This week, I speak with Henry H. Sapoznik, a Peabody Award-winning coproducer of NPR’s Yiddish Radio Project, about his book – The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City. The book offers a new look at over a century of New York’s history of Yiddish popular culture, telling the story in over a baker’s dozen chapters on theater, music, architecture, crime, Blacks and Jews, restaurants, real estate, and journalism.
We will focus on the chapter about the Yiddish theater.
» FROM AMAZON.COM:
A history of New York’s Yiddish popular culture from 1880 to the present.
The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City offers a new look at over a century of New York’s history of Yiddish popular culture. Henry H. Sapoznik-a Peabody Award-winning coproducer of NPR’s Yiddish Radio Project-tells the story in over a baker’s dozen chapters on theater, music, architecture, crime, Blacks and Jews, restaurants, real estate, and journalism. Culled from over five thousand Yiddish and English newspaper articles of the period, and thanks to new research from previously inaccessible materials, the book reveals fresh insights into the impossible-to-overstate influence of Yiddish culture on New York City. Containing fifty images, many of which have never before been published, the book is complemented by an online interactive Google Map linked to over one hundred of the historic locations discussed in the book, with additional graphics and resource materials. The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City is a vivid, entertaining, and accessible compendium of both New York’s lush Ashkenazic past and present, showcasing the culture’s persistent resiliency.
ADDITIONAL READING:
From Black cantors to kosher health nuts, new book reveals lost histories of Yiddish NYC [timesofisrael.com]
Great for Hanukkah, ‘The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City’ by Henry H. Sapoznik is not your usual guidebook. In fact, many of the sites listed in it haven’t existed for decades.
Henry Sapoznik [wikipedia.org]
Henry “Hank” Sapoznik, born 1953, in Brooklyn, New York) is an American author, record and radio producer and performer of traditional Yiddish and American music.
(3) Podcast Posts footer
Full information for each episode including playlists is available on our main PODCASTS page or view a list of ALL episodes.
