Di Nyu-yorkerin

by SARAH PONICHTERA

Welcome to Di Nyu-yorkerin!*

This monthly blog will announce Yiddish happenings taking place in and around New York City, and sometimes beyond.

In the cultural sphere, the New Yiddish Rep and Castillo Theater’s production of “Waiting for Godot” has been getting rave reviews both from people well-versed in Yiddish culture (such as Leyzer Burko’s review) and mainstream news outlets (such as Anita Gates’ review in the New York Times). The Folksbiene is holding a concert series featuring previously unheard songs gathered from Jewish families who lived in Soviet Russia, titled “Notes from the Underground.” The songs will be performed by members of the klezmer band Golem, and the performance is directed by the eminent Zalman Mlotek. Details can be found here.

Binyumen Schaechter has been visiting the YIVO Archives to research songs for his upcoming concert “Amerike di Prekhtike,” celebrating 360 years of American Jewish life (1654-2014). The concert, which will feature Di Shekhter-tekhter as soloists, will include Yiddish choral music in a wide variety of American musical styles—blues, jazz, spirituals, pop and Broadway—as well as Second Avenue hits, labor anthems and more. It will take place this summer, Sunday, June 1, 2014, at Symphony Space in New York. Tickets will be available in March. For more info, write information@thejppc.org or call 212-989-0212.

In academic news, a new biography of Sholem Aleichem by Professor Jeremy Dauber has just been published by NextBook press. Read an excerpt of the book here, listen to a podcast here, or come to a discussion of the book between Professor Dauber and Jonathan Brent, Executive Director of YIVO, on Thursday, October 17, at 7 PM at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. At the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, there will be a weekend program with Professor Anita Norich the weekend of November 1-3. Professor Norich will be discussing the Singer siblings: I. J. Singer and Esther Singer Kreitman, along with their famous brother Isaac Bashevis. See more details here.

There are a number of new arrivals on the Yiddish scene in New York this season! Agi Legutko has been appointed Lecturer in Yiddish and Director of the Yiddish Language Program at Columbia. She is bringing Yiddish language teaching at the University into the twenty-first century, building an online database of Yiddish teaching materials, developing opportunities for distance learning, and integrating technology in the classroom in new and creative ways. At Baruch College, CUNY, Debra Caplan has been appointed Assistant Professor of Theater in the Department of Fine and Performing Arts, and is currently working on a production of Gutzkow's “Uriel Acosta,” which has never before been performed in English. Here at YIVO, Jennifer Young has been named Director of Education, and plans to revitalize the curriculum of the evening Yiddish classes, as well as the Uriel Weinreich summer program. The summer program in particular will sharpen its focus on building students’ facility with archival materials, integrating historical documents at every level of language study.

Come back next month for more news from the world of Yiddish in New York City!

*Di Nyu-yorkin = The lady New Yorker

Sarah Ponichtera is a Processing Archivist at the Center for Jewish History.