As our show aired Erev Yom Kippur, we again presented excerpts of our past interviews on The Yiddish Voice/דאָס ייִדישע קול with Holocaust survivors who died during the past year. Since our previous episode, we've lost Ben Lesser, who died the first day of Rosh Hashona, so we were unable to include this in our previous week's show. The remainder of the show is a repeat of the previous week's show.

• Ben Lesser (died September 23, 2025, age 96) - Ben was a Holocaust Survivor, Author, Lecturer, and visionary founder of The ZACHOR Holocaust Remembrance Foundation. He was known around the world for his courageous testimony, tireless advocacy and unwavering commitment to education and remembrance. Born in Krakow, Poland in 1928 to Shari Segal and Lazar Leser. Ben was the second youngest of five children, Moshe Leser, Lola Lieber-Schwartz, Goldie Leser and baby brother Naphtali Leser. At age ten his life as a boy was forever changed. He endured four concentration camps, a seven-week death march, and two death trains, one of which was the notorious ill-fated death train from Buchenwald to Dachau where of the 6,000 inmates that walked on, only 18 walked off. Ben was the last living survivor from that train. We reached him by Zoom on Apr. 17, 2023. Originally aired April 19, 2023.
  • Funeral service Oct. 5, 2025 (per Legacy.com obituary: https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/latimes/name/ben-lesser-obituary?id=59641327): Sunday October 5, at 1:30pm Mount Sinai Memorial Park in Hollywood (Los Angeles, CA).
  • NOTE: MEMORIAL SERVICE OCT 19 2025: https://templebethsholomlv.shulcloud.com/form/ben-lesser-memorial
• (for additional show notes, see show notes for last week's episode: https://podcast.yv.org/episodes/remembering-aron-bell-bielski-natan-gipsman-judy-altmann-zoli-langer)

Air date: October 1, 2025

We're airing excerpts of interviews with four Holocaust survivors, past guests of The Yiddish Voice/דאָס ייִדישע קול who died during the past year.

• Aron Bell (Bielski) (died September 22, 2025, age 98) - born in the village Stankiewicze, near Navaredok (now in Belarus), he was the last of the famed Bielski brothers, who led the Bielski Partisans, which collectively saved more than 1,200 Jews from the Nazis during the Holocaust. We reached him by phone at his home in Palm Beach, FL, on Jan. 12, 2009. Originally aired Jan. 14, 2009.
• Natan Gipsman (died the night of September 10th, 2025, age 100) - born in Hindenburg (Upper Silesia, Prussia), Germany (now Zabrze, Poland), he was confined in the Będzin (Yiddish: בענדין) Ghetto and survived six concentration camps, including Buchenwald. We interviewed him at his home in Los Angeles on Jan. 26, 2024. Originally aired Feb 15, 2024.
• Judy Altmann (died April 30, 2025, age 100) - born in Jasina, Czechoslovakia (Körösmezö, Hungary during WWII; now Yasinya, Ukraine), she survived Auschwitz and death marches. We reached her by phone at her home in Stamford, CT, on Aug. 18, 2018. Originally aired Apr. 25, 2019.
• Zoli Langer (died February 28, 2025, age 98) - born in the village Minai, near Uzhgorod, Czechoslovakia (Ungvar, Hungary during WWII, now Uzhhorod, Ukraine), he survived Auschwitz and death marches. We interviewed at his home in Los Angeles on Oct. 31, 2019. Originally aired Apr. 22, 2020.

‫אַ גמר חתימה טובֿה!

Featured Announcements for Rosh Hashona/Yom Kippur:

• Greetings on behalf of the American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants of Greater Boston, featuring members Tania Lefman (Treasurer), Mary Ehrlich and Rosalie Reszelbach. Recorded Sept. 9 and 10, 2025.
• Hy Wolfe, manager of CYCO Books, Hebrew Actors Foundation and the Yiddish National Theatre. Recorded Sept. 21, 2025.
• Greetings on behalf of the League for Yiddish / די ייִדיש-ליגע by Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, Board Chair. Recorded Sept. 9, 2025.
• Greetings from Eli Dovek ז״ל, late proprietor of our sponsor Israel Bookshop, Brookline, MA. Recorded in 2009.
• Greetings on behalf of the Boston Workers Circle / דער באָסטאָנער אַרבעטער-רינג by Libe Gritz. Recorded Sept. 17, 2025.
• Greetings by The Yiddish Voice co-hosts Leye Schporer-Leavitt, Sholem Beinfeld and Dovid Braun. Recorded Sept. 17, 2025.

