Children's Day

A morning of activity and cultural immersion for children of all ages Co-sponsored by Center for Jewish History and Jewish Community Youth Foundation This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Family Admission: $10 Family Admission – YIVO / CJH members: $5

Join us for sing-alongs, storytelling, and puppetry inspired by the lives of Jewish children before World War II.

Children of all ages are invited to join for sing-alongs led by Eléonore Biezunski, storytelling by Shane Baker, and Yiddish puppet show "Lyzer the Miser" based on a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer by the same name, performed by Great Small Works members John Bell and Trudi Cohen. Liz Alpern of The Gelfilteria will provide authentic old-time Jewish snacks.

Activities will take place from 11:00am until 1:00pm throughout the Center for Jewish History.

Photos by Jen Rodewald

About the Participants

Liz Alpern is co-owner of The Gefilteria, a culinary venture that reimagines Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine and co-author of The Gefilte Manifesto: New Recipes for Old World Jewish Foods (Flatiron, 2016). Her career in food is driven by her passion for bringing people together. Based in Brooklyn, Liz travels around the globe as a cook, recipe tester, educator and entrepreneur. Alpern holds an MBA from Baruch College and is a faculty member in the Culinary Entrepreneurship Program at the International Culinary Center in NYC. She been featured in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for food and wine and was named one of the Forward 50 for 2016.

Eléonore Biezunski is a singer, violinist and archivist. She was trained in classical violin, klezmer music, Yiddish song and voice. She has collected Yiddish songs and melodies between Paris and New York, where she has founded or joined groups (Shpilkes, The Klezmographers, Shtetl Stompers, Les Égarés and Yerushe), written plays (“La Complainte du Balluchon”, “Le Petit Peuple de Ruth Rubin”) or joined theater companies, to which she lends her voice and her bow and plays a little comedy (Cie La Courte Échelle; Der Lufteater; Cie 0,10). She released her second album "Yerushe" in 2016, drawing from the Ruth Rubin Collection and other Yiddish music archives. Her first album “Zol zayn” came out in 2014 with the band Shpilkes. When she is not on stage, she teaches (Maison de la Culture Yiddish, Workmen's Circle, Institut Européen des Musiques Juives), hosts a radio show about “Zing!” on the online Radio "Yiddish Pour Tous” and serves as Sound Archivist in the the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archive of YIVO Sound Recordings at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research (NYC), where she prepares, alongside Lorin Sklamberg the publication of the Ruth Rubin Collection online. She is a 2017 recipient of the New York State Council on the Arts' Folk Art Apprenticeships (for the study of Yiddish Folksongs with Josh Waletzky) through the Center for Traditional Music and Dance. She published an article about Yiddish Songs about New York "East Side Story. Mémoires sédimentées de l’expérience migratoire juive à New York à travers une chanson yiddish", in. Marianne Amar, Hélène Bertheleu, Laure Teulières (dirs.), Mémoires des migrations, temps de l'histoire, Presses Universitaires François Rabelais, Paris, 2015. When she was in Paris, she was the Assistant of Hervé Roten at the European Institute for Jewish Music, where she participated in the publication of a 6-CD set "Jewish Music in Paris in the Aftermath of WWII", Eds. E. Biezunski, L. Couderc & H. Roten, Éditions de l'Institut Européen des Musiques Juives, Paris, 2015. Her website: www.eleonorebiezunski.com

Shane Baker is the best-loved Episcopalian on the Yiddish stage today. As director of the Congress for Jewish Culture, he is helping to produce events marking Sholem Aleichem’s 100th yortsayt around the world and he comes to the YIVO directly from one such performance in Tel-Aviv, his Israeli debut. He also recently starred as Vladimir in his own Yiddish translation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, produced Off Broadway and internationally by the New Yiddish Rep. The New York Times pronounced Baker’s translation ‘even more depressing than Beckett’s original.’ Upcoming appearances include dates in Los Angeles and San Francisco this June with frequent stage partner Miryem-Khaye Seigel. Mentored by the last great stars of the Interwar European Yiddish stage, Baker is renowned not only for his translations and acting, but also for his recitations of Yiddish poetry.

Trudi Cohen and John Bell are theater makers, puppeteers, festival organizers, musicians, and founding members of Great Small Works, a visual theater collective created in 1995 in New York City, whose six members share roots in Bread and Puppet Theater. Its members are now dispersed, with outposts in Brooklyn, Montreal, and Cambridge, MA. Bell and Cohen anchor the New England base in Massachusetts. John Bell is the Director of the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry and an Associate Professor of Dramatic Arts at the University of Connecticut. He was a member of the Bread and and Puppet Theater company from 1976 to 1986; and received his doctoral degree in theater history from Columbia University in 1993. He is a respected scholar in the field of puppet theater, whose writing includes American Puppet Modernism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); and Strings, Hands, Shadows: A Modern Puppet History (Detroit Institute of Arts, 2000). He edited Puppets, Masks, and Performing Objects (MIT Press, 2001), and co-edited with Dassia Posner and Claudia Orenstein The Routledge Guide to Puppetry and Material Performance (2014). He is an editor of Puppetry International, the publication of the U.S. branch of the Union Internationale de la Marionnette; an organizer of the Honk! Festival of Activist Street Bands in Somerville, Massachusetts; and a trombonist in the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band. Trudi Cohen was a full-time member of Bread and Puppet Theater's resident company in Vermont for 10 years, and has performed as puppeteer in productions directed by Peter Schumann, Janie Geiser, Amy Trompetter and David Neumann. She was Director of Great Small Works' 2008, 2010 and 2013 International Toy Theater Festivals and has curated dozens of the company’s Spaghetti Dinner events. She plays bass drum with the Second Line Social Aid and Pleasure Society Brass Band, and is a founder and organizer of the HONK! Festival in Somerville, MA. She is secretary of the Board of Bread and Puppet Theater, and on the board of Parts & Crafts, a maker space for young people in Somerville, MA. Bell and Cohen offer original Toy Theater productions for both family and adult audiences. Original plays based on the daily news are more geared to adults; the retelling of folk tales and fables are designed for audiences of all ages, including very young children.