Itzik Gottesman
By Itzik Gottesman
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The Schmooze American Cradle
On the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Forverts associate editor Itzik Gottesman writes about “Mayn shifl” (“My Cradle”) by poet Leah Kapilowitz Hofman, as sung by Nitsa Ranz: Nitsa Ranz was born in Poland in 1922 and emigrated to America in 1950. Mayn shifl (My Cradle) was recorded at an event that I produced…
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The Schmooze A Yiddish Writer’s Fashion and Misfortune
On the Yiddish Song of the Week blog, Forverts associate editor Itzik Gottesman writes about “Di mode” (“Fashion”), a poem by the early Yiddish writer Yitskhok Yoel Linetski, as adapted by his grandmother, Lifshe Schaechter-Widman: I never thought I would thank Google Books in this blog, but the website has opened up tremendous possibilities for…
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The Schmooze Yeshiva University Linguist Honored by Basque Academy
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. Translated by Ezra Glinter. On October 3, Yeshiva University socio-linguist and longtime Forverts contributor Dr. Joshua A. Fishman was honored by the Euskaltzaindia, or Royal Academy of the Basque Language, for his contribution to the struggle on behalf of “minoritized” languages. At a ceremony at the…
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The Schmooze For Gypsy Travelers, All Roads Lead to Budapest
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. For musicians traveling through Eastern Europe in search of the authentic Gypsy experience, all roads lead to Bob Cohen in Budapest. A fiddler, scholar and gracious host, Cohen could tell you in which Transylvanian town you can still find an old-time band, or just a lone…
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The Schmooze A Star Is Born at KlezKanada
Each year the KlezKanada Summer Institute, held for a week in August in the Laurentian mountains north of Montreal, reveals new surprises. This time around choreographer Steven Weintraub introduced a masquerade ball, so couples were dancing “Pas Despans” along with their bulgars and freilichs. Eight virtuoso musicians from The Other Europeans project, which examines Jewish…
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Culture Ten Years of Yiddish Summer Weimar
Each summer, it seems, it gets harder to keep track of the Jewish culture and klezmer festivals around the world. This summer, we saw Klezfest London, the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, and then — starting at the end of August — New York’s Yidish-Vokh, KlezKanada in Quebec and Ashkenaz in Toronto. These are being…
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News Reminiscing About Chaim Grade’s Widow, a Caustic Woman Known as the ‘Black Witch’
During my extensive interviews with my father about our family, he would occasionally add the phrase “Mayne reyd zoln nisht tsu shver zany” — “May my words not be too heavy” — a traditional expression used when you say something critical about someone who has died. But there arose some moments during our talks when…
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Culture Fusion Shmusion
With a multitude of workshops for musicians and Yiddish culture buffs, the annual KlezKanada Festival takes place at the end of August in the mountains north of Montreal. This year, I was able to sit in on Josh Dolgin’s “Fusion Shmusion” class, whose catalog description started with the question, “Does most Jewishy fusion music suck?”…
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