The Living Legacy of Yiddish
When the founders of Temple Beth Israel built our congregation, they brought with them more than tradition — they brought Yiddish, the language of their homes, their humor, and their hearts. Many were Holocaust survivors, carrying with them the richness of Yiddish culture: its music, theater, literature, poetry, and art.
Yiddish grew up in Central and Eastern Europe over the past thousand years, blending German, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Slavic influences. It was the everyday language of Ashkenazi Jews — spoken in homes, markets, theaters, and synagogues. Though the Holocaust nearly silenced it, Yiddish is making a remarkable comeback, embraced by new generations and celebrated around the world.
At the Temple Beth Israel Preservation Society, we’re keeping Yiddish alive in fun and meaningful ways — through music, storytelling, readings, and celebrations. It’s our way of honoring the voices of our founders, sharing their joy and creativity, and making sure the warmth, humor, and spirit of Yiddish continue to thrive in our community.
Amid Falling Walls
We invite you to watch PBS’s Amid Falling Walls, a moving celebration of Yiddish songs and poetry created during the Holocaust—powerful testimony to courage, creativity, and the enduring human spirit.
From Norm Berman
Tayere Fraynt (Dear Friends),
I’m very proud and excited to share this video of Woodie Guthrie’s classic which premiered in Yiddish in February 2021!
Guthrie, was not Jewish, but had deep personal and artistic connections to Yiddish and Jewish culture. His mother-in-law was the acclaimed Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt and the two often performed their works for each other.
With Greenblatt’s input, Guthrie wrote nearly a dozen songs about Hanukkah and other Jewish themes at the suggestion of Moses Asch, the owner of his record label.
Asch was the son of the well-known Yiddish author and playwright, Sholem Asch.
My dear friend, Linda Gritz with whom I sing in the Boston Workers Circle Yiddish Chorus, assisted in the translation into Yiddish.
Let it not be said that Yiddish is dead. We’ve just been ignoring it for a while.
I’m very proud and excited to share this video of Woodie Guthrie’s classic which premiered in Yiddish in February 2021!
Guthrie, was not Jewish, but had deep personal and artistic connections to Yiddish and Jewish culture. His mother-in-law was the acclaimed Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt and the two often performed their works for each other.
With Greenblatt’s input, Guthrie wrote nearly a dozen songs about Hanukkah and other Jewish themes at the suggestion of Moses Asch, the owner of his record label.
Asch was the son of the well-known Yiddish author and playwright, Sholem Asch.
My dear friend, Linda Gritz with whom I sing in the Boston Workers Circle Yiddish Chorus, assisted in the translation into Yiddish.
Let it not be said that Yiddish is dead. We’ve just been ignoring it for a while.
Yidstock 2026: A Language That Refuses to Stand Still
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For four days this past weekend, July 13 through 16, 2026, the National Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, once again became the gathering place for people who believe that Yiddish is not simply a language to be preserved, but a language to be lived.
An estimated 350 to 400 people attended the 14th Annual Yidstock: The Festival of New Yiddish Music, traveling from across the United States, Canada, and beyond. Among them were Norm Berman, Sheri Abrams, Leah Abrams, and Jason Abbate, representing the Temple Beth Israel Preservation Society. For Norm and Sheri, it was their 13th visit to the festival. Like so many others, they came not only to hear remarkable music but to experience the unique atmosphere that only the Book Center can provide. Designed with low rooflines and intimate spaces that evoke the feel of a traditional Eastern European shtetl, the National Yiddish Book Center is itself part of the experience. |
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Its shelves contain hundreds of thousands of Yiddish books, many rescued after having gone out of print or
been discarded. Its archives preserve oral histories, photographs, recordings, manuscripts, and the voices of a civilization that many once feared would disappear after the Holocaust and the passing of the immigrant generation.
To hear Yiddish music performed in that setting is unlike hearing it anywhere else. The concerts are literally surrounded by the literature, history, language, and memories that gave birth to the music. Between performances, festival-goers wander through galleries, browse rare books, visit exhibits, and immerse themselves in a cultural landscape that enriches every note performed on stage.
The festival itself offered an extraordinary range of performances that honored tradition while continually pushing it in new directions. Each artist drew from the wellspring of Yiddish language and culture, yet each demonstrated that this music remains capable of surprising us, challenging us, and speaking powerfully to the present.
