Yiddish Culture Jam

Levyosn
Thursday, February 26, 2026
Casa del Popolo
Levyosn is a Boston-based ensemble specializing in Yiddish song. The band takes its name from the Ashkenazi Hebrew word for the leviathan, a mythical sea creature traveling the world’s oceans collecting songs, krill, and dreams. The band released their debut album, Levyosn’s Lullaby, through Borscht Beat in 2023. Levyosn’s Lullaby has been described as “one of those special recordings that brings joy and a smile each time it is heard” (Ari Davidow) and “a warm Yiddish blanket [to] calm your frayed nerves” (Rokhl Kafrissen). Levyosn’s second album will be released by Borscht Beat in 2026. Their repertoire includes both traditional music and original songs in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English, and draws from adjacent Eastern European folk traditions. Their intricate arrangements and rich vocal harmonies make their sound unique. Levyosn features Adah Hetko (vocals, guitar), Grammy nominee Lysander Jaffe (vocals, violin), Lexi Ugelow (piano, vocals, guitar), and Raffi Boden (cello, vocals, woodblock).

Klezmer Kitchen Party and Dance
Featuring Isaac Beaudet Lefebvre, Eden Glasman, Zafer Mamilli, and special guests
Saturday, February 28, 2026
Ukrainian Federation
Cherished by many cultural traditions across Canada, the kitchen party conjures a welcoming scene of good company, good cheer, and good tunes. The Klezmer Kitchen Party brings Jewish culture to the table, featuring Quebec-based musicians Isaac Beaudet Lefebvre, Zafer Mamilli, Eden Glasman, and special guests! Raise a glass with them as they swap tunes from the klezmer and Quebecois fiddle repertoire and share translations of Yiddish and French songs. The evening will start with a concert and finish with a dance party!

Cello and Tsimbl
Centre de Musiciens du Monde
Raffi Boden and Daniel Kunda Thagard’s new duo features the cello and tsimbl as unique voices, drawing new textures from old material. The two build a raw, trance-like soundscape out of the slow and soulful heart of klezmer music, revelling in the tunes traditionally played at dawn and twilight.

All workshops take place February 26-March 1 between 10 AM - 5:30 PM. Schedule to be announced once confirmed.

Tous les programmes seront animés en anglais et/ou en yiddish.

Yiddish Choir: Raindrops at the Window, Snowflakes on the Ground
with Rona Nadler
This workshop will explore the soundscape of the seasons through contemporary choral arrangements of Yiddish poetry, with an emphasis on female poets including Kadya Molodowsky and Aliza Grinblat. The program will include both traditional and aleatoric compositions, echoing and resounding through the magnificent acoustics of the Église Saint-Enfant-Jésus du Mile-End. Participants should have some choral singing experience. Music reading ability is an asset but not required.

New Yiddish Songs from Scratch
with Adah Hetko and Lexi Ugelow
In this workshop, led by songwriters Lexi Ugelow and Adah Hetko (both of Levyosn), we’ll experiment with building new songs from the following raw ingredients: creative play, supportive community, and short-form Yiddish poetry. We’ll talk about and play with writing new music for existing text, writing singable translations and adaptations, and combining multiple approaches. The workshop will include demos and exercises, time to work independently, and opportunities for sharing and feedback. No songwriting experience or Yiddish language knowledge required.

New Yiddish Song Sing-Along
with Adah Hetko
In this session, Yiddish singer-songwriter Adah Hetko will teach a selection of her original Yiddish songs. Both deeply personal and eminently shareable, these songs have been performed by choirs, taught in Yiddish classrooms, recorded by Levyosn and sung in the shower. Lyrics will be provided in Yiddish letters, transliteration and translation. No singing or Yiddish language experience required.

Embodied Music Theory (for All!)
with Lexi Ugelow
In this workshop we will explore basic elements of music theory through embodied play and activities. Participants will learn about rhythmic and melodic content and will leave with a stronger foundation for further understanding and engagement with the musical language. We will integrate these concepts using our bodies as the instruments, through voice, body percussion and movement. All levels of musical background welcome.

