Yiddish historian Eddy Portnoy checks in from Harlem. We get into how he's managing the work/home setup now that his sofa has molded itself to his body, how the Yiddish papers covered the 1918 flu and the analogs that has for our present situation, the Displaced Persons exhibition he's working on for 2021 at the UN (fingers crossed), his long-gestating project on a pair of Yiddish puppeteers, a 1970s novel he's reading about the Black Death hitting NYC, why his Jewish tendency to comedy outweighs any tendency to utopian thinking, the soul food restaurant he'd love to visit again, and more. Follow Eddy on Twitter, and read his book, Bad Rabbi • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal