This week, artist Mark Podwal joins us to talk about his work, its influences, and his exhibit Kaddish for Dąbrowa Białostocka, which is on display at the Yiddish Book Center. Podwal may have been best known initially for his drawings on The New York Times Op-Ed page. In addition, he is the author and illustrator of numerous books and his work is included in museum collections worldwide. Most of these works—Podwal’s own, as well as those he has illustrated for others—find their roots in Jewish legend, history, and tradition.

Episode 0160

October 19, 2017

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

In a conversation with filmmakers Alix Wall and Marc Smolowitz, we learn about their collaboration on "The Lonely Child". Their film will tell the story of Yiddish poet Shmerke Kaczerginski’s song, “Dos Elnte Kind,” or “The Lonely Child,” which he wrote for Alix’s grandmother in 1943 while she was in the Vilna Ghetto. Alix’s vision for the film is “to engage those keeping the song alive in a dialogue, exploring the central question: just what is our responsibility to the survivors and their stories? It is not lost on me that a song will outlast all of us; a film will as well.”

Episode 0159

October 4, 2017

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Caraid O’Brien, an accomplished writer, performer, director, translator, and a Yiddish Book Center alumna speaks with us about her work on and off the stage. An accomplished translator, her translation from the Yiddish of Sholem Asch’s "God of Vengeance" “set Show World aflame” according to the Village Voice. She is a three-time recipient of a new play commission from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture for her contemporary adaptation of Dovid Pinski’s Yiddish classic "Jake the Mechanic" as well as for the first-ever English translations of Sholem Asch’s underworld plays "Motke Thief" and "The Dead Man". Currently, Caraid is performing in the New Yiddish Rep’s world premiere of Eugene Ionesco’s "Rhinoceros".

Episode 0158

September 26, 2017

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Eddy Portnoy, senior researcher and director of exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, talks about his newly published compendium of stories, "Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press." He introduces us to stories of thieves, wrestlers, poets, and beauty queens whose misadventures were immortalized in Yiddish newspapers from the 1880s to the 1930s.

Episode 0157

September 15,2017

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Editors Eitan Kensky and Ozzy Irving Gold-Shapiro sit down to talk about a special "Pakn Treger Translation Issue" devoted to writing by women. This collection includes works of poetry, prose poetry, fiction, and memoir. We learn about the writers, the genres, and how this collection helps to address the relative scarcity of translations of Yiddish women writers.

Episode 0156

August 27, 2017

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Director Joshua Z. Weinstein and leading character Menashe Lustig talk about the making of the newly released film, "Menashe." The film, performed in Yiddish, takes place in the Hasidic community of Borough Park, Brooklyn. The story is drawn from the real life of its Hasidic star Menashe Lustig.

Episode 0155

July 26, 2017

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Ozzy Irving Gold-Shapiro tells us what it’s like to spend a year as a Yiddish Book Center Fellow. Ozzy's Fellowship year has been spent rummaging through the Center’s archives, creating metadata spreadsheets, cataloguing collections, writing articles about interesting finds, and working with the Center’s translation fellowship program.

Episode 0154

July 15, 2017

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Mel Rosenthal, a retired Knopf production editor, worked with the early galleys of Grade's "The Rabbi's House." In our conversation he discusses the challenges of translation and the days spent working with the writer.

Episode 0153

July 9, 2017

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Nora Paley, the co-editor of the recently published A Grace Paley Reader: Stories, Essays, and Poetry, talks about the life and work of her mother, writer Grace Paley. Nora explains, "who Grace Paley was and that she was my mother are naturally inseparable for me."

Episode 0152

June 7, 2017

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Seth Rogovoy, who literally wrote the book on klezmer, gives us a sneak preview of the Yidstock (July 13-16, 2017) lineup, from concerts featuring Eleanor Reissa & Frank London’s Klezmer Brass All-Stars, the Andy Statman Trio, Alicia Svigals and Lauren Brody Duo, Ezekiel’s Wheels Klezmer Band, the Hankus Netsky and Eden MacAdam-Somer Duo, to Frank London’s multimedia oratorio A Night at the Old Marketplace, based on the groundbreaking 1907 play of the same name by I.L. Peretz.

Episode 0151

June 7, 2017

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts