Yiddish Book Center Goes Online with Virtual Public Programming

Though the Yiddish Book Center’s building is currently closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, the organization is offering a robust lineup of virtual public programs, which will be broadly accessible through Facebook and Zoom and posted on the Center’s website. Highlights of the virtual program lineup include a multimedia presentation by David Mazower on the NYC salon of Yiddish poet Bertha Kling, a talk by Seth Rogovoy on the evolution of klezmer music, a discussion and reading with actor and Yiddish translator Caraid O’Brien, and more.

All events will be live streamed on the Yiddish Book Center Facebook page and posted to the Center’s website. You can register in advance for events through Zoom in order to be part of the virtual audience and submit questions; space is limited. For more information and links to register for specific events, visit yiddishbookcenter.org/events.

The full list of events:

Talk and Reading: The Plays of Sholem Asch, with Caraid O’Brien
Thursday, May 7, 7 p.m. EDT

Caraid O'Brien is a writer, Yiddish translator, and actor who first began learning Yiddish as a Yiddish Book Center intern in 1994 and, early in her career, received three new play commissions from the Foundation for Jewish Culture for her translations of classic Yiddish plays. Caraid studied Yiddish theater and performance with Luba Kadison Buloff, the last surviving member of the Vilna Troupe, and is a current Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow whose work focuses on Sholem Asch. In this program, Caraid will talk about Yiddish theater in America and will read from selections of her current work translating Sholem Asch: Plays of My People, a collection of four dramas that explore Jewish identity from the acclaimed playwright of God of Vengeance (the play that inspired Paula Vogel’s Tony Award–winning play Indecent.)

Talk: The Essential Klezmer, with Seth Rogovoy
Thursday, May 14, 7 p.m. EDT

A multimedia presentation in which Yidstock artistic director Seth Rogovoy—the author of The Essential Klezmer, the bestselling guidebook to Yiddish roots and soul music—recounts the evolution of klezmer from Old World shtetls to New World nightclubs and concert stages.

Reading: Kaddish for My Father, with Ilan Stavans
Sunday, May 17, 7 p.m. EDT

Ilan Stavans will present a reading of his play Kaddish for My Father, followed by a brief Q&A.
 
Kaddish for My Father; or, Why We Lie, a Play in Four Snapshots by Ilan Stavans:
As a famous Mexican theater and telenovela actor lies in his deathbed, his son tries to come to terms with the emotional trail he left behind and with the tension between the public figure and private man. Directed by Daniel Lombardo.

About the playwright: Ilan Stavans is an internationally renowned writer and cultural critic whose books, translated into numerous languages, have been adapted into film, theater, TV, and radio. 

Director Talk: In Search of Israeli Cuisine, with Roger Sherman
Thursday, May 21, 7 p.m. EDT

In Search of Israeli Cuisine is a portrait of the Israeli people told through food. The film profiles chefs, home cooks, vintners, and cheesemakers drawn from the more than 100 cultures that make up Israel today—Jewish, Arab, Muslim, Christian, Druze. A rich and human story of the people emerges from their food. The film has played in more than 160 festivals and special screenings around the world and has been shown in theaters across the United States and Canada. The film's director, Roger Sherman, will discuss and host a short Q&A about the film. Participants are encouraged to view the film in advance—it's widely available through a number of streaming platforms. 
 
About the director: Roger Sherman’s films have garnered two Academy Award nominations and won an Emmy, a Peabody, and a James Beard Award. He is a producer, director, cinematographer, author, documentary doctor, and a founder of Florentine Films. 

Talk: Bronx Bohemians, with David Mazower
Thursday, May 28, 7 p.m. EDT

For several decades in the early twentieth century, Bertha Kling and her husband kept open house in the Bronx. As hip as Greenwich Village, cheaper than the Café Royal, and more heymish than either, the Klings' apartment was a gathering place for newly arrived Yiddish writers, musicians, and actors, and a place to hear the latest Yiddish literary gossip or news from Paris, Warsaw, Moscow, or Hollywood. In this illustrated talk, David Mazower uses rare family archives to explore this unique group of Bronx bohemians, whose ranks included writers Moyshe Nadir, Malka Lee, Peretz Hirshbein, and Esther Shumiatsher, musicians Lazar Weiner and Joseph and Lara Cherniavsky, puppeteer Zuni Maud, and the entire Sholem Aleichem family. David Mazower is the Yiddish Book Center’s bibliographer and editorial director.

Author Talk: Featuring Brett Sokol, journalist and editor of Shtetl in the Sun: Andy Sweet’s South Beach, 1977–1980
Thursday, June 4, 7 p.m. EDT

Details available soon on Yiddish Book Center website and social media.

Conversation and Reading: Yiddish Comes to America, with Mindl (Madeleine) Cohen
Thursday, June 11, 7 p.m. EDT

Drawing from the Yiddish Book Center’s recently published 2020 Pakn Treger Digital Translation Issue: Yiddish Comes to America, editor Mindl Cohen will talk about the Yiddish writers whose work appears in translation and how the selected works speak to—and inform—our understanding of this year’s Decade of Discovery theme, Yiddish in America: Cultural Encounters. The anthology includes newly translated works; excerpts of some of the translations will be read by actors and translators. The program will include a brief Q&A.

Talk: The Kabbalah of Bob Dylan, with Seth Rogovoy
Thursday, June 18, 7 p.m. EDT

A multimedia presentation in which Yidstock artistic director Seth Rogovoy—the author of Bob Dylan: Prophet Mystic Poet—examines the life and songs of the Nobel Prize–winning rock poet through a Jewish lens.
 
Press: For more information or to arrange for interviews contact Yiddish Book Center Director of Communications Lisa Newman at [email protected].