Yosef Ostrovsky Exhibition

Yosef Ostrovsky Exhibition in Ma’ale Adumim

A major exhibition of artworks by Yosef Ostrovsky (1935–1993) titled Jewish Sound and Soul: From Odessa to Ma’ale Adumim, dedicated to the 90 year anniversary of the artist’s birth, opened earlier in December 2024 at the Moshe Castel Museum of Art in Ma’ale Adumim, Israel.

Yosef Ostrovsky was born in the small Ukrainian town of Shepetovka, but lived most of his life in Odessa. Critics compare his works to the finest production of the École de Paris. In 1984, the office of the Soviet Yiddish magazine Sovetish Heymland held an exhibition of his works, which was accompanied by a publication in the magazine itself. In 1989 the artist immigrated from the USSR to Israel, where he spent most of his time in Ma’ale Adumim.

Riki Rose’s New Song

Riki Rose, a talented young singer and composer who lives in New York, posted on YouTube a recording of her new Yiddish song “Utem Arein Utem Arois” (“Breathe in, breathe out”), produced and arranged by Shloime Bernstein and mixed by Yanky Cohen. The video clip is accompanied by the song’s lyrics.
Rose was raised in a family of Satmar Hasidim; she is singing in her native Yiddish dialect of Austrian-Hungarian origin. Besides her musical activities, she also writes essays in Yiddish. Her colleagues involved in the this song production grew up in Yiddish-speaking Hasidic communities as well.

Yiddish at Nizhny Novgorod Gala

On October 24, 2024, a gala concert, which included the Russian opera award ceremony “Casta Diva”, took place at the Opera and Ballet Theater of Nizhny Novgorod. Among other music compositions presented at this prestigious event was the Yiddish song “Yosl and Sore-Dvoshe”, arranged by the composer Leonid Desyatnikov and performed by the international award-winning opera singer Maria Kalinina.

Previously, on June 9, 2024, Kalinina had performed in Nizhny Novgorod Desyatnikov’s entire song cycle Yiddish, of which “Yosl and Sore-Dvoshe” is the 4th part. The cycle is based on early 20th century cabaret repertoire transformed into opera pieces.

Theater of Sholem Asch

Land of My Soul:

The Theater of Sholem Asch

On September 19, 2024, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York hosted the one-person performance Land of My Soul: The Theater of Sholem Asch by the actress, translator. theater director, writer and Yiddish activist Caraid O’Brien who performed some excerpts from the most successful and controversial dramas by Sholem Asch, including the monologues from his plays God of Vengeance, Motke Thief and The Dead Man translated by O’Brien for the first time into English.

The performance was followed by a talkback with Asch’s great-grandson David Mazower and Lisa Newman, the heads of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst. The event was also streamed live online. Caraid O’Brien, born in Ireland, is based in New York and is best known for her work with material originally written in Yiddish.

The Shvesters Tour New York

The Shvesters, a vocal duo who recently began their music career in Detroit, performed several concerts in New York. On August 22 and 25, 2024, the Museum of Jewish Heritage hosted their performances twice, accompanied by the renowned guitarist Omri Bar Giora. On September 17 the duo had a concert at the Altneu, a relatively new Modern Orthodox synagogue launched in Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 2022.

During the last couple of years, the two singers, Chava Levi and Polina Fradkin, gained their reputation on social media for their perfectly synchronized voices and matching outfits, which resulted in a series of successful concerts in the US and Israel. Levi and Fradkin transform classic Yiddish melodies into sophisticated, contemporary harmonic jazz arrangements. As noted by one of their critics, Tel Aviv-based journalist Blake Flayton, “The Shvesters do not just make us want to move our feet to Yiddish; their music makes us long for Yiddish”.

Sholom Secunda’s Anniversary in New York

On September 14, 2024, the Merkin Hall of the Kaufman Music Center in New York hosted the concert Sholom Secunda: A 130th Anniversary Spectacular, staring the Swedish singer Idun Carling, the ex-Soviet singer-songwriter Alexander Gorodnitsky, the jazz band of the Grammy-nominated saxophonist Yaacov Mayman, and other prominent musicians.

Sholom Secunda (1894 – 1974) was an American composer of Ukrainian-Jewish descent, known for some of the most popular Yiddish songs, including “Bay mir bistu sheyn“. Although he emigrated from Russia in 1907, his tunes remain well known in post-Soviet countries as well as in the US, where he is considered one of the greatest 20th century composers of New York’s historical Yiddish Theater District.

Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage

Сохранение культуры идиша

אָפּהיטן אונדזער ייִדישע קולטור־ירושה

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