A conversation with Leana Jelen about her work as a sign language interpreter, the deaf community, growing up with Yiddish, and on being a "freak.”

A transcript is coming in a week or so! In fact, we're starting to make transcripts again more generally. If you'd like to help, donate to us to cover our costs, or work for us as a transcriber. Contact us if you're interested.
Please consider Vaybertaytsh in your holiday giving this year! All donations are tax deductible, a dank our fiscal conduit, Yugntruf. 

A FRAYLIKHN GEBORTSTOG RUKHL DOBKIN! <3

Episode 34: ליאַנאַ יעלען, שטום־לשון איבערזעצערקע | Leana Jelen

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In this episode, our guest host Esther Singer talks to Rivke Margolis, a professor at Monash University in Melbourne. They talked about queer yiddishkayt, Yiddish pedagogy, and comparing Yiddish to other minority languages. Thanks to Esther for being our first guest host in a very long time!

Episode 61: Rivke Margolis | רבקה מאַרגאָליס

I'm so pumped about this conversation with Etl Niborski, recorded in Tel Aviv this past summer. Etl is a 19-year-old left-wing activist and a native Yiddish speaker who recently completed her national service working in a school in Jaffa for at-risk youth. We talked all about what it’s like to be an Israeli at the end of high school — all of the complicated decisions one has to make about joining the military or finding a way not to — how her Yiddishist background impacts her political thinking, what it was like to be a Yiddish-speaking, non-Hasidic kid on the streets of Jerusalem, and about her current Yiddish activities and projects.

Episode 60: Etl Niborski | עטל ניבאָרסקי

In this episode, Sosye and Meyer Dovid from the long-running Yiddish radio show Dos Yidishe Kol chat all things Yiddish, podcasting, and — you guessed it — Yiddish podcasting. It was a pleasure to get to know Meyer Dovid better, and to learn a bit about his radio show’s trajectory. You can see a concise version of our conversation in Yiddish and in English translation at In geveb: A Journal of Yiddish Studies. Thank you to In geveb’s blog team for proposing this idea and collaborating with both of our shows on this episode!

Episode 59: ?דער ייִדישער פּאָדקאַסט – װוּהין | The Yiddish Podcast Today

It was wonderful to get a chance to speak to Miriam Udel, sof-kol-sof! Miriam is associate professor of Yiddish language, literature, and culture at Emory University. She recently published Honey on the Page (NYU Press, October 2020 — happy 1st birthday to the book!), a rich resource of nearly fifty Yiddish stories and poems in English translation. We chatted children’s literature, Miriam’s background story with Judaism, her rabbinical studies at Yeshivat Maharat, and much more.

Episode 58: Miriam Udel | מרים יודל

What a pleasure to get to know Isabel Frey! Isabel is a Vienna-based Yiddish musician with a wonderful new-ish album called Millennial Bundist. We talked about being Jewish in Vienna, her left-wing activism and her departure from the Zionism of her youth, as well as her music and her future plans. I know you'll love her story as well as her music! Read more about her and check out her music at https://www.isabelfrey.com/

Episode 34: ליאַנאַ יעלען, שטום־לשון איבערזעצערקע | Leana Jelen

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