• Deborah A. Green (דבֿורה גרין)— author, historian, translator, Yiddishist and retired litigator — discusses her translation of the late Yiddish journalist S. L. Schneiderman's book קריג אין שפּאַניען about the Spanish Civil War, with an emphasis on the outsized role of Jews among the International Brigades who took part. Deborah's new translation into English is Journey Through the Spanish Civil War. We reached Deborah by Zoom on Aug. 7, 2025.

• The interviewer Sholem Beinfeld is co-editor-in-chief of the Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary and Professor of History, Emeritus, Washington University, St. Louis. He translated The Rudashevsky Diary, which was published as the November, 2024, issue of The Jewish Quarterly.

• In the second half of our show, we present two recordings from our archive in memory of 12 August 1952 and the execution of leading Jewish figures by the Soviet authorities: (1) Yosef Lakhman (in memory of the victims of 12 August 1952, originally aired in 2010) and (2) Interview with Gennady Estraikh about the 12 August 1952 events and their memorialization in the years since (originally aired in 2012).

• Related links:

  • About page at Fighting Fascism: https://jewsfightingfascism.com/about/
  • Book: Journey Through the Spanish Civil War

• Music:

  • Emil Gorovets: Ikh Bin a Yid
  • Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air Date: August 13, 2025

• Riki Rose (ריקי רױז) — who works as a singer, songwriter and comic in both Yiddish and English — discusses her life and career. She's built up a substantial following over the past several years through concerts and social media performances. Her latest recording, גלות Blues, has just been released on YouTube, Spotify and most other platforms. We reached her by phone at her home in the New York City area on Aug. 6, 2025. Related links:

  • Home page: https://rikirose.com
  • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/riki_rose
  • X (Twitter): https://x.com/Riki_Rose
  • Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@therikirose
  • YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@riki_rose
  • Upcoming performance Aug. 24 in NYC/UWS: https://www.instantseats.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.event&eventID=F6B95EE0-ABD8-F36E-F1507EED3192742C

• Music:

  • Riki Rose: Galus Blues
  • Riki Rose: Utem Arein Utem Arois
  • Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air Date: August 6, 2025

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

• Leybl Botwinik is a writer of science fiction, poetry and songs (in both Yiddish and English) who grew up in Montreal's vibrant Yiddish cultural scene. He is the son of the late Dovid Botwinik, a composer of Yiddish songs, music educator, and Yiddish activist, and the brother of Sender Botwinik, a Yiddish educator, choral director, and music producer. Now living in Israel, Leybl has passed on the Yiddish language and culture to his children. In this episode, he shares stories from his Yiddishist upbringing as well as personal experiences and reflections on the October 7 massacre. The interview was conducted via Zoom on May 30, 2025 (Erev Shabbos/Shvues).

• Rebbetzin Yetta Kane, a Holocaust survivor, grew up in Miadziol (Yiddish: Miadl – מיאַדל), a small town in Belarus. She recounts memories of her childhood and how her family survived the Holocaust by hiding in the forests of Belarus with the partisans. Yetta and her late husband, Rabbi and Cantor David Kane, co-authored the memoir How to Survive Anything: The Life Story of David and Yetta Kane. This is Part 2 of our interview, recorded at her home in the Los Angeles area on April 8, 2025. Part 1 aired on April 23, 2025.

• Music:

  • Chava Alberstein: Friling
  • Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air Date: June 11, 2025

• Samuel Kassow is interviewed by Sholem Beinfeld about Rokhl Auerbach and her book Warsaw Testament („וואַרשעווער צוואָות“), which Kassow translated into English. The interview was by Zoom on May 30, 2025, with Kassow and Beinfeld at their homes in Connecticut and Cambridge, MA, respectively.

• Samuel Kassow is the Charles H. Northam Professor, Emeritus, of History at Trinity College, and is recognized as one of the world’s leading scholars on the Holocaust and the Jews of Poland. Kassow was born in 1946 in a DP-camp in Stuttgart, Germany and grew up speaking Yiddish. Kassow attended the London School of Economics and Princeton University where he earned a PhD in 1976 with a study about students and professors in Tsarist Russia. He is widely known for his 2007 book Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive (Indiana University Press). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research, has won numerous awards, and has lectured widely.

• Sholem Beinfeld is co-editor-in-chief of the Comprehensive Yiddish-English Dictionary and Professor of History, Emeritus, Washington University, St. Louis. He translated The Rudashevsky Diary, which was published as the November, 2024, issue of The Jewish Quarterly.

• Additional info on Warsaw Testament:

  • Publisher White Goat Press's page: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/about/white-goat-press-0/rokhl-auerbach
  • Distributor page: https://www.ipgbook.com/warsaw-testament-products-9798988677390.php

• Music:

  • Hélène Engel: Yeder Ruft Mikh Zhamele from Voices Of The Ghetto (Voix Du Ghetto): Warszawa, 1943
  • Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air Date: June 4, 2025

Air date: May 14, 2025