A zisn Peysekh!
For a real Peysekh (Passover) treat, listen to the Jewish People's Philharmonic Chorus sing two Yiddish songs in four-part harmony:



KlezCalifornia Donor Party! Save the date for our next semi-annual party: Sunday, June 2, 2-5pm , in Oakland. If you have donated in the past year, you will receive your invitation by early May. If you are not yet a donor, it's never too late!  Donate online »

An Evening with Veretski Pass:
Thursday, April 11, 7pm
Jewish Community Library, SF

Co-presented by KlezCalifornia

Veretski Pass has embarked on uncharted territory with a new project dedicated to performing pieces collected by Sofia Magid, a Jewish ethnographer who worked intensively to document Jewish music in Belarus and Ukraine during Stalin's regime in the 1920s and 1930s. Magid's six hundred recordings, which had been left untouched since they were created, include music that was not only collected by a woman, but which also features rare examples of women's themes. 

"The Magid Chronicles" is a collection of new compositions, improvisations, and re-compositions derived from and inspired by the Magid collection and drawing on cultures as diverse as Romanian, Turkish, and Greek, as well as the Hutsul traditions of western Ukraine and Romania.
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with Gregory (Grisha) Freidin
Sunday, April 14, 1:30pm 
Jewish Community Library, SF  

Isaac Babel (1894, Odessa - 1940, Moscow) was a Russian Jewish short-story writer known for his cycles of stories. Translated into many languages, his works have for decades exemplified both the achievement of Russia's literature of the revolutionary Soviet period and the dilemmas faced by a modern intellectual, a Russian, a European, and a Jew, caught in the swell of a violent social upheaval. Professor Freidin will speak about Isaac Babel's career and destiny as a Russian Jewish writer in the age of revolution and lead a close reading of three stories by Babel: "The King," "Rebbe's Son," and "Story of My Dovecote."

Co-presented
by KlezCalifornia
KlezCalifornia's Monthly Klezmer Workshops!
The Grizzly Bear Klezmer Band
with Joshua Horowitz 
Sunday, April 14, 3:30-6:30pm
Kehilla Community Synagogue 
1300 Grand Avenue, Piedmont 94610 
Use the sidewalk door near the bus stop.

Learn new klezmer tunes and traditional style as a whole group. Participants will be sent sheet music beforehand to learn as much as they can ahead of time. The emphasis will be on fine-tuning how to play in a klezmer orchestra. 
 
$25 or whatever you can afford.
Refreshments included! More info

RSVP to receive links to
recordings and sheet music.
Joshua Horowitz
Kaleh Bazetsns & Doinas
with Joshua Horowitz
Sunday, May 5, 2019, 2-5pm
Santa Cruz

Telling a Story: Bringing Klezmer to Life Through Creative Arrangement
with Rob Reich
Sunday, May 19, 12:30-3:30pm
SF
 
Music of the Crossroads
with Dan Cantrell
Sunday, May 19, 2-5pm
Sebastopol 

Cookie Segelstein  
Theme TBD 
Sunday, June 23, 3:30-6:30pm,
Piedmont 
Monthly workshops in 2019 are made possible by a grant from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, in partnership with the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and Surdna Foundation
Flisik Yidish Salon
Fluent in Yiddish? Come to our free monthly conversation salon!
Sunday, April 21, 2-4 pm, Berkeley | Presented by KlezCalifornia
Tayereh fraynd: Mir veln zikh farzamlen zuntik, dem 21stn april, 2-4pm.  Brengt epes peysekhdik tsu esn.

Mir veln shmuesn vegn di temes: 
  • Dem bestn seyder vos ir hot a mol gepravet 
  • Vos iz der vaytster plats vos ir hot bazukht un far vos? 
  • Vertershpil 
  • Peysekh-lider mit Gerry

RSVP  to get the address.  
Next month's Salon : Sunday, May 19, 2-4pm, Menorah Park, SF.
Farshidns
Tidbits of Yiddish culture from around the world 
Roza Makes Kasha Varnishkes , in Yiddish with English subtitles.

(thanks to Oren Rubin)
 
(thanks to Jim Rebhan) 
 
(It's Burning, i.e. our shtetl)  
 
"O, I wash with my weak hands. I wash and wash and earn a few cents. From early to late for a dry piece of bread. I wash and pray for my own death."  
Yiddish Culture, Dance & Music
APRIL
American Jewish Radicals , with Elaine Leeder, Yiddish songs by Gale Kissin
Wednesdays, April 3 & 10, 1-2:30pm 
Osher Marin JCC, San Rafael 
Advance reservation required
Hava Nagila (the movie)
Followed by  havdoleh , singing, dancing, and eating. Music and Yiddish song with Laura Eytan and Jacob Koff.

Saturday, April 6, 7:30pm
Congregation B'nai Israel, Vallejo
10th Jazz & Klez Summit , with Albany Jazz Band and Netivot Shalom Jazzkleztet
Sunday, April 7, 1-3:30pm
Congregation Netivot Shalom, Berkeley
 

with Eddy Portnoy (author of "Bad Rabbi") 
Monday, April 8, 12:30-1:00pm 
The Contemporary Jewish Museum, SF
 

with Eddy Portnoy
Tuesday, April 9, 5:30-7:30pm
Stanford University, Stanford
The Navel of the Dream : Freud's Jewish Languages ,
with Naomi Seidman
• Tuesday, April 9, 7pm | Freud, Anna O, and the Linguistic Architecture of the Modern Jewish Self

• Thursday, April 11, 7pm | A Different Diaspora: Translation, Dispersion, and the Rewriting of Psychoanalysis in Jewish Languages

• Tuesday, April 16, 5:30pm , followed by reception | Weinreich's "Freud Laboratory": The Yiddish Translation and Reception of Psychoanalysis.

