Claim OwnershipThe Shmooze, The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast
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The Yiddish Book Center's podcast includes conversations with Jewish culture makers, plus news and stories related to Yiddish literature, language, and culture.
402 Episodes
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Film director, film producer, and screenwriter Mark Jay spoke with "The Shmooze" about his 1993 documentary film "East Endings". "East Endings" documents a night at Bloom’s in May 1993—then one of the last remaining kosher restaurants in Whitechapel. Harry Blacker, renowned cartoonist and satirist of British Jewry, arrives to celebrate his 83rd birthday. Greeted by a group of old friends including Anna Tzelniker, Barnet Litvinoff, Bill Fishman, Brian Sewell, Simon Blumenfeld, and Rabbi Lionel Blue, they spend the evening together reminiscing about the Jewish East End of the 1930s: its humor, history, and politics of solidarity.
Episode 402
December 16, 2025
Amherst, MA
Sebastian Schulman joined The Shmooze to talk about the Yiddish Book Center’s upcoming online course Speak the World! A Tour of Global Jewish Languages. Sebastian shared that the four-part online course will explore Jewish languages with scholars, activists, and artists who are working in the field today. Instructors will speak about the diversity, history, and the contemporary efforts to preserve, document, and continue speaking these languages. This course is presented in partnership with The Jewish Language Project.
Episode 401
December 15, 2025
Amherst, MA
Dr. Rachel Lichtenstein, one of the foremost chroniclers of Jewish East London, visited with The Shmooze to talk about A. N. Stencl, a native Yiddish speaker from Poland, who settled in London’s East End in 1936 and became an activist and campaigner for the continuation of Yiddish. His extraordinary life spanned the height and demise of contemporary Yiddish culture. Stencl’s literary journal, Loshn un lebn (Language and Life), featured his own memoirs, poems, and essays alongside an array of work by other Yiddish writers from around the globe that explored political and literary topics of the time. Rachel’s work on Stencl includes a forthcoming book, The Prince of Whitechapel, a website hosting the complete collection Loshn un lebn, and a digital archive on Stencl in collaboration with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and the Centre for Jewish History in New York, funded by Arcadia.
Episode 400
December 9, 2025
Amherst, MA
Ellen Cassedy and Andrew Cassel joined The Shmooze to talk about their work translating So We Died: A Memoir of Life and Death in the Ghetto of Šiauliai, Lithuania, by Levi Shalit. Few accounts of the Šiauliai, or Shavl, Ghetto survived the war. Shalit’s work offers English-language readers a rare insight into a vital chapter of history. In conversation we learn about Levi Shalit the writer and how his literary and journalist style illuminates the Shavl Ghetto’s daily struggles, false hopes, and atrocities.
Episode 399
October 30, 2025
Amherst, MA
Shakespeare & Company’s Artistic Director Allyn Burrows and the co-chair of the upcoming Celebrating Jewish Plays program Greg Lipper sat down with "The Shmooze" to talk about the weekend-long event. Celebrating Jewish Plays runs October 10–12, 2025, and will feature four staged readings—"The Price," by Arthur Miller; "The Sisters Rosensweig," by Wendy Wasserstein; "Here There Are Blueberries," by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich; and "Roz and Ray," by Karen Hartman, featuring Tony-nominated actor John Douglas Thompson ("The Gilded Age"). Established in the 1970s, Shakespeare & Company, in Lenox, Massachusetts, develops and performs Shakespeare’s works as well as other classic, contemporary, and socially and politically significant works. The company embraces the core values of Shakespearean ethos: collaboration, commitment to language, visceral experience, and classical ideals expressed with physical prowess and an embodied contemporary voice.
Episode 397
September 21, 2025
Amherst, MA "
"In geveb"’s board president Mindl Cohen and the journal’s editor-in-chief Jessica Kirzane visit with "The Shmooze" to talk all things "In geveb." "In geveb" is a subscription-free digital forum that publishes peer-reviewed academic articles and translated and annotated Yiddish texts; it also serves as an exchange platform for pedagogical materials and as a blog of Yiddish cultural life. In conversation we talk about the history of "In geveb" and discuss the challenges, accomplishments, and future plans the journal faces as it marks its 10th year.
Episode 397
September 7, 2025
Amherst, MA
Scholar and translator Anita Norich talks to "The Shmooze" about her work translating the work of Yiddish women writers. Anita is the translator of Celia Dropkin’s "Desires," Kadya Molodovsky’s "A Jewish Refugee in America," and Chana Blankshteyn’s "Fear and Other Stories." She co-translated with Ellen Cassedy the forthcoming release of Rashel Veprinski’s "Hand in Hand." Anita reflects on the field of translation, the challenges Yiddish women writers faced, and the current work being done to bring these works to translation.
Episode 396
August 31, 2025
Amherst, MA
Sarah Biskowitz and Ruby Zuckerman joined "The Shmooze" to talk about the Great Jewish Books Summer Program. Sarah and Ruby, alums of the program, are back at the Yiddish Book Center as RAs for this year’s program. In conversation we talk about their experiences as participants and as RAs and learn about how Great Jewish Books lead them in new directions, personal and professional. And we hear what’s on the reading list for this summer’s students.
Episode 395
August 7, 2025
Amherst, MA
Andrew Jacobs, president of the board of the Borscht Belt Museum, joins us on "The Shmooze" to talk about the Borscht Belt Museum and the annual Borscht Belt Fest. The museum is dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Catskills resort era and celebrating its history as a refuge from bigotry, the cradle of stand-up comedy, and a cultural catalyst that changed America. The annual festival includes everything from stand-up comedians and art workshops to live music and Jewish food. This year’s festival will take place July 26 & 27, 2025.
