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The Vertical Shtetl: Boston's Organized Housing For the Jewish Elderly

Jeff Warschauer talks about his interactions with the elderly Jewish community in Boston in the 1980s. Every Thursday evening he would go to meetings in apartment buildings where many Jews lived and there would play klezmer music and speak Yiddish wi...

Can Yiddish Music Be Heard As Word Music?

Henri Oppenheim, klezmer musician based in Montreal, critiques the focus on lyrical content in Yiddish music over musical experience. He considers this to reflect prejudice about the purpose of Jewish music, and seeks to make Yiddish music that focus...

Her Daughter at Weinreich's Desk

Adrienne Cooper z"l talks about her daughter, Klezmer musician Sarah Gordon, growing up in the Yiddish world and her early exposure to Yiddish culture. She describes her daughter at the age of four sitting at Max Weinreich's desk in YIVO, pretending...

The Beginning of A Catskills Career

Peter Sokolow, a full-time professional musician active in Klezmer revival, describes his first gig in the Catskills playing in an Orthodox hotel and being treated like a non-Jew by the ultra-observant guests. He goes on to speak about his second Cat...

Setting Yiddish Poetry to Music

Henri Oppenheim, klezmer musician based in Montreal, describes the process that led him to his album "Tur Malka," if which he sets Yiddish poetry to music. He recalls how he found the poetry of Chava Rosenfarb, and his surprise at receiving a grant a...

Clare Burson

Clare Burson, former Yiddish Book Center intern and musician, was interviewed by Pauline Katz on July 10, 2011 at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. The interview focuses on Clare's Jewish upbringing in Tennessee, education, interna...

2011-07-10

Sruli Dresdner

Sruli Dresdner, Jewish musician, scholar, and educator, was interviewed by Christa Whitney on August 25, 2011 at KlezKanada, in Montreal, Quebec. His father was born into a Hasidic family in Belgium right before World War II. They were one of the fam...

2011-08-25

What's the Matter with the Klezmer? The Peter Sokolow Story

The Current Status of Klezmer and Yiddish Music

Pete Rushefsky, executive director of the Center for Traditional Music & Dance, outlines the statuses of various kinds of Jewish music in the world today.

Klezmer: Music and Community in Twentieth-Century Philadelphia, with Hankus Netsky

"I'm not part of the whole Klezmer business": The Generational Divide in Yiddish Music and the Preservation of Culture at the Yiddish Book Center

Jalda Rebling—Renewal Cantor, Yiddish performer, and daughter of performer Lin Jaldati—discusses how Yiddish culture and music is evolving with new generations.

Avia Moore

Avia Moore, freelance performing artist, was interviewed by Christa Whitney on December 14, 2011 at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Her parents were self-described hippies; her father was Jewish and not very religious. She reme...

2011-12-14

Sophia Holtz

Sophia Holtz, Yiddish language student in the January term intensive at the Yiddish Book Center, was interviewed by Lesley Yalen on February 25, 2011 at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. Sophia grew up in New York City, on the Uppe...

2011-02-25

Michael Wex

Michael Wex, novelist, translator, and scholar of Yiddish language and literature, was interviewed by Pauline Katz on December 29, 2010 at KlezKamp, in the Catskills of New York State. Michael Wex's interview takes us through a beautifully detailed...

2010-12-29

Avi Hoffman

Avi Hoffman, actor, was interviewed by Christa Whitney on March 12, 2013 in Boca Raton, Florida. He grew up in the Bronx, part of a group of Yiddishist families who raised their children surrounded by Yiddish language and culture. His father survived...

2013-03-12

Rose Bergman

Rose Bergman, retired teacher and daughter of Holocaust survivors, was interviewed by Mark Gerstein on August 10, 2012 at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. Rose, a former teacher, recounts growing up in Poland after the Holocaust, h...

2012-08-10

Yale (Yitskhok) Strom

Yale Strom - musical performer, artist, and ethnographic collector of Yiddish music - was interviewed by Christa Whitney on December 21, 2016 at the Association for Jewish Studies Conference in San Diego, California. Yale's father's side of the famil...

2016-12-21

Yehudi Wyner

Yehudi Wyner - American composer, music educator, pianist, conductor and son of Yiddish composer Lazar Weiner - was interviewed by Hankus Netsky on June 14, 2011 in Medford, Massachusetts. Yehudi reminisces about visiting the Brooklyn apartment of hi...

2011-06-14

Daniel Weltlinger

Daniel Weltlinger, violinist, was interviewed by Agnieszka Ilwicka on May 9, 2016 in Wroclaw, Poland. Daniel was born in Sydney, Australia in 1977 and was raised in a traditional Jewish family. Daniel's maternal grandfather was a violinist and a memb...

2016-05-09