Podcast
The Shmooze, The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast
Hosted by Yiddish Book Center · EN
The Yiddish Book Center's podcast includes conversations with Jewish culture makers, plus news and stories related to Yiddish literature, language, and culture.
25episodes
Episodes
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Episode 410: Boom and Chains: A Yiddish Novel in Translation
3w ago00:23:16Tap to summarizeAdi Mahalel visited with "The Shmooze" to speak about his translation of Hanan Ayalti’s "Boom and Chains". The novel provides a rare glimpse of the Jewish political left before the creation of the State of Israel and vividly illustrates the physical and mental toll of making a life in Mandatory Palestine. In conversation we discuss how author Hanan Ayalti’s own journey resembles that of Zalmen, the novel’s main character, and reflects his disillusionment with early Labor Zionism. Episode 410 April 30, 2026 Amherst, MA
Transcribe →Episode 409: Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries
4w ago00:22:03Tap to summarizeThis week on The Shmooze we visit with Nicholas Lemann. A veteran New Yorker correspondent, Lemann grew up in New Orleans, the son of German Jews in a world of gilded privilege. Yet in contrast to his parents’ generation, which always sought to downplay their religious background, Lemann was intrigued by his roots, thinking he wanted to be like Jack Burden, the ever-curious reporter in Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. In conversation he talks about his recently released book, Returning, which tells both a personal family history and reveals much about Jewish life in the twenty-first century. Episode 409 April 22, 2026 Amherst, MA
Transcribe →Episode 408: Crude Creatures: Confronting Representations of Black People in Yiddish Culture
Apr 100:31:35Tap to summarizeAuthor Gil Ribak visited with "The Shmooze" to discuss his latest book, "Crude Creatures." The book draws on a mixture of previously unexplored Yiddish press, theater, and literature from Eastern Europe and the United States to examine how Black Africans and African Americans were depicted by Jews from the late nineteenth century through 1929. Episode 408 April 1, 2026 Amherst, MA
Transcribe →Episode 407: The Last Women of Warsaw
Mar 2300:21:20Tap to summarizeAuthor Judy Batalion visited with "The Shmooze" to talk about her latest book, "The Last Women of Warsaw." The historical novel follows two very different Jewish women in vibrant, stylish late-1930s Warsaw—the “Paris of the North”—as they grapple with the gathering storm clouds of war and unexpectedly come together in their search for love, meaning, and a sense of home. In conversation we discuss how the book shines a light on this rarely explored world, a city filled with theaters, cabaret, and nightclubs with revolving dancefloors Episode 407 March 23, 2026 Amherst, MA
Transcribe →Episode 406: Here Where We Live Is Our Country
Mar 500:19:21Tap to summarizeWriter and artist Molly Crabapple visited with "The Shmooze" to speak about her forthcoming book, "Here Where We Live Is Our Country", the first popular history of the Bund. Molly re-creates the Bundists’ extraordinary world through dramatic portraits of insurgent poets and antireligious rebels, clandestine revolutionaries and lovers on the barricades. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Sam Rothbort created “memory paintings” with the hope of resurrecting the vanished world of his shtetl childhood. Decades later, his great-granddaughter Molly discovered these paintings, and one stood out: a girl, her dress the color of sky, hurling a rock through a cottage window. It was this painting—"Itka the Bundist, Breaking Windows"—that introduced Molly to the Jewish Labor Bund. Episode 406 March 5, 2026 Amherst, MA
Transcribe →Episode 405: Tevye’s Daughters: The Opera
Feb 2200:27:09Tap to summarizeLibrettist and playwright Stephanie Fleischmann and composer and playwright Alex Weiser sat down with "The Shmooze" to talk about their collaboration on "Tevye’s Daughters." Their opera is based on Sholem Aleichem’s iconic Yiddish stories, exploring the tragic death of Tevye’s lesser-known daughter, Shprintse. The opera also traces the lasting impact of Shprintse’s fate on her sisters as elderly immigrants living in New York. The opera will be performed at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on March 19, 2026. Episode 405 February 24, 2026 Amherst, MA
Transcribe →Episode 404: Once There Was a Town: The Memory Books of a Lost Jewish World
Feb 1200:24:12Tap to summarizeAuthor Jane Ziegelman joined "The Shmooze "to talk about her latest book, "Once There Was a Town." In conversation Jane talks about Yizkor (memorial) books and how she discovered the story of her family’s ancestral shtetl between the pages of the Luboml Yizkor book. Episode 404 February 12, 2026 Amherst, MA
Transcribe →Episode 403: Polin: A One-Woman Play
Jan 1500:26:57Tap to summarizeJuliette Carbonnier joins The Shmooze to talk about her one-woman play, Polin. Polin is both a travel story and a ghost story, taking the audience through the Warsaw cabaret scene of the 1920s, the Lodz Ghetto in the 1930s, the Terezin concentration camp in the 1940s, and the Catskills Borscht Belt of the 1950s. Polin is also a love letter to New York City as homeland, so that is where we begin and end the journey. Polin was developed through Princeton University’s Martin A. Dale ’53 Fellowship and will be presented on January 30, 2026, at the Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn, New York. Episode 403 January 15, 2026 Amherst, MA
Transcribe →Episode 402: East Endings: Jewish East End writers, artists, and activists
Dec 1600:24:49Tap to summarizeFilm director, film producer, and screenwriter Mark Jay spoke with "The Shmooze" about his 1993 documentary film "East Endings". "East Endings" documents a night at Bloom’s in May 1993—then one of the last remaining kosher restaurants in Whitechapel. Harry Blacker, renowned cartoonist and satirist of British Jewry, arrives to celebrate his 83rd birthday. Greeted by a group of old friends including Anna Tzelniker, Barnet Litvinoff, Bill Fishman, Brian Sewell, Simon Blumenfeld, and Rabbi Lionel Blue, they spend the evening together reminiscing about the Jewish East End of the 1930s: its humor, history, and politics of solidarity. Episode 402 December 16, 2025 Amherst, MA
Transcribe →Episode 401: A Tour of Global Jewish Languages with Sebastian Schulman
Dec 1500:14:14Tap to summarizeSebastian Schulman joined The Shmooze to talk about the Yiddish Book Center’s upcoming online course Speak the World! A Tour of Global Jewish Languages. Sebastian shared that the four-part online course will explore Jewish languages with scholars, activists, and artists who are working in the field today. Instructors will speak about the diversity, history, and the contemporary efforts to preserve, document, and continue speaking these languages. This course is presented in partnership with The Jewish Language Project. Episode 401 December 15, 2025 Amherst, MA
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