Music:

• Sholom Katz: Zochreinu L'Chayim
• Sholom Katz: Kol Nidre
• Jan Peerce: Ovinu Malkeinu
• Shalom Katz: El Moleh Rachamim
• Leibele Waldman: Der Nayer Yor
• Goldie Malavsky: Zochreinu L'Chayim
• Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS, an instrumental track from the CD Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air date: September 24, 2025

• Shmuel Bak (Samuel Bak), the internationally renowned artist and Holocaust survivor, presented in a lengthy conversation with his friend, The Yiddish Voice co-host Sholem Beinfeld. Excerpts from Pucker Gallery's page about Bak:
  • *Samuel Bak was born in Vilna, Poland in 1933, at a crucial moment in modern history. From 1940 to 1944, Vilna was under Soviet, then German occupation. Bak’s artistic talent was first recognized during an exhibition of his work in the Ghetto of Vilna when he was nine years old. While he and his mother survived, his father and four grandparents all perished at the hands of the Nazis. At the end of the war, he fled with his mother to the Landsberg Displaced Persons Camp, where he enrolled in painting lessons at the Blocherer School in Munich. In 1948, they immigrated to the newly established state of Israel. He studied at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem and completed his mandatory service in the Israeli army. In 1956, he went to Paris to continue his education at the École des Beaux Arts.... Bak has exhibited extensively in major museums, galleries, and universities throughout Europe, Israel, and the United States. He lived and worked in Tel Aviv, Paris, Rome, New York, and Lausanne before settling in Massachusetts in 1993 and becoming an American citizen. Bak has been the subject of articles, scholarly works, and over twenty books, most notably a 400-page monograph entitled Between Worlds. In 2001, he published his touching memoir, Painted in Words, which has been translated into four languages, and a biography entitled Art & Life: The Story of Samuel Bak was published in 2023. Related links:
    • Wikipedia page for Samuel Bak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Bak
    • Pucker Gallery page for Samuel Bak: https://www.puckergallery.com/samuel-bak
    • Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center (Omaha, NE): https://www.unomaha.edu/samuel-bak-museum-the-learning-center/
• 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.

אַ כּ‫תיבֿה וחתימה טובֿה!

Featured Announcements for Rosh Hashona:

• Greetings on behalf of the League for Yiddish / די ייִדיש-ליגע by Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, Board Chair. Recorded Sept. 9, 2025.
• Greetings on behalf of the American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants of Greater Boston, featuring members Mary Ehrlich, Rosalie Reszelbach and Tania Lefman (Treasurer). Recorded Sept. 9 and 10, 2025.
• Greetings from Eli Dovek ז״ל, late proprietor of our sponsor Israel Bookshop, Brookline, MA. Recorded in 2009.
• Greetings on behalf of the Boston Workers Circle / דער באָסטאָנער אַרבעטער-רינג by Libe Gritz. Recorded Sept. 17, 2025.
• Greetings by The Yiddish Voice co-hosts Leye Schporer-Leavitt, Sholem Beinfeld and Dovid Braun. Recorded Sept. 17, 2025.<...

• Matty Mendlowitz runs the YouTube channel Multisingual, featuring Yiddish-language vlogs of her travels, deep dives into world languages (especially Yiddish and its history and grammar, with a focus on contemporary Chassidic Yiddish), Disney clips dubbed into Yiddish, and much more engaging content. In this interview Matty talks about her background, including growing up speaking Yiddish, and what caused her to embrace Yiddish and learn many other languages and about her travels and other content she presents on her YouTube channel. Several excerpts of her YouTube content are presented during the show. We reached Matty via Zoom in Helsinki, Finland, on September 5, 2025. Related links
  • Matty Mendlowitz's Multisingual YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@multisingual1241
  • Featured Multisingual videos
    • Disney Frozen’s Let it Go sung in Yiddish: https://youtu.be/QnIYfnHmyfc?si=BVakMguPCV5od7Mj
    • Hannukah Story in Yiddish: The Festival of Lights Explained: https://youtu.be/brF2Xqmx4Ng?si=J_Y-4XRLtm4cWkZ-
    • Synonyms in Yiddish: Expanding your Yiddish Vocabulary with Like Words: https://youtu.be/TKp5QRcrSC8?si=4WRPgGbtkp1K3ip8
  • Frieda Vizel's recent (Aug., 2025) interview with Matty (in English): https://youtu.be/OhEuezMqyaE?si=5jq1vfGjAjPL_COs

