Yiddish New York

Celebrating Yiddish Music, Language, and Culture!

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Evening/Special Events Announced!

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Book of J - Jewlia Eisenberg & Jeremiah Lockwood
Book of J – Jewlia Eisenberg & Jeremiah Lockwood

We’re excited to announce the calendar of Special Events for the second annual Yiddish New York, which is being held from Saturday, December 24 – Thursday, December 29, with pre-festival events starting on Thursday, December 8. Special events include dance parties, concerts, lectures, historical neighborhood walking tours and more!

This year’s events feature a host of leading performers of Yiddish Arts, including Grammy-winning trumpeter Frank London (The Klezmatics); acclaimed Montreal rapper Socalled; Smithsonian Folkways recording artists The Brothers Nazaroff which features Daniel Kahn (Berlin), Psoy Korolenko (Moscow), Bob Cohen (Budapest) and Jake Shulman-Ment (Brooklyn); ECM recording artist Judith Berkson; internationally celebrated cantor Jack Mendelson; two projects of guitarist/singer Jeremiah Lockwood – his acclaimed ensemble The Sway Machinery, and the Book of J, a new collaboration with singer Jewlia Eisenberg; NEA National Heritage Fellow/percussionist Elaine Hoffman Watts and her daughter Susan Hoffman Watts; renowned Yiddish singer Zhenya Lopatnik – a new transplant to New York from Kharkiv, Ukraine; and acclaimed clarinetist Michael Winograd. The centerpiece event will be the Adrienne Cooper Memorial Dreaming in Yiddish Concert, which will be held at 8pm Sunday evening December 25 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (36 Battery Place). This year’s Dreaming in Yiddish Concert will honor poet Irena Klepfisz.

Admission to events is included with registration for 6-day pass holders. Tickets will go on sale soon for individual concerts. To see the calendar click here.

For information on YNY’s Daytime Programs at 14th Street Y click here.

2016 Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Award Winner Announced!

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Irena Klepfisz, picture by Linda Eber
Irena Klepfisz, photo by Linda Eber

We are pleased to announce that the 2016 Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Award will be presented to Yiddish poet/activist Irena Klepfisz. Commemorating the life’s work and legacy of Yiddish singer/activist Adrienne Cooper (1946-2011), the award will be presented at the 2016 Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Concert on Sunday, December 25th, 8:00PM, at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (check back at YNY’s website soon for information about tickets). Admission to the concert is included in YNY’s Full Festival 6-day Pass.

Born in the Warsaw ghetto, Irena Klepfisz is a poet, Yiddish translator, and teacher of English literature, Yiddish language and literature, and Women’s Studies. She is the author of the poetry collection A Few Words in the Mother Tongue and Dreams of an Insomniac: Jewish Feminist Essays, Speeches, and Diatribes. Klepfisz is additionally a co-editor of The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology and Jewish Women’s Call for Peace: A Handbook for Jewish Women on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict, and served for many years as Yiddish editor for Bridges magazine. She has been a long-time activist whose work has addressed homophobia in the Jewish community, women and peace in the Middle East, and secular Jewish identity. She taught for 10 years at Bedford Correctional Facility for Women and has been teaching Jewish Women’s Studies for 20 years at Barnard College.

The Adrienne Cooper Fund for Dreaming in Yiddish supports artists as they embark on the timeless, boundless, utterly unexpected adventure of working in Yiddish. Previous award winners are Jenny Romaine, Michael Wex and Josh Dolgin (a.k.a Socalled).