Hot off the heels of Queer Yiddish Camp and Rad Yiddish’s cabaret fundraiser in December, organizers freygl gertsovski, Sorke Schneider, and Willow Rosenberg came together to discuss the passions that feed their work in building queer and Yiddish spaces
And each one of them wears many hats.
Sorke is a queer Yiddishist and amateur musician, playing folk music, including klezmer, in some community bands. She works in publishing and are a cultural organizer, putting on contra dances in upstate New York.
Willow is queer, disabled, and neurodivergent who is from the UK but now resides in Winnipeg. She works part-time at a tabletop gaming shop and is a certified tournament judge for three different collectible card games. Outside of the gaming world, you can find them writing or performing a comedy routine.
freygl, based in Toronto, is also a writer, though mostly of queer, disabled, Jewish speculative poetry, and is a soon-to-be graduate of arts administration and culture management.
Yet this is not the first time Queer Yiddish Camp and Rad Yiddish have collaborated on a project before.
Queer Yiddish Camp launched in May 2022 and was comprised of 17 queer faculty who taught five levels of Yiddish classes and various Yiddish cultural and history classes—including participatory Yiddish dance and vocal classes—in a two week intensive on Zoom. Since then, freygl notes, they’ve been teaming up with Rad Yiddish regularly on their programs like Queer Yiddishist Shmueskrayzn (conversation practice circles) and other events.
Rad Yiddish’s events are politically, culturally leftist and have included poetry and short story reading circles and discussions facilitated by community members, to worker’s songs zinerays (singing circles) led by members of the Boston Workers Circle.
Working together is a natural fit, as Sorke described Rad Yiddish as a “Yiddish free school” and Queer Yiddish Camp akin to a “radical yeshiva.” In fact, they have a few events lined up for spring. Come March 11, they’ll be hosting a Yiddish song circle with Boston Workers Circle; on March 24, there'll be a Radical Yiddish Purim games night; and on April 8, a Queer Yiddishist Shmueskrayz (conversation practice circle). And their first zine will be released later this year. The text seeks to explore versions of queer/lefty/Yiddish futures.
But while we await what is to come, settle into the conversation below.
What is your connection to Yiddishkayt?
Willow: I grew up in a fairly assimilated family in Winnipeg, especially on my dad’s side, but my mom’s family was very socialist and Yiddish and Ashkenazi. There used to be a very strict dichotomy between North End Jews who were still very traditional and South End Jews who were assimilating into Christian culture. My grandparents spoke Yiddish but kept it from my parents. In university, I took a Yiddish class for a year as one of my electives and tried my best to rebuild that connection. I lost it again until Yiddish came to Duolingo, and that was how I started exploring Yiddishkayt Facebook groups and other online communities.
freygl: I grew up hearing phrases like “sheyne meydele,” but between my family being Russian- and Hebrew-speaking, I never formed the idea of Yiddish as a fully-fledged language. As a first-generation post-Soviet Jew, I grew up with a lot of Soviet Jewish food and culture and stories from my mom about her life, but I didn’t really have a sense of what our family’s lives were like going further back. One day I Googled Moldovan Jewish history and read some cursory Wikipedia-type pages where they said Klezmer music originated in what is present-day Moldova, and that Yiddish was the language of Ashkenazi Jews for one thousand years. When I read that my brain exploded a little because I’d been missing this really critical piece of information about my own culture. I decided then and there I’d learn to play klezmer and become fluent in Yiddish. I also credit the influence of Indigenous elders I met during my involvement with Indigenous solidarity activism who said white folks need to learn their own cultures so they’re not taking from ours.
Sorke: I grew up in a very lefty, progressive interfaith family in New York City, a mix of Ashkenazi and Irish. I felt equally comfortable at a Dropkick Murphys show as on candle patrol at a Hanukkah party. I’ve been studying Irish traditional flute since I was 14, and I play several kinds of folk music, like American folk and some French Canadian. In my twenties, I started wanting to learn klezmer, too. One fateful day, walking across my university campus to catch a ride to a fiddle jam, someone handing out quarter cards spotted the violin on my back and yelled across the quad, “Hey, you play an instrument; you should join the klezmer band.” So I showed up a few days later.
My grandfather’s first language was Yiddish. My Irish grandmother actually spoke some Yiddish so I knew quite a lot of Yinglish. But it wasn’t until I'd been playing klezmer for a while that I saw all my friends learning Yiddish, and thought, I need to learn it.
What excites, inspires, or motivates you about cultural organizing?
freygl: We can amplify the work of those revealing alternate possibilities for what Yiddish has been and help realize the creative production of those further queering and cripping Yiddish.
Sorke: People really enjoy themselves at the events we organize. I recently started writing radical recipes for the newsletter and folks are excited by that. People have been responding positively and enthusiastically and it means a lot to know we’re reaching people in ways that are fun and meaningful to them.
Willow: Building intentionally queer spaces, intentionally Yiddish spaces—which are inclusive and radical—while also reconnecting with our histories and communities feels important.
So not only are you cultural organizers, but you’re also artists in your own right. How has Yiddish influenced your artistic or creative process?
Sarah :The Yiddish cultural world has given me a lot of room to grow, especially at KlezKanada, Yiddish New York, and Queer Yiddish Camp. When I’m in these spaces I feel like I’m somewhere safe. I’ve grown as a musician because it made me more confident about trying things out, like playing in a different octave, or doing a short solo piece. I started trying out comedy, because I figured, if I’m here to do Yiddish culture, everything can be Yiddish culture, so let’s try performing a comedy set, let’s try that creative writing workshop, let’s get up there and dance. It’s helped me be more open and creative.
freygl: Yiddish has helped connect my art to my ancestors more tangibly, instead of grasping for stereotyped imaginations of my ancestors. When I read Yiddish stories, poetry, or newspaper articles, listen to Yiddish music, watch Yiddish movies or plays, I get glimpses into the lives of Yiddish speakers, writers, and artists from the past and have a better sense of what has already been possible in Yiddish.
I speak and think in different cadences, in different languages. The first time I tried to write a poem completely in Yiddish it came out more fluidly. I was less inhibited; I let the cadence of Yiddish shape my feelings into the words on the page. What came out couldn’t have been written in English.
What brought you to stand-up, or sit-down (for a mobility-inclusive term), comedy? What kind of comedy have you done to date?
Willow: I was itching to get back into performance. I was tangentially involved in theatre as a kid but didn’t stick with it after high school. When I moved back to Canada in 2021, I was looking for ways to connect to local life here. A friend of mine did a five minute comedy set in the 2022 Winnipeg Fringe Festival. I went with a bunch of friends and thought, I want to do this. They did another show a few months later, and I asked, if I wanted to try stand-up, how would I go about it?
They told me about a women’s and non-binary open mic on the first Friday of every month. I started writing out some jokes only the week before the show, because of my ADHD. My friend who had first invited me couldn’t make it because of a chronic pain flare, so I was alone in terms of who I knew performing that night, but I did really well. As I walked off the stage, the person who performed before me introduced herself and said she runs a bimonthly queer comedy night and wanted me on it. So of course I said yes. It’s been over a year since I started comedy, and I love it.
Sorke: In my younger days, I experimented with drag. I enjoyed the comedy and stagecraft aspect of it. My dad is an actor. My grandmother was an actress. One of my grandfathers was a magician. There’s a deep respect for stagecraft in my family and when we’re together we have a rather theatrical perspective of the world. I'm always looking for ways to honour that legacy. Performing comedy has been filling that need that I've been trying to find an outlet for. It's also a lot cheaper than drag.
At a Zoom event in 2022, a friend and I were writing silly comments in the chat and she sent me a message asking if I’d ever tried stand-up comedy, saying she thought I’d be pretty good at it. Then last year, on the shuttle bus up to KlezKanada, no one could hear anything because the rain was so loud, so I sat in silence and got to thinking that there’s a cabaret at the retreat and maybe I should try doing comedy. I started writing a set in my head on the bus. I performed a five minute set at the KlezKabaret, goofy, low-key comedy, and it felt really good!
I’ve really only been doing stand-up for about a year and I’ve only done a few formal sets but I’m trying to further develop that muscle.
Do you think comedy can be an instigator for social change or can effectively convey a political message?