Episode 394
July 20, 2025
Amherst, MA
Editors Altie Karper and Todd Portnowitz sat down with "The Shmooze" to talk about Chaim Grade’s novel "Sons & Daughters" (Knopf)—newly translated into English by Rose Waldman. Originally serialized in the 1960s and 1970s in New York–based Yiddish newspapers, Grade’s "Sons and Daughters" tells the story of a way of life that is no longer. In conversation Altie and Todd tell the incredible backstory of how the work came to publication and why the newly translated novel has been lauded as the “last great Yiddish novel.”
Episode 393
June 30, 2025
Amherst, MA
Co-authors Sheila Baslaw and Karen Levine joined "The Shmooze" to talk about "The Light Keeper," their illustrated children’s book that tells the story of ten-year-old Shmuel Saslovsky’s life in an early-twentieth-century shtetl. At 92, this is Sheila’s first published children’s book. In collaboration with Karen Levine, she worked to tell the story of how Sheila’s father Shmuel helped when electricity first came to his shtetl in Russia.
Epsiode 392
May 18, 2025
Amherst, MA
When Albert Chasan (1930–2024) retired from the marketing communications firm he founded, “It hit me: I had to do something with the stories my parents told.” He took up painting and commemorated the formative years of his parents’ lives through a series of expressionistic, boldly hued acrylics. A selection of color prints of many of these historically poignant works are on exhibit at the Yiddish Book Center. On the occasion of the exhibit opening, before a live audience at the Yiddish Book Center, Albert’s daughter Betty and his son Robert sat down with "The Shmooze" to talk about their father’s work as a painter and stories behind his narrative painting.
Episode 391
May 5, 2025
Amherst, MA
This week on "The Shmooze," writer, translator, and literary scholar David Stromberg. In a wide-ranging conversation, David talks about his recently released translation of "Isaac Bashevis Singer: Writings on Yiddish and Yiddishkayt: A Spiritual Reappraisal, 1946–1955" (White Goat Press) and sheds light on Bashevis’s lesser-known nonfiction, which he has translated and edited for this collection of Singer’s writings.
Episode 390
April 23, 2025
Amherst, MA
Hankus Netsky joined "The Shmooze" to talk about his upcoming Morris Hollender 100th birthday concert. In conversation we spoke about how interest in Eastern European Jewish musical traditions has experienced an unprecedented resurgence in recent years and how the melodies that Morris Hollender brought over from his birthplace in a small farming village in the Carpathian Mountains have become a major pillar of that resurgence. An Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, Hollender came to the Boston area from Czechoslovakia in 1967.
The program will include little-known melodies that Hollender learned as a child in the Munkacs region of Eastern Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine) and shared generously with Temple Beth Israel members and others during his years in the United States.
The concert will take at Temple Beth Israel located at 25 Harvard St, Waltham, MA 02453. Tickets and more information are available at https://tbiwaltham.org/concert/.
Episode 389
April 14, 2025
Amherst, MA
Deb Krivoy, director of the annual Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival, joined "The Shmooze" to talk about this year’s lineup. Now in its nineteenth year, the Pioneer Valley Jewish Film Festival continues its tradition of showcasing award-winning films from around the globe. This year’s festival kicks off at the Yiddish Book Center on April 3 with the screening of "Midas Man."
Episode 388
March 26, 2025
Amherst, MA
Translator Mel Konner and Professor Justin Cammy sat down with "The Shmooze" to talk about the release of "Elephants by Night," a collection of newly translated poems by Abraham Sutzkever. The poems, a result of Sutzkever’s travels to South Africa, are meditations on place, memory, and renewal.
Episode 387
January 16, 2025
Amherst, MA
Allen Lewis Rickman and fellow actor Yelena Shmulenson, better known as the shtetl couple from the Coen brothers’ Oscar-nominated "A Serious Man," sat down with "The Shmooze" to chat about their work in Yiddish theater and their staging of their fast-paced comedy "THE ESSENCE: A YIDDISH THEATRE DIM SUM," which is onstage at the New York’s Theater 154 January 7 to 12, 2025.
Episode 386
January 7, 2025
Amherst, MA
Direct from engagements in Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, Shane Baker and Miryem-Khaye Seigel sat down with "The Shmooze" to talk about their latest collaboration, "BASHEVIS’S DEMONS." The performance includes three short stories by legendary Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer. It makes its official Off-Broadway bow at Theatre 154, 154 Christopher Street (between Greenwich and Washington Streets), with performances beginning December 18, 2024, through January 5, 2025.
"BASHEVIS’S DEMONS" will be presented by the Congress for Jewish Culture in association with Out of the Box Theatrics and ChaShaMa. Tickets are available at https://congressforjewishculture.org/bashevisdemons.
Episode 385
December 11, 2024
Amherst, MA
Frank London visited with "The Shmooze" to chat about his latest LP, "In the City of God," and other releases. In a far-flung conversation, Frank spoke about how he became a musician, his influences past and present, and the release of the new LP.
Episode 384
December 5, 2024
Amherst, MA
Ilan Stavans sits down with "The Shmooze" to talk about his recently released cookbook, "Sabor Judío." Co-authored with Margaret Boyle, the collection of over 100 recipes celebrates the fusion of two culinary traditions, Jewish and Mexican, and tells the story of how cooking and eating connects Jewish Mexicans across places and generations.
Episode 383
November 30, 2024
Amherst, MA
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Oh I love typewriters, I'd love a Yiddish typewriter! I'm still looking for Esperanto machines too. My Smith Corona portable is still a favorite.