Creative Harmonization – Making Accompaniment Personal
with Raffi Boden
When you accompany a tune, you are essentially composing in real time – choosing your voicing, determining the groove, and deciding how to harmonize the melody. How do we make these decisions within the klezmer idiom? How can we bring our own musical voice and personal taste into our role supporting the melody? This workshop will open the door into these conversations and provide tools and approaches – we’ll be exploring klezmer modes and the chords that fit best within them, experimenting with creative harmonies... and inevitably battling about taste! Geared towards accompaniment players, on any instrument, with basic knowledge of major/minor chords and theory.

Klezmer Piano
with Josh Dolgin
The piano has become one of the most versatile, powerful moving musical parts of a modern “klezmer” ensemble. This workshop will look at Eastern European Jewish wedding music for the piano: how to accompany, how to groove, how to participate in various different Yiddish music ensembles from Belf to 2nd Avenue. The piano is an orchestra by itself with a wide range. It is both a rhythm and a melody instrument, both percussive and stringy. Are there different ways of accompanying different kinds of “klezmer”? What are some tools that might help to develop a “klezmer piano” vocabulary? Through deep listening to source recordings and trying things out on our instruments, we will explore the universe of harmony, rhythm, and groove that makes up Yiddish piano dance music and try to apply it to our playing. For intermediate to serious students of piano.

How Many Ways Can a Klezmer Play a Scale?
with Daniel Kunda Thagard
An important part of learning to play klezmer melodies idiomatically is the study and practice of variations so that you play phrases a little differently every time. But how do you make up variations on the fly and improvise with melodies while still staying within the sound of klezmer music? In this workshop, we'll build up approaches to improvising variations by starting with a scale, an essential building block of this music. We will learn from the ways the great Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein improvised variations on this very same scale in their respective recordings of the classic klezmer tune, A Dreydele Far Ale. From there, we will zoom out and experience the tune in a whole new light.

Moskowitz Across Borders
with Daniel Kunda Thagard
Cimbalom virtuoso Joseph Moskowitz got his start playing on river ferry crossing the Danube in Romania, before eventually recording in New York between 1916 and 1953. His repertoire crossed borders and ethnic boundaries, comprising Yiddish, Romanian, Hungarian, Greek, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Russian traditional tunes, popular music, and original compositions. In this workshop, we'll learn some less common tunes from Joseph Moskowitz's transnational repertoire.

Yiddish Dance: Choreographing the Folk
with Avia Moore
How do we understand choreography within folk dance genres? In this Yiddish dance workshop, we will learn dance choreographies new and old and discuss what makes new steps and patterns feel as though they emerge from the tradition? Come and dance a patsh tants (or two!), a terkisher, a troika, and more!

Yiddish Dance: Musical Shers
with Avia Moore
Shers on a shir (shers without end)! An important part of the core Yiddish dance repertoire, shers are Jewish square dances. While we only have a few documented historical variations, new shers are being written within the contemporary renaissance of Yiddish dance. In this workshop, we will learn and dance as many sher variations as we can fit within the two-hour workshop.

Nigunim Throughout the Ages
with Dan Wolfe
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
Join Dan Wolfe to learn and sing nigunim--wordless, repetitive melodies--and zmires (songs) both ancient and modern. You will learn older tunes sung by various Hasidic groups (such as Bobov and Karlin), as well as some newer songs and original compositions. No experience necessary.

Klezmer Tunes for Playing and Singing!
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
with Rachel Leader and Ariel Shapiro
In this session, we welcome both singers and instrumentalists (all instruments and levels) to explore klezmer tunes that are great for both singing and playing. Many klezmer tunes are also sung as nigns, or even started out that way. We’ll experiment with the interplay of voices and instruments and making jams more accessible to everyone. No prior knowledge needed, bring your voices and instruments – all are welcome.

