LISTENING IN ANNA BEHRMANN’S PICK OF THE BEST JEWISH-INTEREST PODCASTS
THE KIBBITZ
THIS IS a fun, lively and intellectual look at Jewish ideas and culture, recorded in America but of global interest. Journalist Dan Crane and comedian Jessica Chaffin are kibbitzing — the Yiddish word for passing the time, chatting and making jokes
— but they are also very good interviewers. They speak to art historians, writers, academics — anyone with an interesting project — for each roughly themed episode.
In The False Lens of History episode, they talk to Maya Benton, a curator at the International Centre for Photography in New York, about the photography of Roman Vishniac, a Russian-American born in 1897. He was commissioned by a Jewish relief organisation to document impoverished Eastern European Jews between 1935 and 1938, in order to encourage philanthropists to donate.
Vishniac could not have known how these communities would be decimated in the Holocaust and that his photographs would be pretty much all that was left to remember them. The subjects that he chose to photograph, mainly pious bearded Jewish men and boys in kippahs, form our knowl- edge of this “vanished world.” Curator Maya Benton argues in the podcast that there was in fact a secular, middle-class Jewish community as well. There was affluence and beautiful women wearing brightly designed, hand-made dresses. This frivolity and passion was not documented by Vishniac — but we should remember it as part of the history. Download episodes on iTunes or listen on the website: www.kibitzpod. com/s2-episode-25
CAN WE TALK? (JEWISH WOMEN’S ARCHIVE)
CAN WE Talk? is a very slick and polished monthly podcast, which covers culture, current events, politics and little-known stories from a female perspective. It’s not in any way preachy; it’s fun, often poetic and thought-provoking. In its variety and seriousness, it’s not dissimilar to the BBC’s Woman’s Hour.
For one of the episodes, the hosts interview Anita Diamant, author of the seminal 1997 novel
The Red Tent. They read extracts from the book which gives a voice to Dinah, who does not say a word in the book of Genesis, as well as the other biblical matriarchs around her. While I haven’t read the novel and felt I had missed the boat because it was published so long ago, I am definitely interested in reading it now.
Other episodes include a 30th anniversary celebration of the 1987 coming-of-age film Dirty Dancing, set at a kosher seaside resort. In another, they join the Mah Jong Tov Club where they play the ancient Chinese game which has become a part of Jewish culture in America. Apparently younger Jewish women are now playing Mah Jong, so when will the trend catch on in the UK? Can We Talk? is run by the Jewish Women’s Archive, which is an American national organisation dedicated to documenting and promoting stories of Jewish women. Download on iTunes or listen on the website: www.jwa.org/podcasts/ canwetalk
UNORTHODOX, TABLET MAGAZINE
THIS FAST-TALKING weekly podcast covers a lot of ground in terms of highbrow and more popular Jewish culture, as well as current affairs. A lot of the podcast is about Jewish life in America, although it does also cover Jewish culture generally. In one episode, they remember Philip Roth, tracing his position in the literary Jewish canon. In another, they mark the festival of Shavuot by hearing stories from people around the world who have converted to Judaism. Download on i-Tunes or listen on the website: www.tabletmag.com/ author/unorthodox
VAYBERTAYTSH
I CAN’T understand a word of this, but anyone who speaks Yiddish should definitely give it a listen. Vaybertaytsh is a feminist podcast in Yiddish aimed at millenials. Sandy Fox, 29, founded and produced the podcast, and the majority of the approximately 6,000 listeners a month are under 40. Recent episodes have included an interview with a former Chasidic Jew who left her community and became a lesbian, a fair-trade fashion entrepreneur, and a scholar of
Soviet Jewish history. Download on i-Tunes or listen on the website: www. vaybertaytsh.com
They speak to a Chasidic Jew who became a lesbian