The festival opened with the joyous energy of Eleanor Reissa and Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars, whose performance seamlessly blended classic Yiddish song with the exuberance of klezmer, jazz, and brass band traditions. Reissa’s remarkable command of Yiddish song and London’s endlessly inventive musical imagination reminded us why both remain among the leading interpreters of contemporary Yiddish culture.
Riki Rose: Where Yiddish Tradition Meets Modern Soundscapes explored entirely different musical territory. A powerhouse Yiddish singer, songwriter, and entertainer born and raised in the ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Riki is known for reclaiming her voice through a bold blend of traditional Yiddish music, blues, and comedy, all while openly sharing her journey with fans. Her work demonstrated that Yiddish lyrics can inhabit rich contemporary textures without sacrificing their intimacy or emotional authenticity. Rather than treating tradition as something fixed, she invited it into conversation with today’s musical language.
Boston’s own Levyosn brought its distinctive blend of folk, klezmer, and original compositions, performing with warmth, precision, and infectious enthusiasm. Their music which features intricate vocal harmonies, embodies one of the defining characteristics of today’s Yiddish revival: respect for the past coupled with complete confidence in creating something entirely new.
One of the festival’s most moving performances was given by the remarkable Ethel Raim. More than sixty years after co-founding the legendary Pennywhistlers, Raim continues the work that has defined her life’s mission: collecting, preserving, and performing Yiddish song. She was joined by the extraordinary Montreal musician and rapper Josh Dolgin, who assembled a gifted ensemble of instrumentalists that wrapped her voice in a warm, sensitive tapestry of accompaniment, allowing her singing to remain at the heart of the performance. To hear Ethel Raim sing was to experience a direct connection to generations of Yiddish singers whose voices might otherwise have been lost. Her performance was more than a presentation of musical history—it was deeply personal, profoundly generous, and emotionally unforgettable.
Perhaps no artist captured the spirit of the festival more eloquently than Jordan Wax, a Santa Fe based singer songwriter whose concert of new Yiddish songs illustrated the remarkable creative possibilities that continue to emerge from this ancient language. As he explained, his work seeks to bring poems in search of melodies together with melodies in search of poems. That beautiful observation perfectly captured the spirit of Yidstock. The goal is not merely to preserve old songs. It is to create new ones.
Brooklyn-based Midwood continued that exploration, drawing comfortably from klezmer, folk, rock, and contemporary songwriting. Their performance demonstrated that Yiddish music can absorb new influences while remaining unmistakably rooted in its own traditions.
The festival concluded with a spectacular celebration of the 40th Anniversary of The Klezmatics, a group that has done as much as any ensemble to redefine Yiddish music for modern audiences. For four decades they have demonstrated that Yiddish song can address politics, spirituality, joy, grief, love, and social justice with the same urgency it always has. Their anniversary concert was both a celebration of their remarkable career and a reminder of how profoundly they have shaped the contemporary Yiddish musical landscape.
For many of us, Yiddish music inevitably evokes memory. It transports us to the towns and villages where our parents and grandparents lived before the Holocaust. It recalls the bustling Jewish neighborhoods of New York, Boston, Montreal, and countless other immigrant communities where Yiddish was the language of home, commerce, celebration, and everyday conversation. We hear the language they spoke around kitchen tables, in workshops and marketplaces, in synagogues, and at family gatherings. We hear echoes of voices we once knew—and voices we never had the opportunity to hear.
Yet what makes Yidstock so extraordinary is that it refuses to become a festival of nostalgia. This is not simply a celebration of the Yiddish entertainment of an earlier era, wonderful though performers such as the Barry Sisters, Theodore Bikel and Molly Picon undoubtedly were. Instead, Yidstock has become something far more exciting: a laboratory of artistic creativity.
Its musicians are uncovering forgotten poems and giving them new melodies. They are rediscovering old melodies and pairing them with contemporary texts. They are composing entirely new songs in Yiddish that speak to the experiences, hopes, and challenges of the twenty-first century. They draw confidently from jazz, folk, classical music, rock, world music, and experimental traditions while remaining unmistakably grounded in the language and culture from which they spring. The result is not preservation for preservation’s sake. It is renewal.