Sorke: Comedians help change people’s mindsets. A comedian can use observation and absurdity to call attention, and to make you think about something by exaggerating the situation. When I was in college, I was involved in a campaign to increase recycling on campus, which made increasingly absurd use of ninjas saying bad things will happen to you if you don’t recycle. Someone got swallowed by a dumpster, cans flew out of a bin, then ninjas emerged. I think activism goes better with a side of comedy and I’m still working on ways to incorporate more social change into a comedy routine.
freygl: Environmental activism using comedy reminds me of the political organizing I did in my youth. We had this big convergence at the capital called Power Change. Several of us were in costume as GMO corn zombies in front of a McDonalds, which was one of the stations along a march route that thousands were participating in. It was absurd and bizarre, yet we got the message across.
Willow: I’m thinking of Hannah Gatsby's sets and specials using comedy to frame an important and often difficult discussion. I have a bit about how broken trans health care is in the UK, where I used to live, and the absurdities of what one has to go through, over-exaggerating and adding in comedy—forcing people in Canada to learn about how awful it is over there. Given how much the right wing in Canada is copy-pasting the transphobia from the U.S. and the UK right now, I don’t know if making comedy about it is helping, but it feels like I’m at least doing something.
Do you try to combine your comedy with Yiddish?
Sorke: I actually really try to keep the Yiddish separate because there’s this whole cliche of: Yiddish oh, ha ha, it’s so funny, just put some Yiddish in your comedy routine, ha ha. But no. It’s a language in its own right. Why do we as English speakers think that Yiddish is an intrinsically funny language? There are words in English that sound like a funny word.
I’m not at a point where I could do an entire standard routine in Yiddish so I really try to keep things separate because I’m trying to avoid any cliches.
What was it like co-MCing the Cabaret Fundraiser? What can folks expect if they go back and watch the recording?
Sorke: Folks can expect jokes for very small audiences. I had to slip in at least one Moyshe Oysher reference because everything I learned about that individual is golden. There was a lot of fawning over the performers and dorky, awkward enthusiasm for Yiddish in general, stopping short of cringe, well, maybe giving cringe a little kiss on the cheek.
Willow: Authentic enthusiasm is so wonderful to me and I was so excited about the performers we had. It was tough to match them and live up to the quality they brought. We made sure to have at least one guest appearance by my cat who loves to climb on top of me when I’m on Zoom.
Hot off the heels of Queer Yiddish Camp and Rad Yiddish’s cabaret fundraiser in December, organizers freygl gertsovski, Sorke Schneider, and Willow Rosenberg came together to discuss the passions that feed their work in building queer and Yiddish spaces
And each one of them wears many hats.
Sorke is a queer Yiddishist and amateur musician, playing folk music, including klezmer, in some community bands. She works in publishing and are a cultural organizer, putting on contra dances in upstate New York.
Willow is queer, disabled, and neurodivergent who is from the UK but now resides in Winnipeg. She works part-time at a tabletop gaming shop and is a certified tournament judge for three different collectible card games. Outside of the gaming world, you can find them writing or performing a comedy routine.
freygl, based in Toronto, is also a writer, though mostly of queer, disabled, Jewish speculative poetry, and is a soon-to-be graduate of arts administration and culture management.
Yet this is not the first time Queer Yiddish Camp and Rad Yiddish have collaborated on a project before.
Queer Yiddish Camp launched in May 2022 and was comprised of 17 queer faculty who taught five levels of Yiddish classes and various Yiddish cultural and history classes—including participatory Yiddish dance and vocal classes—in a two week intensive on Zoom. Since then, freygl notes, they’ve been teaming up with Rad Yiddish regularly on their programs like Queer Yiddishist Shmueskrayzn (conversation practice circles) and other events.
Rad Yiddish’s events are politically, culturally leftist and have included poetry and short story reading circles and discussions facilitated by community members, to worker’s songs zinerays (singing circles) led by members of the Boston Workers Circle.
Working together is a natural fit, as Sorke described Rad Yiddish as a “Yiddish free school” and Queer Yiddish Camp akin to a “radical yeshiva.” In fact, they have a few events lined up for spring. Come March 11, they’ll be hosting a Yiddish song circle with Boston Workers Circle; on March 24, there'll be a Radical Yiddish Purim games night; and on April 8, a Queer Yiddishist Shmueskrayz (conversation practice circle). And their first zine will be released later this year. The text seeks to explore versions of queer/lefty/Yiddish futures.
But while we await what is to come, settle into the conversation below.
