Celia Dropkin was a beloved and heretical Yiddish poet of the early 1900’s whose only novel, Desires, was recently translated into English by Anita Norich. Now, join us in experiencing this newly translated book through performance and music.
New York based actor and Yiddish Theater maven Caraid O’Brien will read passages from the brand new English translation and the Reisman Klezmer Band, led by violinist Abigale Reisman, will perform new Yiddish music to underscore the narrative.
We'll open with a festive reception and conclude the evening with a book signing with Anita Norich.
This program is part of a series in honor of Women’s History Month 2025. Join us in raising up the stories of Jewish women who have made significant contributions to our world. Prompted by the book The Only Woman in The Room, the story of Beate Sirota Gordon, the Jewish woman who co-authored the Japanese constitution, this series features literature, art, music, film and more to illuminate the lives and innovations of these women.
Co-sponsored by the Yiddish Book Center.
Galway born actor, translator, writer and director Caraid O’Brien is known for her "lithe, exceptionally actable translations" of the daring Yiddish playwright Sholem Asch. Her debut translation, god of vengeance, opened in a strip club in Times Square and "set Show World aflame" according to the Village Voice. Variety dubbed her second Asch translation, Motke Thief, "not your bubbe's Yiddish theater." Caraid has translated seven of Asch's dramas, three of which are available in Sholem Asch: Underworld Trilogy from White Goat Press. You can listen to her translations of The Dead Man (Carnegie Hall's Voices of Hope Festival) and On the Road to Zion, Asch's first full length play which was his response to Chekhov's The Sea Gull. She also wrote and directed a short film of On the Road to Zion starring Hal Robinson.
With over 15 years of experience playing klezmer music, Abigale Reisman has established herself as an expressive and thoughtful fidl player with a lot to say. She is particularly interested in expressing the human voice through the violin and connecting her playing to the rhythms and accents of the Yiddish language. Abigale is a performer, composer, and arranger with the International Jewish Music Festival award winning band, Ezekiel's Wheels Klezmer Band. She regularly performs in a duo with renowned klezmer scholar and performer Hankus Netsky. Abigale is also a co-founder of Thread Ensemble, an experimental trio that creates music out of interactions with their audiences and a member of Tredici Bacci, which was featured in Rolling Stone’s “10 Artists You Need to Know: November 2016”. Most recently, Abigale was commissioned by the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra to write a Concerto for Klezmer band and orchestra, which was premiered on September 5th, 2024 in Aalborg, Denmark.
Anita Norich is Collegiate Professor Emerita at the University of Michigan. She is a scholar and translator of Yiddish literature who has written and taught about American Jewish and Yiddish literature and literature of the Holocaust. She earned her Ph.D. in Victorian literature from Columbia University and studied Yiddish literature at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Norich’s books include: The Homeless Imagination in the Fiction of Israel Joshua Singer; Discovering Exile: Yiddish and Jewish Culture in America During the Holocaust; Writing in Tongues: Translating Yiddish in the 20th Century; and translations of Kadya Molodovsky’s A Jewish Refugee in America and Celia Dropkin’s Desires. She is also co-editor of Gender and Text in Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature; Jewish Literatures and Cultures: Context and Intertext; Languages of Modern Jewish Cultures: Comparative Perspectives.
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