That may be the National Yiddish Book Center’s greatest achievement. The Center has done far more than rescue more than a million Yiddish books from oblivion. It has created an environment in which literature, scholarship, history, language, and music continually nourish one another. The books on the shelves inspire new songs. The songs send listeners back to the books. Together they ensure that Yiddish remains not simply remembered, but lived.
The founders of our own Temple Beth Israel community would surely have recognized much of what they heard at Yidstock. The language would have been familiar. The stories would have reminded them of their own lives. But they also would have encountered something that would have made them proud: a younger generation embracing Yiddish not as a relic to be preserved behind glass, but as a vibrant language capable of expressing contemporary ideas, emotions, and artistic vision.
The greatest compliment one can pay Yidstock is this: when the final concert ended, no one left feeling they had attended a memorial for a disappearing culture. Instead, we left convinced that Yiddish still has countless new poems to inspire, new melodies to discover, and many new songs yet to sing.
been discarded. Its archives preserve oral histories, photographs, recordings, manuscripts, and the voices of a civilization that many once feared would disappear after the Holocaust and the passing of the immigrant generation.
To hear Yiddish music performed in that setting is unlike hearing it anywhere else. The concerts are literally surrounded by the literature, history, language, and memories that gave birth to the music. Between performances, festival-goers wander through galleries, browse rare books, visit exhibits, and immerse themselves in a cultural landscape that enriches every note performed on stage.
The festival itself offered an extraordinary range of performances that honored tradition while continually pushing it in new directions. Each artist drew from the wellspring of Yiddish language and culture, yet each demonstrated that this music remains capable of surprising us, challenging us, and speaking powerfully to the present.
The festival opened with the joyous energy of Eleanor Reissa and Frank London’s Klezmer Brass Allstars, whose performance seamlessly blended classic Yiddish song with the exuberance of klezmer, jazz, and brass band traditions. Reissa’s remarkable command of Yiddish song and London’s endlessly inventive musical imagination reminded us why both remain among the leading interpreters of contemporary Yiddish culture.
Riki Rose: Where Yiddish Tradition Meets Modern Soundscapes explored entirely different musical territory. A powerhouse Yiddish singer, songwriter, and entertainer born and raised in the ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic community of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Riki is known for reclaiming her voice through a bold blend of traditional Yiddish music, blues, and comedy, all while openly sharing her journey with fans. Her work demonstrated that Yiddish lyrics can inhabit rich contemporary textures without sacrificing their intimacy or emotional authenticity. Rather than treating tradition as something fixed, she invited it into conversation with today’s musical language.
Boston’s own Levyosn brought its distinctive blend of folk, klezmer, and original compositions, performing with warmth, precision, and infectious enthusiasm. Their music which features intricate vocal harmonies, embodies one of the defining characteristics of today’s Yiddish revival: respect for the past coupled with complete confidence in creating something entirely new.
One of the festival’s most moving performances was given by the remarkable Ethel Raim. More than sixty years after co-founding the legendary Pennywhistlers, Raim continues the work that has defined her life’s mission: collecting, preserving, and performing Yiddish song. She was joined by the extraordinary Montreal musician and rapper Josh Dolgin, who assembled a gifted ensemble of instrumentalists that wrapped her voice in a warm, sensitive tapestry of accompaniment, allowing her singing to remain at the heart of the performance. To hear Ethel Raim sing was to experience a direct connection to generations of Yiddish singers whose voices might otherwise have been lost. Her performance was more than a presentation of musical history—it was deeply personal, profoundly generous, and emotionally unforgettable.
Perhaps no artist captured the spirit of the festival more eloquently than Jordan Wax, a Santa Fe based singer songwriter whose concert of new Yiddish songs illustrated the remarkable creative possibilities that continue to emerge from this ancient language. As he explained, his work seeks to bring poems in search of melodies together with melodies in search of poems. That beautiful observation perfectly captured the spirit of Yidstock. The goal is not merely to preserve old songs. It is to create new ones.
Brooklyn-based Midwood continued that exploration, drawing comfortably from klezmer, folk, rock, and contemporary songwriting. Their performance demonstrated that Yiddish music can absorb new influences while remaining unmistakably rooted in its own traditions.