What is your connection to Yiddishkayt?
Willow: I grew up in a fairly assimilated family in Winnipeg, especially on my dad’s side, but my mom’s family was very socialist and Yiddish and Ashkenazi. There used to be a very strict dichotomy between North End Jews who were still very traditional and South End Jews who were assimilating into Christian culture. My grandparents spoke Yiddish but kept it from my parents. In university, I took a Yiddish class for a year as one of my electives and tried my best to rebuild that connection. I lost it again until Yiddish came to Duolingo, and that was how I started exploring Yiddishkayt Facebook groups and other online communities.
freygl: I grew up hearing phrases like “sheyne meydele,” but between my family being Russian- and Hebrew-speaking, I never formed the idea of Yiddish as a fully-fledged language. As a first-generation post-Soviet Jew, I grew up with a lot of Soviet Jewish food and culture and stories from my mom about her life, but I didn’t really have a sense of what our family’s lives were like going further back. One day I Googled Moldovan Jewish history and read some cursory Wikipedia-type pages where they said Klezmer music originated in what is present-day Moldova, and that Yiddish was the language of Ashkenazi Jews for one thousand years. When I read that my brain exploded a little because I’d been missing this really critical piece of information about my own culture. I decided then and there I’d learn to play klezmer and become fluent in Yiddish. I also credit the influence of Indigenous elders I met during my involvement with Indigenous solidarity activism who said white folks need to learn their own cultures so they’re not taking from ours.
Sorke: I grew up in a very lefty, progressive interfaith family in New York City, a mix of Ashkenazi and Irish. I felt equally comfortable at a Dropkick Murphys show as on candle patrol at a Hanukkah party. I’ve been studying Irish traditional flute since I was 14, and I play several kinds of folk music, like American folk and some French Canadian. In my twenties, I started wanting to learn klezmer, too. One fateful day, walking across my university campus to catch a ride to a fiddle jam, someone handing out quarter cards spotted the violin on my back and yelled across the quad, “Hey, you play an instrument; you should join the klezmer band.” So I showed up a few days later.
My grandfather’s first language was Yiddish. My Irish grandmother actually spoke some Yiddish so I knew quite a lot of Yinglish. But it wasn’t until I'd been playing klezmer for a while that I saw all my friends learning Yiddish, and thought, I need to learn it.
What excites, inspires, or motivates you about cultural organizing?
freygl: We can amplify the work of those revealing alternate possibilities for what Yiddish has been and help realize the creative production of those further queering and cripping Yiddish.
Sorke: People really enjoy themselves at the events we organize. I recently started writing radical recipes for the newsletter and folks are excited by that. People have been responding positively and enthusiastically and it means a lot to know we’re reaching people in ways that are fun and meaningful to them.
Willow: Building intentionally queer spaces, intentionally Yiddish spaces—which are inclusive and radical—while also reconnecting with our histories and communities feels important.
So not only are you cultural organizers, but you’re also artists in your own right. How has Yiddish influenced your artistic or creative process?
Sarah :The Yiddish cultural world has given me a lot of room to grow, especially at KlezKanada, Yiddish New York, and Queer Yiddish Camp. When I’m in these spaces I feel like I’m somewhere safe. I’ve grown as a musician because it made me more confident about trying things out, like playing in a different octave, or doing a short solo piece. I started trying out comedy, because I figured, if I’m here to do Yiddish culture, everything can be Yiddish culture, so let’s try performing a comedy set, let’s try that creative writing workshop, let’s get up there and dance. It’s helped me be more open and creative.
freygl: Yiddish has helped connect my art to my ancestors more tangibly, instead of grasping for stereotyped imaginations of my ancestors. When I read Yiddish stories, poetry, or newspaper articles, listen to Yiddish music, watch Yiddish movies or plays, I get glimpses into the lives of Yiddish speakers, writers, and artists from the past and have a better sense of what has already been possible in Yiddish.
I speak and think in different cadences, in different languages. The first time I tried to write a poem completely in Yiddish it came out more fluidly. I was less inhibited; I let the cadence of Yiddish shape my feelings into the words on the page. What came out couldn’t have been written in English.
What brought you to stand-up, or sit-down (for a mobility-inclusive term), comedy? What kind of comedy have you done to date?
