This week, we present our second interview in the past year and a half with Marvin Zuckerman. Our first took place in his warm and welcoming home in LA’s Pacific Palisades, where the walls were adorned with beautiful paintings and lined with bookshelves holding thousands of volumes. Unfortunately, that house was destroyed in the LA fires of January 2025. Marvin and his wife, Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, have since relocated to a rental apartment in Santa Monica, where we conducted this follow-up interview on June 26, 2025. In this conversation, Zuckerman reflects on the devastating fire and shares further insights from his remarkable and multifaceted life.

Zuckerman was raised in the Yiddish-speaking milieu of the Jewish Labor Bund in the Bronx, New York. He later became a professor of English at a Los Angeles college and co-authored the well-regarded Yiddish textbook Learning Yiddish in Easy Stages as well as several other works in the field of Yiddish. He also translated the memoir of prominent Bundist Bernard Goldstein, Twenty Years with the Jewish Labor Bund: A Memoir of Interwar Poland (Purdue University Press, 2016). His latest book is Dickinson in Yiddish & Other Essays & Translations (Brass Tacks Press, 2024).

• Music:
  • Sveta Kundish & Patrick Farrell: Ikh un di Velt (words by Avrom Reyzen)
  • Ida Gillner & Livet Nord:Mayn heym – Mitt hem (words by Anna Margolin; Swedish translation by Beila Engelhardt Titelman)
  • Levyosn: Fisher-Lid (words by Aliza Greenblatt)
  • Levyosn: Fun der Khupe / Moh Rabu / Kleyne Printsesin
  • Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air Date: July 15, 2025

• Adi Mehalel (עדי מהלאל) talks about teaching Yiddish language and literature at Univ. of Maryland and Yivo Summer Program and discusses the writers I. L. Peretz, the subject of his book The Radical Isaac: I. L. Peretz and the Rise of Jewish Socialism, and Hanan Ayalti, whose book Boom and Chains: A Yiddish Novel Set in Israel/Palestine is forthcoming with Mehalel's translation and introduction. Interviewed in New York City via Zoom on July 2, 2025. Book links:

  • Boom and Chains: https://wsupress.wayne.edu/9780814351802/
  • The Radical Isaac: https://sunypress.edu/Books/T/The-Radical-Isaac

• Avremi Zaks (אבֿרהמי זאַקס), host of the Kan Yiddish (כאן יידיש) radio show in Israel, discusses Israel's recent war with Iran and its ongoing war with Hamas. Interviewed in Jerusalem via Zoom on July 2, 2025. Archive of Kan Yiddish: https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan/kan-reka/p-10820/

• Music:

  • Yiddish songs about America, in honor of the July 4th Independence Day holiday:
    • Mandy Patinkin: American Tune
    • Aaron Lebedeff & Alexander Olshanetsky Orchestra:Vot ken you makh? Es iz Amerike!
    • Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus, directed by Binyumin Schaechter: Amerike di Prekhtike
  • Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air Date: July 2, 2025

• Sholem Beinfeld (in Cambridge, MA, recorded by phone, June 26, 2025)

• Leybl Botwinik (in central Israel, recorded via Zoom, June 26, 2025)

• Avremi Zaks (recorded June 20, 2025, courtesy of Kan Israel radio (https://www.kan.org.il/content/kan/kan-reka/p-10820/))

• Music:

  • (Yiddish music performed by various artists)
  • Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air Date: June 25, 2025