YIVO Announces Its Fall Yiddish Club Celebrating Yiddish Language and Culture

(New York, NY) – The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is excited to announce this fall's YIVO Yiddish Club sessions. This season will be kicked off with Shane Baker as the featured guest and playwright and Tablet Magazine columnist Rokhl Kafrissen as guest host. Other session’s guests include YIVO Sound Archivist and Grammy award-winning musician Lorin Sklamberg and actress, singer, and filmmaker Dylan Seders Hoffman.

Yiddish Club, which began in February 2021, has held nineteen sessions so far, covering topics such as theater, film, food, comedy, music, and more. Hosted by Shane Baker, sessions take place in English, and are liberally peppered with Yiddish. Each month Baker is joined by a guest who discusses their work and a related Yiddish cultural theme.

In the spirit of a club, sessions are held as interactive zoom meetings in which participants can see and hear one another. Each session includes ample time for audience questions, group discussion, and, time permitting, some good old fashion debates. Attendees need not know any Yiddish to attend, though some familiarity with the language is highly recommended.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

What:                    Shane Baker
When:                   Sunday, October 15, 2023 | 2:00pm ET
Where:                 On Zoom
Cost:                     Free
Register:              yivo.org/YiddishClub20

What:                    Lorin Sklamberg
When:                   Sunday, November 19, 2023 | 2:00pm ET
Where:                 On Zoom
Cost:                     Free
Register:              yivo.org/YiddishClub21

What:                    Dylan Seders Hoffman
When:                   Sunday, December 10, 2023 | 2:00pm ET
Where:                 On Zoom
Cost:                     Free
Register:              yivo.org/YiddishClub22

For media inquiries please contact:
Shelly Freeman                          
Chief of Staff

ABOUT THE GUESTS

Shane Baker is the best-loved Episcopalian on the Yiddish stage today. He has starred internationally as Vladimir in his own Yiddish translation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, most recently at Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theater in their first-ever Yiddish production. The New Yorker said of his translation that the play “may finally have found its mother tongue.” Shane serves as director of the Congress for Jewish Culture, a Yiddishist organization based in New York, producing over the pandemic period with critically acclaimed virtual presentations of Sh. Ansky's Der Dybbuk and Itzik Manger's Megillah Cycle. In 2020, he received the Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Award.

Lorin Sklamberg is a Multi-instrumentalist and YIVO Sound Archivist and founding member of the Grammy Award-winning Yiddish-American roots band, the Klezmatics, and has been heard on innumerable recordings and live shows, solo and in collaboration with such diverse artists as Itzhak Perlman, Jane Siberry, Chava Alberstein, Ehud Banai, Yoni Rechter, Emmylou Harris, Tracy Grammer, Neil Sedaka, Natalie Merchant, Tony Kushner and Theodore Bikel. He has composed and performed for film, dance, stage and circus, and has produced a number of recordings of world and theater music.

Dylan Seders Hoffman, actor, singer, and filmmaker is the founder and artistic director of Chava Productions, a film production company which presents original works located at the intersection of pop culture and 21st century Jewishness with a generous dose of Yiddish. Chava Productions’ first short film Yiddish Mean Girls premiered in the fall of 2022. As an actor, she has performed Off-Broadway with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, including in their New York Times Critic's Pick production The Sorceress, with the New Yiddish Rep, and at the New York Theatre Festival.

YIVO

The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is dedicated to the preservation and study of the history and culture of East European Jewry worldwide. For nearly a century, YIVO has pioneered new forms of Jewish scholarship, research, education, and cultural expression. Our public programs and exhibitions, as well as online and on-site courses, extend our outreach to a global community. The YIVO Archives contains 24 million unique items and YIVO’s Library has over 400,000 volumes—the single largest resource for the study of East European Jewish life in the world. yivo.org / yivo.org/the-whole-story