The festival concluded with a spectacular celebration of the 40th Anniversary of The Klezmatics, a group that has done as much as any ensemble to redefine Yiddish music for modern audiences. For four decades they have demonstrated that Yiddish song can address politics, spirituality, joy, grief, love, and social justice with the same urgency it always has. Their anniversary concert was both a celebration of their remarkable career and a reminder of how profoundly they have shaped the contemporary Yiddish musical landscape.
For many of us, Yiddish music inevitably evokes memory. It transports us to the towns and villages where our parents and grandparents lived before the Holocaust. It recalls the bustling Jewish neighborhoods of New York, Boston, Montreal, and countless other immigrant communities where Yiddish was the language of home, commerce, celebration, and everyday conversation. We hear the language they spoke around kitchen tables, in workshops and marketplaces, in synagogues, and at family gatherings. We hear echoes of voices we once knew—and voices we never had the opportunity to hear.
Yet what makes Yidstock so extraordinary is that it refuses to become a festival of nostalgia. This is not simply a celebration of the Yiddish entertainment of an earlier era, wonderful though performers such as the Barry Sisters, Theodore Bikel and Molly Picon undoubtedly were. Instead, Yidstock has become something far more exciting: a laboratory of artistic creativity.
Its musicians are uncovering forgotten poems and giving them new melodies. They are rediscovering old melodies and pairing them with contemporary texts. They are composing entirely new songs in Yiddish that speak to the experiences, hopes, and challenges of the twenty-first century. They draw confidently from jazz, folk, classical music, rock, world music, and experimental traditions while remaining unmistakably grounded in the language and culture from which they spring. The result is not preservation for preservation’s sake. It is renewal.
That may be the National Yiddish Book Center’s greatest achievement. The Center has done far more than rescue more than a million Yiddish books from oblivion. It has created an environment in which literature, scholarship, history, language, and music continually nourish one another. The books on the shelves inspire new songs. The songs send listeners back to the books. Together they ensure that Yiddish remains not simply remembered, but lived.
The founders of our own Temple Beth Israel community would surely have recognized much of what they heard at Yidstock. The language would have been familiar. The stories would have reminded them of their own lives. But they also would have encountered something that would have made them proud: a younger generation embracing Yiddish not as a relic to be preserved behind glass, but as a vibrant language capable of expressing contemporary ideas, emotions, and artistic vision.
The greatest compliment one can pay Yidstock is this: when the final concert ended, no one left feeling they had attended a memorial for a disappearing culture. Instead, we left convinced that Yiddish still has countless new poems to inspire, new melodies to discover, and many new songs yet to sing.
Essential Reading for Exploring Yiddish Language, Culture, and Renewal
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For nearly all of the founders of our community, Yiddish was far more than a language. It was the language of family, memory, humor, song, literature, and everyday life. It connected them to the towns and cities of Eastern Europe, to immigrant neighborhoods in New York and other American cities, and to loved ones whose lives were cut short during the Holocaust.
Today, Yiddish is experiencing a remarkable renewal. |
New generations of scholars, musicians, writers, performers, and students are discovering the richness of Yiddish language and culture.
The books pictured below provide an excellent starting point for anyone interested in learning more about the history, significance, decline, survival, and revival of Yiddish.
Together, these works tell a remarkable story: how Yiddish became the language of a global Jewish civilization, how it shaped American culture, how its literature was rescued from near extinction, and how it continues to thrive in the twenty-first century.
Yiddish: A Nation of Words
Miriam Weinstein
Part memoir, part travelogue, and part cultural history, Miriam Weinstein’s engaging book explores the world of Yiddish and the people who continue to keep it alive. Through conversations with scholars, artists, and everyday speakers, she demonstrates how a language once spoken by millions remains a powerful source of identity, memory, and creativity. Accessible and deeply personal, it is often considered one of the best introductions to the modern Yiddish revival.
How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish
Ilan Stavans
Language scholar Ilan Stavans traces the fascinating two-way exchange between Yiddish and American culture. From words such as “chutzpah,” “schlep,” and “kvetch” that entered everyday English, to the ways American life transformed the language itself, Stavans reveals the enduring influence of Yiddish on American speech, humor, entertainment, and identity. The book offers a lively exploration of cultural adaptation and resilience.
Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books
Aaron Lansky
One of the most inspiring stories in modern Jewish cultural history, Aaron Lansky recounts the creation of the Yiddish Book Center and his extraordinary effort to save Yiddish books from destruction. What began as a race to rescue discarded volumes from basements, attics, and garages became an international movement that preserved a literary civilization. The book is a testament to the determination of individuals who refused to let an entire culture disappear.
Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish
Dovid Katz
Renowned linguist Dovid Katz presents a sweeping history of Yiddish from its medieval origins through its flowering in Eastern Europe and its challenges in the modern era. Rich with historical detail and colorful personalities, the book illustrates how Yiddish became the language of a vibrant civilization and why its story remains unfinished. Katz’s work is both scholarly and passionate, emphasizing the language’s enduring vitality.
Yiddish
Jeffrey Shandler
Part of the Yale University Press “Jewish Lives” and cultural history series, Jeffrey Shandler’s concise volume examines Yiddish not simply as a language but as a symbol of Jewish culture, memory, and identity. Shandler explores how Yiddish continues to evolve through literature, music, theater, film, scholarship, and digital media. The book offers an insightful look at how Yiddish remains relevant in the twenty-first century.
These books provide different pathways into the world of Yiddish—through language, history, literature, personal narrative, and cultural preservation. Together they tell the story of a language that survived migration, assimilation, and catastrophe, and that continues to inspire new generations.
As we honor the founders of Temple Beth Israel and preserve their stories, we also celebrate the language that shaped many of their lives and connected them to their families, communities, and heritage. We invite you to explore these works and discover the remarkable journey of Yiddish—a language that continues to speak across generations.
The books pictured below provide an excellent starting point for anyone interested in learning more about the history, significance, decline, survival, and revival of Yiddish.
Together, these works tell a remarkable story: how Yiddish became the language of a global Jewish civilization, how it shaped American culture, how its literature was rescued from near extinction, and how it continues to thrive in the twenty-first century.
Yiddish: A Nation of Words
Miriam Weinstein
Part memoir, part travelogue, and part cultural history, Miriam Weinstein’s engaging book explores the world of Yiddish and the people who continue to keep it alive. Through conversations with scholars, artists, and everyday speakers, she demonstrates how a language once spoken by millions remains a powerful source of identity, memory, and creativity. Accessible and deeply personal, it is often considered one of the best introductions to the modern Yiddish revival.
How Yiddish Changed America and How America Changed Yiddish
Ilan Stavans
Language scholar Ilan Stavans traces the fascinating two-way exchange between Yiddish and American culture. From words such as “chutzpah,” “schlep,” and “kvetch” that entered everyday English, to the ways American life transformed the language itself, Stavans reveals the enduring influence of Yiddish on American speech, humor, entertainment, and identity. The book offers a lively exploration of cultural adaptation and resilience.
Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books
Aaron Lansky
One of the most inspiring stories in modern Jewish cultural history, Aaron Lansky recounts the creation of the Yiddish Book Center and his extraordinary effort to save Yiddish books from destruction. What began as a race to rescue discarded volumes from basements, attics, and garages became an international movement that preserved a literary civilization. The book is a testament to the determination of individuals who refused to let an entire culture disappear.
Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish
Dovid Katz
Renowned linguist Dovid Katz presents a sweeping history of Yiddish from its medieval origins through its flowering in Eastern Europe and its challenges in the modern era. Rich with historical detail and colorful personalities, the book illustrates how Yiddish became the language of a vibrant civilization and why its story remains unfinished. Katz’s work is both scholarly and passionate, emphasizing the language’s enduring vitality.
Yiddish
Jeffrey Shandler
Part of the Yale University Press “Jewish Lives” and cultural history series, Jeffrey Shandler’s concise volume examines Yiddish not simply as a language but as a symbol of Jewish culture, memory, and identity. Shandler explores how Yiddish continues to evolve through literature, music, theater, film, scholarship, and digital media. The book offers an insightful look at how Yiddish remains relevant in the twenty-first century.
These books provide different pathways into the world of Yiddish—through language, history, literature, personal narrative, and cultural preservation. Together they tell the story of a language that survived migration, assimilation, and catastrophe, and that continues to inspire new generations.
As we honor the founders of Temple Beth Israel and preserve their stories, we also celebrate the language that shaped many of their lives and connected them to their families, communities, and heritage. We invite you to explore these works and discover the remarkable journey of Yiddish—a language that continues to speak across generations.