The Cockney Yiddish Podcast

• 6. Look back in shmaltz

  Episode 6 takes a wallow in nostalgia. Nadia and Vivi listen to a shmaltzy song yearning for Jewish Whitechapel and look at how postwar Yiddish and English-language writers remembered and reinvented the East End. We hear a story, movingly read by Miriam Margolyes, in which the smell of traditional Friday night gefilte fish in the back streets of the East End triggers memories of the Eastern European ‘shtetl’ (town) where the writer grew up and which was destroyed in the Holocaust. We look back at the origins of Jewish East End nostalgia in the nineteenth century, explore Alexander Baron’s fiction from the 1960s and continuing resonances in Eastenders’ memories. Aditi Anand shows us around the Migration Museum in London exploring how migrants to London from around the world remember their origins through food.The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi LachsProduced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of LondonFunded by the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilGuest: Aditi Anand, Artistic Director, Migration MuseumContributor: Celia, Holocaust Survivors’ Centre Yiddish groupArchival recording: Georgia Brown from the radio programme Our East End (BBC Home Service, 1962)Reader: Miriam MargolyesFeatured story: Ella Zilberg, ‘Gefilte Fish’, translated by Vivi Lachs. From East End Jews: Sketches from the London Yiddish Press (Wayne State University Press, 2025)Featured song: Chaim Towber with Johnny Franks Orchestra, ‘Whitechapel’ (Shellac, 10″, 78 RPM, 1951). Digitised on the CD Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World Yiddisher Jazz in London’s East End 1920s-1950s (Playloud, 2018)Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad) and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)Podcast image: © Jeremy Richardson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 5. Khanike oder Krismes

  This episode, entirely in Yiddish, focuses on the pressures on interwar immigrant and second generation Jews to engage with English life and the particular dilemma of what to do about Christmas. We hear Katie Brown’s story of a family negotiating Hanukkah and Christmas and the street song ‘Mayn heym in Ventvort Strit’. This week’s guest, Yiddish teacher Sima Beeri describes her multilingual background and her experience of Lithuanian-Yiddish Christmas. We discuss the way English and Cockney words, like ‘kapati’ (cup of tea), creep into Yiddish texts, with participants of the UK Sof-Vokh Yiddish learners’ and speakers’ Weekend, and the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre Yiddish Group.The episode is entirely in Yiddish. Go to our website for an English transcript.The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi LachsProduced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of LondonFunded by the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilGuest: Sima BeeriContributors: participants from the Yiddish Sof-vokh 2024: Joseph, Pam, Justin, Tamara, Jake, Barry, Motl, and participants of the London Holocaust Survivors Centre Yiddish groupReaders: Vivi Lachs,Sima BeeriFeatured story: Katie Brown, ‘Krismes Prezents’ (Alts in eynem, 1951)Featured song: Raymond Kalman, ‘Mayn heym in ventvort strit’ (streetsong)Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad) and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)Podcast image: © Jeremy Richardson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 4. Oy! Who are you laughing at?

  Did you hear the one about Haimy and Moishe …? In this episode Vivi and Nadia tell some of their families’ favourite Jewish jokes and find out about Cockney-Yiddish rhyming slang with actor Nick Cassenbaum. We look at Yiddish humour with our studio guest, writer Michael Rosen. We discuss his family’s fragmentary use of Yiddish and how he drew on it in his comic writing. We mull over what is so funny about a story of Jewish technical incompetence, and the outrageous adventures of an East End Jewish wife in a Yiddish music hall parody of a famous ragtime song, Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home.The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi LachsProduced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of LondonFunded by the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilGuests: Michael Rosen and Nick CassenbaumReader: Michael RosenFeatured story: Asher Beilin, ‘A Jew Takes a Pleasure Trip’, translated by Vivi Lachs. From East End Jews: Sketches from the London Yiddish Press (Wayne State University Press, 2025)Featured song: Katsha’nes, ‘Vos geyst nisht aheym, sore-gitl?’ (Lyrics: Arn Nager. Music: Hughie Cannon). From the CD Don’t Ask Silly Questions (Katshanes, 2017)Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad) and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)Podcast image: © Jeremy Richardson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 3. When you go to a Yiddish theatre

  Pack your picnic, practise your heckles and come with us to the Yiddish theatre. This episode looks at Yiddish theatre and music hall from its early days in the late nineteenth century, from the popular theatre with its cheap songs and audience misbehaviour to highbrow performances of Shakespeare and opera in Yiddish. Nadia and Vivi bring you a short story about audience antics, and ‘Gevalt polis!’ (Help Police!), a comic song about East End crime. We are joined by the actor and writer David Schneider whose family had a leading role in London’s Yiddish theatre. David performs his grandfather’s translation of Shylock’s ‘Hath not a Jew’ speech in Yiddish, and historian David Mazower describes the doomed attempt to set up a London Yiddish art theatre.The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi LachsProduced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of LondonFunded by the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilGuests: David Schneider and David MazowerReader: David SchneiderFeatured story: A. M. Kaizer ‘When You Go to a Yiddish Theatre’, translated by Vivi Lachs. From London Yiddishtown: East End Jewish Life in Yiddish Sketch and Story, 1930-1950 (Wayne State University Press, 2021)Featured song: Katsha’nes, ‘Gevalt Police’ (Lyrics and music: Anon). From the CD Don’t Ask Silly Questions (Katshanes, 2017)Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad) and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)Podcast image: © Jeremy Richardson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 2. Forverts! Politics and protest

  The East End of London has always been a place of political protest and activism and this episode focuses on East End Jewish radicalism. From the union protests of the 1880s through to fighting fascism in the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, Nadia and Vivi discuss Yiddish-speaking activists in East End politics with historians Professor Ruth Livesey and Dr Sarah Glynn. Join us in listening to Morris Winchevsky’s attempts to cajole Victorian Jewish workers into action with one of his Meshugener Filozof (Crazy Philosopher) columns, read by Nick Cassenbaum, and Winchevsky’s angry ballad ‘London bay nakht’ (London at Night). Join in singing stirring protest songs with the Great Yiddish Parade and the strike songs of the Rego-Polikoff factory women!The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi LachsProduced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of LondonFunded by the Arts and Humanities Research CouncilGuests: Professor Ruth Livesey and Dr Sarah GlynnReader: Nick CassenbaumFeatured story: Morris Winchevsky, ‘How Do You Become a Poet’, translated by Vivi Lachs, from East End Jews: Sketches from the London Yiddish Press (Wayne State University Press, 2025).Featured songs:Klezmer Klub. ‘London bay nakht’. Words: Morris Winchevsky. Music: Vivi Lachs, 2024. http://www.klezmerklub.co.uk.‘Mare Street, Hackney’ (1929) (Rego and Polikoff Strike Songs, 1983)Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad), and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)Podcast image: © Jeremy Richardson Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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