Let's Write A Tune! A Klezmer Composition Workshop
with Mattias Kaufman
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
This workshop is for anyone interested in writing their own music. Mattias will discuss their compositional approach, covering topics such as using traditional and non-traditional source material as models, crafting a melody, working with constraints, overcoming writer’s block, exploring harmony, and developing a personal style. Participants will then have the opportunity to create miniature compositions of their own within a provided framework and receive feedback from the group. Some experience playing an instrument or singing is recommended, but reading or writing musical notation is not required. This workshop welcomes both beginners and those looking to refine their skills. All ages and experience levels are encouraged to participate.

Model-Based Composing: a Particularly Fun Way to Write New Klezmer Tunes
with Nat Seelen
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
How can we write new klezmer tunes that sound like, well, klezmer? Model-based composing is one particularly fun way to do it. In this class, we'll analyze a traditional klezmer tune, taking it apart to understand what makes it tick, and then use that tune as a model to write our own original work.

All workshops take place February 26-March 1 between 10 AM - 5:30 PM. Schedule to be announced once confirmed.

Tous les programmes seront animés en anglais et/ou en yiddish.

Embroidering in Yiddish
with Sorke Schneider
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn different options for embroidering Yiddish text (backstitch for script, cross-stitch for print), and be supported in designing their own Yiddish language embroidery project (i.e., sketching a design out on paper and starting it on fabric). Some familiarity with embroidery/cross-stitch is good, but as long as people know which end of a needle to hold, they should be ready to get started. This workshop will be scheduled early during the weekend so that you can continue to work on your projects throughout the Yiddish Culture Jam.

GezunTECH
with Sam Berkson
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
In this GenzunTECH Workshop you will learn how to safely setup and operate the sound and stage equipment needed for a KlezKabaret or other live event. Lemoshl (for example): speaker/stage design, basic live mixing, sound check criteria, and cable management. This will earn you ultimate mentsh status. Let’s get the shmutz out of those shpeakers!

The Soundscape of Yiddish Poetry: the Pleasure of Declaiming Poems Aloud
with Rivka Augenfeld
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
Yiddish classes abound around the world. Yiddish poetry is being rediscovered, read and translated. But where is the sound, the pleasure of reading the words aloud, and the pleasure of discovering new meanings through the spoken words? Rivka Augenfeld has been reciting Yiddish poems--happy, funny, sad and tragic--since she was a young child in her parents home. Then, at various community events, conferences, and commemorations. She discovered that the real meaning of a poem can often be found when saying the words aloud, finding the pace, the rhythm, the path to enhancing the understanding of the words. Participants will be encouraged to read aloud and discuss the content. A working knowledge of reading Yiddish required, the rest will follow. Material will be provided (with English translations).

Playing with Yiddish Poetry
with freygl gertsovski
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
In this hands-on workshop, participants will be introduced to examples of found poetry including cut-up poetry, blackout/erasure poetry, and centos–-poetic forms that are created without having to write new texts-–and invited to create their own. Source texts of Yiddish poetry will be available as handouts, in the original Yiddish (oysyes) and in translation, that participants can cut, paste, collage, black out, write on, and use as inspiration for their experimental Yiddish (or translated from Yiddish) poetry. This workshop is to be an inviting, fun, experimental, and accessible way for people of all levels of experience with poetry and with Yiddish to create new Yiddish poems. Found poetry allows participants who feel they ‘can’t write poetry’ to directly play with poetry in a low-barrier way, while also being a challenging and engaging art form. Before the end of the workshop, participants will have the chance to share their new Yiddish poems with the rest of the group.