Willow: I was itching to get back into performance. I was tangentially involved in theatre as a kid but didn’t stick with it after high school. When I moved back to Canada in 2021, I was looking for ways to connect to local life here. A friend of mine did a five minute comedy set in the 2022 Winnipeg Fringe Festival. I went with a bunch of friends and thought, I want to do this. They did another show a few months later, and I asked, if I wanted to try stand-up, how would I go about it?
They told me about a women’s and non-binary open mic on the first Friday of every month. I started writing out some jokes only the week before the show, because of my ADHD. My friend who had first invited me couldn’t make it because of a chronic pain flare, so I was alone in terms of who I knew performing that night, but I did really well. As I walked off the stage, the person who performed before me introduced herself and said she runs a bimonthly queer comedy night and wanted me on it. So of course I said yes. It’s been over a year since I started comedy, and I love it.
Sorke: In my younger days, I experimented with drag. I enjoyed the comedy and stagecraft aspect of it. My dad is an actor. My grandmother was an actress. One of my grandfathers was a magician. There’s a deep respect for stagecraft in my family and when we’re together we have a rather theatrical perspective of the world. I'm always looking for ways to honour that legacy. Performing comedy has been filling that need that I've been trying to find an outlet for. It's also a lot cheaper than drag.
At a Zoom event in 2022, a friend and I were writing silly comments in the chat and she sent me a message asking if I’d ever tried stand-up comedy, saying she thought I’d be pretty good at it. Then last year, on the shuttle bus up to KlezKanada, no one could hear anything because the rain was so loud, so I sat in silence and got to thinking that there’s a cabaret at the retreat and maybe I should try doing comedy. I started writing a set in my head on the bus. I performed a five minute set at the KlezKabaret, goofy, low-key comedy, and it felt really good!
I’ve really only been doing stand-up for about a year and I’ve only done a few formal sets but I’m trying to further develop that muscle.
Do you think comedy can be an instigator for social change or can effectively convey a political message?
Sorke: Comedians help change people’s mindsets. A comedian can use observation and absurdity to call attention, and to make you think about something by exaggerating the situation. When I was in college, I was involved in a campaign to increase recycling on campus, which made increasingly absurd use of ninjas saying bad things will happen to you if you don’t recycle. Someone got swallowed by a dumpster, cans flew out of a bin, then ninjas emerged. I think activism goes better with a side of comedy and I’m still working on ways to incorporate more social change into a comedy routine.
freygl: Environmental activism using comedy reminds me of the political organizing I did in my youth. We had this big convergence at the capital called Power Change. Several of us were in costume as GMO corn zombies in front of a McDonalds, which was one of the stations along a march route that thousands were participating in. It was absurd and bizarre, yet we got the message across.
Willow: I’m thinking of Hannah Gatsby's sets and specials using comedy to frame an important and often difficult discussion. I have a bit about how broken trans health care is in the UK, where I used to live, and the absurdities of what one has to go through, over-exaggerating and adding in comedy—forcing people in Canada to learn about how awful it is over there. Given how much the right wing in Canada is copy-pasting the transphobia from the U.S. and the UK right now, I don’t know if making comedy about it is helping, but it feels like I’m at least doing something.
Do you try to combine your comedy with Yiddish?
Sorke: I actually really try to keep the Yiddish separate because there’s this whole cliche of: Yiddish oh, ha ha, it’s so funny, just put some Yiddish in your comedy routine, ha ha. But no. It’s a language in its own right. Why do we as English speakers think that Yiddish is an intrinsically funny language? There are words in English that sound like a funny word.
I’m not at a point where I could do an entire standard routine in Yiddish so I really try to keep things separate because I’m trying to avoid any cliches.
What was it like co-MCing the Cabaret Fundraiser? What can folks expect if they go back and watch the recording?
Sorke: Folks can expect jokes for very small audiences. I had to slip in at least one Moyshe Oysher reference because everything I learned about that individual is golden. There was a lot of fawning over the performers and dorky, awkward enthusiasm for Yiddish in general, stopping short of cringe, well, maybe giving cringe a little kiss on the cheek.
Willow: Authentic enthusiasm is so wonderful to me and I was so excited about the performers we had. It was tough to match them and live up to the quality they brought. We made sure to have at least one guest appearance by my cat who loves to climb on top of me when I’m on Zoom.