The Yiddish Radio Project
'Gems from the Yiddish Radio Archive' Web Series Concludes

Gems from the Yiddish Radio Archive This week's feature: "Loving Your Stepchildren", a man-on-the-street contest by Yiddish radio stalwart Victor Packer. Victor Packer in the studio. Photo © 2002 Sound Portraits Productions The "Gems from the Archive" series concludes with a farewell visit to the streets of Brooklyn with radio impresario Victor Packer. Listen in as this Yiddish radio hero chews the fat with housewives and shopkeepers on the corner of Clarkson Avenue. The topic of conversation: "Can a mother love her stepchildren as much as her own children?" Host Victor Packer skillfully elicits opinions, stories and even songs from contestants eager for a shot at winning two containers of Foremost pasteurized milk.

Learn more about this week's Yiddish Radio Gem.  Experience the Yiddish Radio Project documentary on Victor Packer, the "one-man radio deparment".

Stories from the original 10-part series heard on All Things Considered:  March 19 -- Series introduction  March 26 -- Yiddish Melodies in Swing  April 2 -- The radio dramas of Nahum Stutchkoff  April 9 -- Charles A. Levine, the first transatlantic passenger  April 16 -- Yiddish radio's unique commercials  April 23 -- C. Israel Lutsky, "The Jewish Philosopher"  April 30 -- Seymour Rexite, the "Yiddish Frank Sinatra"  May 7 -- Ground- breaking radio programmer Victor Packer  May 14 -- Rabbi Rubin's on-air people's court  May 21 -- Holocaust survivors and Reunion

The recent 10-part Yiddish Radio Project series from npr.org and YiddishRadioProject.org continues online with a 26-week festival of Yiddish radio.

Every Tuesday, "Gems from the Yiddish Radio Archive" features another classic recording from the Yiddish radio vaults -- presented it in its entirety, with simultaneous English text translations.

Musician and historian Henry Sapoznik collaborated with Dave Isay, the MacArthur Award-winning radio documentary producer, to create the ongoing series celebrating these recordings, and the forgotten radio geniuses of the golden age of Yiddish-American broadcasting in the 1930s to '50s.

The Yiddish Radio Project stems from one fateful day 17 years ago when Sapoznik walked into an old New York City storeroom.

There, among looming stacks of broken records and musty pamphlets, Sapoznik made the discovery of a lifetime: a handful of single-cut aluminum transcription disks of Yiddish radio shows from the 1930s and '40s.

In the years since then, Sapoznik has combed attics, flea markets and even dumpsters in an attempt to find and preserve all of the last surviving remnants of Yiddish radio.

The collection has grown to more than 500 hours of recordings on 1,000 fragile disks, with everything from man-on-the-street interviews and news programs to searing dramas and swinging music shows -- the last recorded vestiges of a people in the midst of a cultural renaissance.

"You have to remember, these are one-of-a-kind recordings," explains Sapoznik. "So much was so close to being lost forever. What choice did I have?"

Isay says listening to the rare cache of broadcast disks "was like opening up King Tut's Tomb."

"Taken together, the collection give us this incredibly intimate snapshot of American Jewish life in the 1930s and '40s.

"You see the collision of Yiddish and American cultures, the day-to-day lives of immigrants struggling to make it in a new land, and the dawning reality of the genocide occurring across the ocean."

 Yiddish Words -- An audible glossary of familiar terms.


Other Resources

• Visit the official Web site of the Yiddish Radio Project.

• Listen to the current incarnation of WEVD's classic Forward Hour.

• Yiddish Radio Project producer Henry Sapoznik is also the executive director of LivingTraditions.org, supporting education in "community-based traditional folk culture."

• The Yiddish Voice, a radio show based in Boston, Mass., features live Web audio on Wednesdays.

• Learn more about the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass.

• Read about the Spoken Yiddish Language Project at Columbia University.

• Make Yiddish online with the virtual Yiddish Typewriter.

• Web site for the Dora Teitelboim Center for Yiddish Culture.

• Hungry for klezmer music? Legacy Recordings has three CDs from classic klezmer artists.

E-mail this Page

 

Recipient's e-mail address:	» Up to twelve addresses, separated by commas.
Your e-mail address:
Your name:
Personal message (optional, 600 characters max):
Your NPR member station:	» List of local stations (PDF)
Are you a member of your local NPR station?	Yes    No
Would you like to receive information from your local NPR member station? (see NPR's privacy policy)	Yes    No
May we contact you with information about NPR programming and services? (see NPR's privacy policy)	Yes    No
(Information collected by NPR will be used solely for internal NPR or NPR member station purposes and only if you selected 'yes' above. See NPR's privacy policy for more information.)