Research, Rehearse, Resist! : A Practical Performance Methodology from the People's Puppet Parade for Creating New Yiddish Culture in Your Neighbourhood
with Ozzy Irving Gold-Shapiro
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
What does it mean to rehearse resistance? What does it mean to truly bring Yiddish language, Ashkenazic gesture, and klezmer music out into the streets? How do we transform archival materials into vibrant multidisciplinary performances that tell our community's stories? And what even is dazzle camouflage? The People's Puppet Parade is an all-ages collective based on Nipmuck, Pocumtuc, and Nonotuck land (so-called Northampton, Massachusetts) that seeks to answer these questions. In the first part of the workshop, participants will be introduced to the methodologies and practices of the People's Puppet Parade, and in the second part, participants will have an chance to put them into action. This is a great workshop for anyone who is curious about transforming research into community-based art. We'll explore how making performances through research builds our capacity for collective imagination and play, deepens communal engagement with Yiddish, creates new living culture, and generates vibrant spaces for intergenerational cultural transmission.

Makhn Mezuzes
with Ava Berkson
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
When it comes to Judaism, every body knows about the importance of "stuff". Special cups, special fabrics, special books, and special materials that these things are made out of.... Mezuzes are no exception and add a practical, beautiful, and meaningful addition to any Jewish home. This workshop would provide participants with one or two (or three!) handmade, authentically ceramic mezuzes with which to decorate their home, or give to a loved one. Exploring a brief overview of the history and the importance of the mezuze, as well as a hands-on in-depth (but beginner!) exploration of working with clay. We will answer nail biting questions like: Why do we hang it slanted?; What IS a mezuze?; and What are the physical and chemical limits of clay?

Finding Our Voices in the Jewish Storytelling Tradition
with Weaver
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
In this 90 minute workshop, participants will explore some possible definitions of what constitutes "the Jewish storytelling tradition" and look at some examples together of Jewish storytelling, particularly focusing on Rebbe Nachman stories and how they impacted Yiddish literature. Together, participants will analyze what makes a performance of Jewish storytelling 'successful' and try their hand at some brainstorming and writing exercises to develop ideas for their own Jewish stories. There will be opportunities to share at the end. This class will be oriented towards creative writers/theatre makers/other narrative artists, but all disciplines and skill levels are welcome.

All workshops take place February 26-March 1 between 10 AM - 5:30 PM. Schedule to be announced once confirmed.

Tous les programmes seront animés en anglais et/ou en yiddish.

Québec in Yiddish, Yiddish in Québec
with Sebastian Schulman
Bienvenue et brukhim-haboim! Come to any session or come to them all!
Presentation One: Sur un seul pied: A Short History of Yiddish Culture in Québec
Presentation Two: A shtikl eyrope: Depictions of Québec and francophone Quebeckers in Yiddish Literature
Presentation Three: Who was Shabse Perl? Uncovering Montréal lost--and most radical-- Yiddish poet
Montréal and its environs have long been an important point on the map of global Yiddish culture. In these three talks, we'll take a deep dive into the history and literature of this unique centre of Yiddish creativity. In the first presentation, we'll reexamine the history of the region's Jews and their francophone Québécois neighbours--a relationship often depicted as one of distrust and antagonism--and explore how these speakers of joual and zhargon far more in common than might be expected. In the second lecture, we'll plunge into texts by well-known local literati such as Chava Rosenfarb and J.I. Segal to parse out just how Yiddish writers viewed their voisins and the landscapes they shared. In the third session, we'll take the case study of life and work of Shabse Perl, Montréal's most radical leftwing and perhaps least known Yiddish poet, to show how Cold War politics and related shifts in taste have changed how we read, remember, and translate Yiddish.

The Progressive Musical Benevolent Society: a Mutual Aid Society for New York Klezmorim (1890–2010)
with Daniel Carkner
This talk is part of our Participant-Led Series
The Progressive Musical Benevolent Society was a mutual aid and burial society in New York City which counted among its members many of the celebrities of old American klezmer music, as well as upwardly mobile musicians who left klezmer behind. It changed over several eras of New York Jewish life, from its start as a labour union, to a mutual aid and social organization, to mainly being a burial society after WWII. This talk will explain how and why it was formed, what its purpose was, and who some of its notable members were: Brandweins, Beckermans, Levitts, and dozens of now-forgotten musicians and their families.

Imagining Backwards: Queer Yiddish Genealogies in Contemporary Fiction
with Sandra Chiritescu
This talk is part of our Participant-Led Series
In this talk Sandra Chiritescu will discuss two recent examples of queer Jewish fiction that engage with imagined queer genealogies in Eastern Europe: the chapbook Schmutz by Jess Goldman and the novel City of Laughter by Temim Fruchter. Her exploration of queer Yiddish genealogies in these texts draws on Jeffrey Shandler's "Queer Yiddishkayt" and “queer time” as put forward by theorists such as Jack Halberstam, Carol Dinshaw, and José Muñoz, to name just a few. These queer genealogies often operate on the basis of a non-linear temporality and are marked by discontinuities which are especially pronounced given the fractured transmission of Yiddish as a vernacular language throughout the twentieth century. The common stereotypes surrounding Yiddish, such as its “belatedness,” (constant) “death” and (constant) “revival” feed into the natural fit between Yiddish and queer time: Yiddish culture always already exists outside a linear, heteronormative timeline.

In Der Mit: Petaluma Chicken Farmer and Collaborative Art Making Processes
with Yael Horowitz
This workshop is part of the Yiddish Culture Jam Participant-Led Series
This presentation will explore a collaborative project between Etai Rogers-Fett and Yael Horowitz. At a residency in Petaluma, California, Etai and Yael created an artist book and short story about the history of communist Yiddish chicken farmers in Petaluma. The presentation will exhibit the book, will talk about the process of collaboration, and will explore ideas of creating fictive work based on archival research.

An Hour-ish with Moishe Volf-Dolman
with Moishe Volf-Dolman and Avi Gross-Grand
A conversation with Moishe Volf-Dolman – Montrealer, long-time political activist of sorts, Yiddish translator, Yiddish teacher, mishteyns gezogt (so-called, sham, questionable...) Along with Avreml, one of Moishe's students, we'll discuss what, if anything, it means to talk Yiddishly and what, if anything, it means to talk about Yiddish as a countercultural or antiauthoritarian force?"

All workshops take place February 26-March 1 between 10 AM - 5:30 PM. Schedule to be announced once confirmed.

Tous les programmes seront animés en anglais et/ou en yiddish.

The Art of Jewish Pickling (Workshop)
Delve into the world of pickling the old- fashioned way with The Gefilteria's Jeffrey Yoskowitz and Liz Alpern. Make your own jar of sour and half-sour pickles while learning about the exciting world of vegetable fermentation and the Ashkenazi culinary history behind the techniques. You’ll never look at a jar of pickles the same way again.

The Shtetl Kitchen (Talk)
Join The Gefilteria (https://www.gefilteria.com/)'s Jeffrey Yoskowitz and Liz Alpern for a dynamic discussion of Eastern European Jewish foodways, past and present. The Gefilte Manifesto (https://www.gefilteria.com/gefilte-manifesto) co-authors will share exciting discoveries about seasonal Jewish eating, holiday cooking and culinary wisdom which will transform everything you thought about Ashkenazi gastronomy. We'll dive into goose, gefilte fish, cabbage, kugel, and more from the shtetl to the Lower East Side to today's hottest restaurants.

What am I, Chopped Liver? (Demo)
Chopped liver is more than just a deli classic that elicits strong feelings from lovers and haters alike. The Jewish connection to liver tells a unique story of a rich, indulgent dish that was popularized by Jews centuries ago, a byproduct of schmaltz production. It’s loved so much that a vegetarian version of this spread is even more popular now than the original. Join The Gefilteria for a talk and cooking demo all about chopped liver (minus the actual liver!). Vegetarian “mock chop” will be served.