אַ כּ‫תיבֿה וחתימה טובֿה!

Featured Announcements for Rosh Hashona:

• Greetings on behalf of the League for Yiddish / די ייִדיש-ליגע by Gitl Schaechter-Viswanath, Board Chair. Recorded Sept. 9, 2025.
• Greetings on behalf of the American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Descendants of Greater Boston, featuring members Mary Ehrlich, Rosalie Reszelbach and Tania Lefman (Treasurer). Recorded Sept. 9 and 10, 2025.
• Greetings from Eli Dovek ז״ל, late proprietor of our sponsor Israel Bookshop, Brookline, MA. Recorded in 2009.

Music: (Partial List)

• Sholom Katz: Zochreinu L'Chayim
• Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS, an instrumental track from the CD Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air date: September 10, 2025

• Charlie on the MTA in Yiddish is performed by Yiddishists from Boston’s Arbeter Ring and exclusively recorded for The Yiddish Voice on Labor Day, Sept. 1, 2025, in Medford, MA. All of the following sang, with additional contributions noted:

  • ליליע װײַצמאַן — Lily Weitzman · איבערזעצונג און נײַע סטראָפֿע (translation, introduction and new verse)
  • יונה סידמאַן — Jonah Sidman · גיטאַר (guitar)
  • עמאַ ברעסלאָװ — Emma Breslow · טשאַרלי צאָלט זײַן דײַם (“Charlie pays his dime”) verse
  • שׂרה־לו האַרטמאַן — Lou Hartman · הערט אויס בירגער פֿון באָסטאָן (“Citizens of Boston, hear me out”) verse
  • ליבע גריץ — Linda Gritz

• Marc Caplan in conversation with Yiddish Voice host Mark David (Meyer) about the recent Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown. The film traces Dylan’s formative years, culminating in his landmark performance of Like a Rolling Stone at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival in a mostly-Jewish band of blues-rock musicians — Bob Dylan (guitar and vocals), Michael Bloomfield (guitar), Al Kooper (bass), and Barry Goldberg (organ). (Drummer Sam Lay was the non-Jewish member.) Marc Caplan is a Yiddish literature and Bob Dylan expert, currently Visiting Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth. We reached Marc at his home in the Dartmouth College/Hanover, NH, area via Zoom on Sept. 3, 2025.

  • CORRECTION: Murray Lerner, who filmed the Newport Folk Festivals (including Dylan’s 1965 performance), is incorrectly identified by Meyer as “Lerman” in the interview.
  • Related links:
    • Marc Caplan's article in Afn Shvel #351-350 Winter-Spring 2006: באָב דילאַן: פֿאַרנומען מיטן געבױרן װערן: https://docs.leagueforyiddish.org/mark-brukhes-artikl.pdf
    • Marc Caplan's academic website: https://dartmouth.academia.edu/MarcCaplan
    • Wiki page for the film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Complete_Unknown
    • Mike Bloomfield's Final Interview - Part Two (1981): https://youtu.be/K7cKLr6tOdE
    • Bob Dylan - Like A Rolling Stone (Live at Newport 1965): https://youtu.be/a6Kv0vF41Bc (from Murray Lerner's film The Other Side of the Mirror)

• Music:

  • Kingston Trio: M.T.A. (A/K/A "Charlie on the MTA") (from YouTube: https://youtu.be/S7Jw_v3F_Q0)
  • (Yiddishists in Boston - see credits above): Charlie on the M.T.A. (in Yiddish translation, with added verse)
  • Bob Dylan: Like a Rolling Stone (recorded live at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965)
  • Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air Date: September 3, 2025

• 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