In a conversation with Alex Weiser, composer and the director of public programs at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, we learn about his debut album, "And All the Days Were Purple," and a new opera, "State of the Jews," a historical drama about Theodor Herzl.

Episode 0240

December 12, 2019

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

This week on The Shmooze, we visit with Kirsten Fermaglich, author of "A Rosenberg by Any Other Name: A History of Jewish Name Changing in America," a groundbreaking history of the practice of Jewish name changing in the 20th century.

Episode 0239

December 6, 2019

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

The Shmooze caught up with literary translator Daniel Kennedy at his home in France to chat about the recently published "Warsaw Stories," a collection of short stories by the Yiddish writer Hersh Dovid Nomberg, newly translated by Kennedy. Nomberg's stories explore modern Jewish life in the growing cosmopolitan city of Warsaw: young intellectuals in pursuit of truth, beauty, and love; working class fathers tempted by schemes for easy money; teenagers divided between their traditional religious upbringings and the world of secular culture and political revolution.

Episode 0238

November 26, 2019

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

This week, Brett Sokol, journalist, arts editor, and co-founder and editor of the recently published "Shtetl in the Sun: Andy Sweet's South Beach 1977–1980," visits with The Shmooze. In our conversation, he discusses what drew photographer Andy Sweet to document South Beach's vibrant Jewish community in the late 1970s, capturing the community's daily rhythms in all their beach-strolling, cafeteria-noshing, and klezmer-dancing glory. "A Shtetl in the Sun," an exhibit of Andy Sweet's photographs documenting South Beach's once-thriving and now-vanished Jewish world, is currently on view at the Yiddish Book Center.

Episode 0237

November 21, 2019

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Daniel Ronfeld dropped by The Shmooze recording studio to chat about the Great Jewish Books Book Club. Over the course of a lively discussion, we learn what drew him to join the Book Club, some of his favorite selections, and how he came to create a monthly gathering of fellow Book Club members in his home state of Idaho.

Episode 0236

November 7, 2019

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Recorded live at the Yiddish Book Center's Community Open House in October 2019, Lisa Newman, director of communications, and Mindl Cohen, director of translation and collections initiatives, discuss all things Yiddish translation.

Episode 0235

October 31, 2019

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

This week we visit with Christa Whitney, director of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project, to talk about the oral history interview she recorded with Harold Bloom shortly before his death. In his oral history interview the late, legendary, literary scholar--and native Yiddish speaker--Harold Bloom explores his connection with Yiddish language and literature. He also recalls his first experience seeing Shakespeare as a child and watching the towering Maurice Schwartz as Shylock in a Yiddish production of "The Merchant of Venice" on 2nd Avenue in 1938. Christa shares some of the highlights and insights from her interview with Harold Bloom.

Episode 0234

October 24, 2019

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

This week we visit with Ann Toback, executive director of The Workmen's Circle in New York City, to hear about their program that brings owners and their trusty dog companions together in Central Park, where they learn some basic commands in Yiddish. By all accounts, both dogs and owners have a great time, and, yes, we learn that you can teach an old dog new tricks--in this case, Yiddish.

Episode 0233

October 17, 2019

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Sarah Abrevaya Stein, professor of history and Jewish studies at UCLA, talks with The Shmooze about her new book "Family Papers: A Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century" and the process of writing history through personal stories. Along the way, she discusses the challenges of reading historical documents against the grain, how her time in the Yiddish Book Center's summer internship (now Steiner Summer Yiddish Program) influenced her professional path, and the diversity of the modern Jewish cultural experience.

Episode 0232

October 10, 2019

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts

Bob Schor chats with The Shmooze about his remarkable aunt Cipe Pineles. Born in Vienna in 1908 to an Orthodox Jewish family, Cipe immigrated to New York in 1923, where she studied art at Pratt Institute and went on to have an amazing career as the first female art director at Condé Nast and the first woman asked to join the legendary Art Directors Club. Her work and illustration continue to influence modern design.

Episode 0231

September 19, 2019

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts