binyumen Schaechter and Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath , discussing the Jewish People’s Philharmonic Chorus (JPPC - thejppc.org ), of which Binyumen is the conductor and his sister Gitl is one of the singers. They discuss the history of the JPPC and their many years of involvement with it, and also talk about the upcoming Spring 2019 Gala Concert, Yiddish Flavors of Love: A Musical Celebration , set to take place Sunday June 16, 2019, at 3:00 PM at Merkin Concert Hall in New York City....
Apr 11, 2019•1 hr
Highlights from past years’ Pesach , including Hasia Segal ’s Pesach presentation from Pesach 1991, originally aired on our predecessor radio show די ייִדישע שעה ( The Yiddish Hour / Di Yidishe Sho , WBRS 100.1 FM Waltham, MA) songs and greetings. Recently aired interviews: Interview with Kolya Borodulin , Director of Yiddish Programming at Workmen’s Circle ( Arbeter Ring ). Check out all their Yiddish programming here: https://circle.org/what-we-do/yiddish-language/ Interview with Dovid Braun ,...
Apr 11, 2019•1 hr
