Celebrating Cohost Hasia Segal's 90th Birthday
Team's 13th Year of Yiddish Radio
The Yiddish Voice, a Yiddish-language weekly radio show heard in
Boston and on the Internet, is pleased to announce it has now
completed ten years of broadcasting. The show is heard on WUNR 1600
AM in the Boston area every Wednesday evening from 7:30 pm to 8:30 pm.
The show features music, poetry, comedy, interviews, news, commentary,
and announcements of current events, all of it in the Yiddish language.
The show's host and producer Mark David stated, "On the occasion of
ten years of The Yiddish Voice, I'd really like to thank first and
foremost my cohost Hasia Segal for giving so much of her talent to our
show. She has talents as a humorist, a wonderful speaker, and a fine
interviewer. She draws on her great depth of knowledge of both Hebrew
and Yiddish language and culture. Her experience of having lived
through heyday of Yiddish culture, as a young woman in interwar
Lithuania, has brought many interesting contacts and much interesting
experience she has generously shared with us, and lends a special
stamp of authenticity to our broadcast. I'd also like to extend
warmest wishes to Hasia on the occasion of her reaching her 90th year,
as we say 'alevay biz hundert un tsvantsik', with hopefully many more
productive years ahead on the radio. I'd also like to thank the many
other volunteers who have helped produce and/or host the show.
Thanks, of course, to the many guests over the years; they are the
living voices of the 'Yidishe Gas' (the Yiddish/Jewish world) that
make our show unique. And I especially want to thank those listeners,
and even some 'fans' who've only heard about us through the Internet,
who have voiced so much encouragement and guidance over the years.
Finally, thanks to our supporters, including individuals, businesses,
and foundations, who've given the financial support necessary to make
this venture function."
On the question of plans for the future, David continued, "We would
like to recruit new volunteers to help to do the show. In this
regard, I am particularly excited to welcome Iosif Lakhman, a writer
for the Yiddish and Russian Forward newspapers, as a cohost. He's
just recently begun this role, and his voice will be a very welcome
addition. We also hope to continue to create and air great radio
segments, especially through new guest interviews. In addition, we
plan a project to better organize our rather vast archive of exclusive
recordings, especially interviews, to make the "catalogue" more
complete and up-to-date, and ultimately with a goal to make copies of
most of the recordings available via the Internet, on tape, and CD."
The Yiddish Voice (known, in Yiddish, as 'Dos Yidishe Kol') was
founded by the team of host/producer Mark David and cohost Hasia
Segal. The team actually marks its 13th year of producing Yiddish
radio in Boston this year: this same team created another all-Yiddish
Boston radio show, The Yiddish Hour, in 1991. That show was, and is
to this day, broadcast on WBRS 100 FM/Waltham, a non-commercial
station.
The Yiddish Voice, the "new" show, was "spun off", so to speak, from
The Yiddish Hour in 1994. The primary goal of this spinoff was to
overcome the number one "complaint" about the old show: lack of
reception. By operating on a 5,000 Watt commercial AM station, The
Yiddish Voice reaches all of the Metro Boston area, whereas the old
show was only heard in Waltham and surrounding towns, on FM.
In recent years, in addition to reaching a wider Boston audience
through the higher powered airwaves of WUNR 1600/AM, the Yiddish Voice
has been reaching a worldwide audience through live Internet audio
streaming of its weekly program, and on-demand streaming of select
excerpts of past programs. The audio streaming link is available from
the show's web site:
www.yiddishvoice.com
The Yiddish Voice operates on a not-for-profit basis. Originally, it
sought financial support in the form of advertising, grants, and
donations to cover such costs as station airtime, equipment, records
and tapes, and promotional materials. In addition, in recent years,
the show has expanded its operations to include an associated "Yiddish
Voice Store" web site (http://www.yiddishstore.com/">www.yiddishstore.com), which sells
Yiddish-related items, including books, music, videos, and software,
with all profits used to support the radio show.
The all-volunteer staff of the Yiddish Voice includes Mark David, the
show's producer and regular host, and Hasia Segal, a native of
Lithuania, who, as cohost, continues to offer frequent special
presentations and exclusive interviews of important personalities.
Numerous other contributors have provided features over the years.
These have included Miriam Libenson, Dovid Braun, Rhoda Bernard, Betty
Silberman, Norman Miller, Zalman Srebro, and Iosif Lakhman, as well as
the late Manya Web and Cantor Simon Kandler.
The show has produced a great many original and exclusive radio
segments, including Jewish holiday specials, poetry recitals, live and
recorded musical performances, and interviews. Interviews have been
done on a wide variety of topics, with greater and lesser known
Yiddish-speaking personalities from a wide variety of fields. The
names and descriptions of interviews are too numerous to begin to list
here. A lengthy, but partial, list of past interviews is available
online at the show's web site.
For further information:
Mark David
The Yiddish Voice
PO Box 313
Brookline, MA 02446
(617) 730-8484
Fax: (617) 249-0141
Cambridge's Zeitgeist is a small gallery/performance space, but it was packed last night with a crowd that new Charming Hostess' work well, and responded enthusiastically to the power and amazing grace of the performance. Imagine, if you will, a cross between Sweet Honey in the Rock and Bulgarian village music, or Zap Mama crossed with avant garde: three incredibly powerful, incredibly sweet voices singing everything from gospel to Sephardic song to non-poetic texts set to stirring, harmonic music.