RSVP requested for each event. The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, Berkeley 

Thursday, April 11, 6:30-8pm
Gaia’s Garden, Santa Rosa


An Evening with Veretski Pass: The Magid Chronicles
Thursday, April 11, 7pm 
Jewish Community Library, SF
(See details above)
Co-presented by KlezCalifornia
 

It Only Hurts When I Don't Laugh , an evening of Jewish humor, with MC Lisa Geduldig, Judi Leff, Rabbi Sydney Mintz, Joe Nguyen, Cathy Ladman 
Saturday, April 13, 7:30pm
The Glaser Center, Santa Rosa
  

Isaac Babel and His Gospel , with Gregory (Grisha) Freidin 
Sunday, April 14, 1:30pm
Jewish Community Library, SF
Co-presented by KlezCalifornia


The Grizzly Bear Klezmer Band , a workshop with Joshua Horowitz 
Sunday, April 14, 3:30-6:30pm 
Kehilla Community Synagogue, Piedmont  
(See details above)  
Presented by KlezCalifornia


Improvising a Klezmer Doina , with Marian Concus
Tuesday, April 16, 5-6pm
$20. Enrollment by telephone only, beginning April 9, 610 917 6800 X330
Community School of Music and Art, Mountain View  
 

Learn melody and harmony for Yiddish song Yoshke, with Marian Concus 
For instrumentalists and singers 
Tuesday, April 16, 6-7pm
$20. Enrollment by telephone only, beginning April 9, 610 917 6800 X330
Community School of Music and Art, Mountain View  
 

Wednesday, April 17, 7-9pm
Le Bateau Ivre, Berkeley

 Jubilee Klezmer Ensemble
Part of Russian River Jewish
Community Seder 
Friday, April 19, 5pm
Monte Rio Community Center, Monte Rio 
More info: 707 632 5545; no web site
Sunday, April 21, 2-4pm
Private home, Berkeley
(See details above)
Presented by KlezCalifornia
 

House Concert of Yiddish Songs with Cindy Paley, accompanied by Asaf Ophir 
Sunday, April 21, 6:30pm
Private home, SF
$15, sliding scale. Space limited; RSVP »  
 

Concert, with Achi Ben Shalom, Nigunim Chorus, SF Jewish Folk Chorus, others 
Remembering the songs cherished by the victims of the Holocaust. 
Sunday, April 28, 3pm
JCC East Bay, Berkeley 
Coming in May
Klezmer workshop with Joshua Horowitz  
Sunday, May 5, 2-5pm
UC Santa Cruz Hillel, Santa Cruz
Presented by KlezCalifornia


Concert, with Achi Ben Shalom, Nigunim Chorus, SF Jewish Folk Chorus, others 
Remembering the songs cherished by the victims of the Holocaust. 
Sunday, May 5, 3pm 
Congregation Sherith Israel, SF
 

Thursday, May 9, 6:30-8pm
Gaia’s Garden, Santa Rosa


Klezmer workshop with Rob Reich
Sunday, May 19, 12:30-3:30pm
Jewish Community Library, SF
Presented by KlezCalifornia


Klezmer workshop with Dan Cantrell
Sunday, May 19, 2-5pm
Private home, Sebastopol
Presented by KlezCalifornia


 KlezCalifornia Flisik Yidish Salon
Sunday, May 19, 2-4pm
Menorah Park, SF
Presented by KlezCalifornia
Honor Wall
Judith Offer:
I was raised a Catholic, but my paternal great grandparents, Sigmund and Rosa Spitzer, were Orthodox Jews. They immigrated in 1905 from Hungary to Niagara Falls, opening the first kosher restaurant in upstate New York. Their son, my "Grampa Rudy," married a Catholic; their children were raised Catholic. I married a Jew, Stuart Offer. My work includes two plays based on Jewish themes/history, "A Shirtwaist Tale" and "It Could Always be Worse; a poem about Yiddish published in J Magazine, and one coming out in September in "CCAR Journal: A Reform Jewish Quarterly," "On Studying Sacred Texts."   
Nava Shaham:
In honor of Talia Shaham for her hard work for KlezCalifornia and her extended family.  
Millie Chazin:
In memory of my husband, Julian Chazin, and my parents, Beckie (Rivka Sklar) Becker and Abraham (Abie) Becker who did not let me forget our Yiddish language and culture and who inspired me to learn more of our history and to work to perpetuate our Yiddish culture.
Pinny (Paul) Switzer:
I wish to honor my teachers at the Peretz School in Winnipeg, Canada, 1945-1952. We had classes in Yiddish all morning Monday through Friday on an array of subjects, starting with learning to read and write, and progressing through history, literature,  tanakh,  and Hebrew language. These teachers included Lapin, Zolf, Cantor, Halper, Greenberg, Tseitlin, Taft, and Fiterman.
View KlezCalifornia's Honor Wall . Become a donor to post your tribute. 
 
Donate
Help us continue our exciting mission to connect people and communities around the Bay Area with Yiddish culture. Donate $18, $36 or $54 here »
 
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A sheynem dank! (Thank you very much!)
A bisl mer (a little bit more)
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