The 'Yiddish Voice' Podcast Yiddish Voice ייִדיש קול

Interview with acclaimed performing artist Eleanor Reissa discussing her recently published memoir The Letters Project: A Daughter's Journey. In 1986, after her mother's death, Reissa discovered fifty-six letters written by her late father. She set them aside for forty years before finally having them translated, which led to set her on a journey to her father's history during the Holocaust, which had been largely hidden from her. The book can be found in bookstores and online, including Eleanor Reissa's website eleanorreissa.com and Amazon. An audio version of the book, with Reissa's own narration, is also available through Audible. Eleanor Reissa is an American actress, singer, theatre director, playwright, librettist, choreographer, translator, and author based in New York City, who performs in both Yiddish and English. For more information on Eleanor Reissa and The Letters Project visit: eleanorreissa.com

The interview is conducted by Yiddish Voice co-host Lillian Shporer-Leavitt, a daughter of Shoah survivors who grew up speaking Yiddish and graduated from the Boston Workmen's Circle Yiddish Shule. A former computer business analyst and software trainer, she is an experienced Yiddish teacher and translator, having taught at the Workmen's Circle, Gann Academy of Greater Boston, Boston University Hillel, and Brandeis University. In addition, she has subtitled Yiddish films for the National Center for Jewish Film and translated Yizkor (memorial) books for the Jewish Genealogical Society.


Music/Spoken Word recordings:

Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman: Zumerteg
Zvee Scooler: Vakatsye in di Berg
Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS, an instrumental track from the CD Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz


Air date: August 17, 2022

We continue our summer rerun season with a panel discussion of the tragic events of August 12, 1952, in Moscow, with Gennady Estraikh, Jana Mazurkiewicz Meisarosh, and Sholem Beinfeld, which was originally aired August 12, 2020.

Air date: July 27, 2022

PS: you can still find the original podcast in our archive:

https://the-yiddish-voice-podcast.zencast.website/episodes/estraikh-mazurkiewicz-meisarosh-beinfeld-august-12-1952

Part 1: We took a temporary break from our summer rerun season to bring our dear listeners breaking news, of a sort, from the real world: we reached friend of the show Gitu Cycowics hours after her meeting with President Biden at Yad Vashem to get her first impressions. Gitu -- a/k/a Giselle (Gita) Cycowicz (née Friedman) -- who was born in 1927 in the town of Chust in the Carpathian Mountains, then part of Czechoslovakia, survived Auschwitz and other camps, later starting a new life in the USA, and eventually getting her PhD in psychology. In her later years, she moved to Israel and then worked for decades for AMCHA (https://amcha.org), helping with the psychological needs of her fellow survivors. Today (Weds., Jul. 13, 2022) she was one of two Holocaust survivors invited to meet President Joseph Biden at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. We are thankful for sharing with us her first impressions of that experience hours after it took place. Here is a YouTube from the live stream of Gitu meeting Biden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q96DZT4qMXs&t=731s Here is Gitu's page at Yad Vashem: https://www.yadvashem.org/blog/i-have-to-tell-my-story-giselle-cycowicz.html

Part 2: We continue our summer rerun season with an interview of Diego Rotman, interviewed by Sholem Beinfeld, discussing the famed Yiddish actors and comics Shimon Dzigan and Yisroel Schumacher. The interview was originally aired in March, 2022.

Air date: July 13, 2022

PS: you can still find the original podcast containing the Diego Rotman interview aired on Mar. 2, 2022, in our archive:

https://the-yiddish-voice-podcast.zencast.website/episodes/diego-rotman-dzigan-schumacher

This week we listen back to our February 2018 interview with Zvi Gitelman, Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, author and editor of numerous books, including A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (2001) and The New Jewish Diaspora: Russian-speaking Immigrants in the United States, Israel and Germany (2016), speaking with Sholem Beinfeld.

Air date: July 6, 2022

PS: you can still find the original podcast containing this interview aired on Feb. 7, 2018, in our archive:

https://the-yiddish-voice-podcast.zencast.website/episodes/zvi-gitelman

This week we listen back to our March 2020 interview with Elissa Bemporad, author of the book Legacy of Blood: Jews, Pogroms, and Ritual Murder in the Lands of the Soviets (Oxford University Press, 2019), interviewed by Sholem Beinfeld. Today we're re-airing the entire interview. It was originally aired in two parts in amid the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and may have gotten a bit lost in the shuffle. But in case you missed it or just want to relisten, it's still as interesting and relevant today, if not more so, considering today's war between Russia and Ukraine in the news.

Air date: June 29, 2022

PS: you can still find the original podcasts containing this interview aired on Mar. 18 and Mar. 25, 2020, in our archive:

Part 1: https://the-yiddish-voice-podcast.zencast.website/episodes/covid-19-with-berger-schaechter-plus-author-elissa-bemporad

Part 2: https://the-yiddish-voice-podcast.zencast.website/episodes/covid-19-avremi-zak-author-elissa-bemporad-cont-eli-rosen-unorthodox-s-yiddish-consultant

This week, we're listening back to a favorite Yiddish Voice interview from the past: our interview with famed American-Israeli actor and singer Mike Burstyn, discussing the streamed production Megillah Cycle as well as many aspects of Yiddish theater and his history with it, originally aired in February 2021.

Air date: June 22, 2022

PS: you can still find the original podcast containing this interview, and the original podcast with part 2 of this interview, in our archive:

Part 1: https://the-yiddish-voice-podcast.zencast.website/episodes/the-megillah-and-mike-burstyn

Part 2: https://the-yiddish-voice-podcast.zencast.website/episodes/the-megillah-and-mike-burstyn-part-2