Monday, Jan 21, 2008

Interview with Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman

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2005 NEA National Heritage Fellow Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman was born in Vienna, Austria, but she was raised in pre-war Chernovitz, Romania, one of the centers of Yiddish intellectual culture. She survived the Holocaust in the ghetto in Chernovitz and came to the United States in 1951. Active as a teacher and songwriter, she also began to write poetry and gained a reputation as one of America's premier Yiddish poets. Many of her songs cover a wide range of subjects from subway musicians, to personal reminiscences, to descriptions of street life in her hometown, the Bronx. The renaissance of klezmer music in the United States allowed her large repertoire of traditional and original material to be performed by many artists.

She's joined today by her granddaughter Esther who speaks on her life growing up in a Yiddish household.

(photo by Alan Lankin)

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