Preserving Life Stories Told in Yiddish

מיר װינטשן פֿאַר אײַך אַלע אַ גוט פֿרײלעך נײַ יאָר

Happy New Year to All!

News

Yiddish Lives on the Radio:

Yiddish Lives was featured on KSVY Radio from Sonoma, CA. We were invited to speak about our project as well as Yiddish preservation in general for their Chanukah program. You can listen to the show here.

Non-Profit Status:

On December 31st, 2009, Yiddish Lives filed Articles of Incorporation with the State of California! Additionally, we’ve applied for a tax ID with the IRS. Once we have these both in hand, we’ll apply for our official 501(3)(c) Non-Profit Corporation status. With that, if YouTube approves of our project, they will allow us to put up videos without the 11 minute restriction we’re currently coping with.

Upcoming Events

New Releases!

Anatomy of a Yiddish Reading Group Eli Katz was a professor at Berkeley and a well known translator of Yiddish literature. With his parting, we felt it was important to show how wonderful and wondrous a Yiddish reading group could be, as it was with him. Luckily, we had Max Ticktin’s group in Washington, D.C., which remains a role model.

We interviewed Carolyn Shapiro at her home in Maryland. As you can tell, she has a lovely smile and likes to laugh. During our time together, she talked about her family, growing up, Yiddish theatre, and took us on a tour of rare pictures from a past long ago.

Flo Stofsky is a New Yorker, was born a New Yorker, and will likely always be a New Yorker. We are lucky and delighted to hear her detailed accounts of life growing up in the Bronx Coops.

Harvey Spiro is a passionate Yiddishist. He’s worked and studied hard to become proficient in Yiddish. In the segment, taken after much arm twisting, he talks about his life, but also some of what he went through to become as good a Yiddish speaker and reader as he now is. Beyond his life as a student of Yiddish, Harvey has also been very helpful as a Yiddish group organizer in the Greater Washington D.C. area.

Wow. Just Wow. Hilda Rubin is the one responsible for getting us to Washington and Maryland. We owe her an enormous debt of gratitude. She has lived vast portions of her life in the Yiddish worlds in ways that many of us only read about. She is an enormous treasure trove of knowledge, experience and information about the Bronx co-operatives, Yiddish theatre and its performers. These interviews only scratch the surface and we are looking forward to more time with Hilda.

Jack Moskowitz is a funny guy. He took us away from all the serious discussions and made us laugh. Not all of his stories are G rated, but from what we’ve heard so far, they are very real and some show aspects of life in the Yiddish speaking community that you might not hear elsewhere.

You will surely remember Rita Rubinstein from the group, “Die Freyliche Knaidlach“. We have a very important set of interviews here. They are quite different from the joyous songs we mentioned in our last newsletter (YiddishLives.com/FK). These conversations are firsthand accounts of a life that started in Romania and are not to be missed. They are moving and beautiful, as is Rita herself.

Sarita Zimmerman will charm you. If you haven’t heard someone from Buenos Aires speak Yiddish, you’re in for a treat. Listening to her language and her story will remind you how universal Yiddish was and remains to this day.

Contact Us

As always, you can contact us at any time by phone or email.
email: info@YiddishLives.com
phone: (408) 457-0075

If you like the program, you might want to let KSVY know. Their site is: http://thmm.com/ksvy. You can also contact them directly by clicking here.

December 2009 Newsletter

Yiddish:
Ven ikh nem gezegnen zikh
Mit der mame
Loyft di gantse shtib oyf gikh
Zikh tsuzamen
Loyft di gantse shtib oyf gikh
Zikh tsuzamen

Vi zhe geystu hey du yat?
Yusl shoyte
Vils gor veren a soldat bay die royte
Vils gor veren a soldat bay die royte

Es hobn di royte kayn giver
Kayn soldatn
Svet dem Bolshevik on dir
Gournit shatn
Svet dem Bolshevik on dir
Gournit shatn

Dan geshtanen dan bin ikh
Zey tsu zogn
Hudyet tsu beveynen mir
Hudyet klugn
Hudyet tsu beveynen mir
Hudyet klugn

English:
When I started saying goodbye
To my mother
Everyone in the house rushed in
All together
Everyone in the house rushed in
All together

So where the heck are you going
You jerk?
I want to be a solider with the red army
I want to be a solider with the red army

They have not guns
No soldiers
There will be Bolsheviks even without you
They wont miss you
There will be Bolsheviks even without you
They wont miss you

Then I stood up
to tell them
Its useless to cry for me
Its useless to wail
Its useless to cry for me
Its useless to wail