Boris Sandler Celebrates His 75th Anniversary

On May 22, 2025, New York’s Florence Gould Theater presented a concert dedicated to the 75th birthday of the award-winning Yiddish writer Boris Sandler, and to the 45-year anniversary of his writing career. The festive evening titled “Mit Yidish Ibern Lebn: A Lifetime of Yiddish” featured performances by the world renowned pianist Evgeny Kissin with two soprano singers, Susanna Phillips and Ekaterina Kapchits, in the world premiere of the vocal cycle for children “Shterndlekh mit mandlen” (Stars with Almonds). Other participants included the violin virtuoso Efim Zubritsky with Zisl Slepovitch’s Klezmer Trio, the actors Yelena Shmulenson with Allen Lewis Rickman, and others. The evening of songs, poetry and dramatic readings was hosted by the actor and playwright Shane Baker, the executive director of the Congress for Jewish Culture and one of the most prominent Yiddish activists in New York.

The founder of our project, Dr. Mark Zilberquit, also attended the concert. The anniversary’s star, Boris Sandler, wishes the best of luck in our activities of promoting Yiddish culture.

Sandler, who authored about two dozens of poetry and prose books, is himself no stranger to music. Born in 1950 in the Moldovan city of Bălți (known in Yiddish as Belts), he studied music at a conservatory and worked for a decade as a professional violinist. In 1981 he became one of the first Yiddish writers and poets to study Yiddish literature on a professional level at the Higher Literary Courses of the Gorky Institute in Moscow. Since 1998 he served as the head the Forverts, the world’s oldest Yiddish newspaper based in New York. Since 2017, Sandler, who remains one of today’s most prolific Yiddish writers, has been running the online literary magazine Yiddish Branzhe.