• Leybl Botwinik is a writer of science fiction, poetry and songs (in both Yiddish and English) who grew up in Montreal's vibrant Yiddish cultural scene. He is the son of the late Dovid Botwinik, a composer of Yiddish songs, music educator, and Yiddish activist, and the brother of Sender Botwinik, a Yiddish educator, choral director, and music producer. Now living in Israel, Leybl has passed on the Yiddish language and culture to his children. In this episode, he shares stories from his Yiddishist upbringing as well as personal experiences and reflections on the October 7 massacre. The interview was conducted via Zoom on May 30, 2025 (Erev Shabbos/Shvues).

• Rebbetzin Yetta Kane, a Holocaust survivor, grew up in Miadziol (Yiddish: Miadl – מיאַדל), a small town in Belarus. She recounts memories of her childhood and how her family survived the Holocaust by hiding in the forests of Belarus with the partisans. Yetta and her late husband, Rabbi and Cantor David Kane, co-authored the memoir How to Survive Anything: The Life Story of David and Yetta Kane. This is Part 2 of our interview, recorded at her home in the Los Angeles area on April 8, 2025. Part 1 aired on April 23, 2025.

• Music:

  • Chava Alberstein: Friling
  • Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air Date: June 11, 2025

• Samuel Kassow is interviewed by Sholem Beinfeld about Rokhl Auerbach and her book Warsaw Testament („וואַרשעווער צוואָות“), which Kassow translated into English. The interview was by Zoom on May 30, 2025, with Kassow and Beinfeld at their homes in Connecticut and Cambridge, MA, respectively.

• Samuel Kassow is the Charles H. Northam Professor, Emeritus, of History at Trinity College, and is recognized as one of the world’s leading scholars on the Holocaust and the Jews of Poland. Kassow was born in 1946 in a DP-camp in Stuttgart, Germany and grew up speaking Yiddish. Kassow attended the London School of Economics and Princeton University where he earned a PhD in 1976 with a study about students and professors in Tsarist Russia. He is widely known for his 2007 book Who Will Write Our History? Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archive (Indiana University Press). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research, has won numerous awards, and has lectured widely.

• 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.

• Additional info on Warsaw Testament:

  • Publisher White Goat Press's page: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/about/white-goat-press-0/rokhl-auerbach
  • Distributor page: https://www.ipgbook.com/warsaw-testament-products-9798988677390.php

• Music:

  • Hélène Engel: Yeder Ruft Mikh Zhamele from Voices Of The Ghetto (Voix Du Ghetto): Warszawa, 1943
  • Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff Warschauer: The Singing Waltz

Air Date: June 4, 2025

Air date: May 14, 2025