The Cockney Yiddish Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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The Cockney Yiddish Podcast

Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs

History

Music

Society & Culture

Frequency: 1 episode/9d. Total Eps: 8

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast explores the unknown Yiddish popular culture of London's East End through an array of newly discovered stories and songs from the 1880s to the 1950s. Historians Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs share their passion for the tunes and words of Jewish Londoners encountering the Cockney culture of music halls, street markets and rhyming slang. They discover a rich landscape of music and interviews from the archives and chat about hidden histories, family stories, lost connections and real and imagined places with special guests and readers including Michael Rosen, Miriam Margolyes, Alan Dein and David Schneider. Join Nadia and Vivi on their journey and hear East London’s long forgotten songs and stories brought to new life by contemporary musicians and actors.

Episodes released every Monday.

Go to our website for more information about the music and texts we discuss.

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs

Produced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of London Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), Grant reference AH/Z505614/1.

Big thanks to: Adam Corsini at the Jewish Museum London; Tamsin Bookey and Sanjida Alam at Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives; Ru Dannreuther, Silke Boettcher, Kaptan Miah and Olivia Warren at Queen Mary University of London; Ashraf Al-Hawrani, the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre, London, the Yiddish Sof-Vokh.

Podcast image: © Jeremy Richardson.

Featured music: Klezmer Klub and Katsha’nes.

Translations: Vivi Lachs and Barry Smerin.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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7. The mystery of Solomon Levy

Episode 7

Monday, March 24, 2025 • Duration 52:52

Who is the gramophone man? In the final episode of the series Nadia and Vivi go down an extraordinary rabbit-hole of East End history. They investigate the mysterious figure of Solomon Levy, immortalised in Yiddish East End street songs. But what is his connection with the ubiquitous gramophone man who haunted Petticoat Lane market with his clapped out gramophone on a rusty pram playing old Yiddish songs? This iconic figure featured in the famous 1955 film A Kid for Two Farthings as well as photographs, drawings and is our podcast image. What is fiction and what is real in the history of the Jewish East End? To help us answer this question, we invite broadcaster Alan Dein for an East End musical tour.

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs

Produced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of London

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Guest: Alan Dein

Contributors: Monty Bixer, Nat, Charles Fox, Sylvie Reid, Alice, Hannah Grant, Naomi, Emanuel Litvinoff

Reader in English: Miriam Margolyes

Featured story: Moshe Domb, ‘Petticoat Lane’, translated by Barry Smerin. From East End Jews: Sketches from the London Yiddish Press (Wayne State University Press, 2025).

Featured songs:

Josef Rosenblatt, ‘Eili, Eili’. From Best Yiddish Songs (Victor Matrix, 1923)
Klezmer Klub, ‘Old Solomon Levy’. From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)
Mendel and his Mishpokhe Band, ‘A Kosher Fox Trot Medley (Petticoat Lane) Part 1 (1929). Digitised on the CD Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World Yiddisher Jazz in London’s East End 1920s-1950s(Playloud, 2018)

Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad) and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)

Podcast image: © Jeremy Richardson

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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6. Look back in shmaltz

Episode 6

Monday, March 17, 2025 • Duration 33:53

Episode 6 takes a wallow in nostalgia. Nadia and Vivi listen to a shmaltzy song yearning for Jewish Whitechapel and look at how postwar Yiddish and English-language writers remembered and reinvented the East End. We hear a story, movingly read by Miriam Margolyes, in which the smell of traditional Friday night gefilte fish in the back streets of the East End triggers memories of the Eastern European ‘shtetl’ (town) where the writer grew up and which was destroyed in the Holocaust. We look back at the origins of Jewish East End nostalgia in the nineteenth century, explore Alexander Baron’s fiction from the 1960s and continuing resonances in Eastenders’ memories. Aditi Anand shows us around the Migration Museum in London exploring how migrants to London from around the world remember their origins through food.

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs

Produced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of London

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Guest: Aditi Anand, Artistic Director, Migration Museum

Contributor: Celia, Holocaust Survivors’ Centre Yiddish group

Archival recording: Georgia Brown from the radio programme Our East End (BBC Home Service, 1962)

Reader: Miriam Margolyes

Featured story: Ella Zilberg, ‘Gefilte Fish’, translated by Vivi Lachs. From East End Jews: Sketches from the London Yiddish Press (Wayne State University Press, 2025)

Featured song: Chaim Towber with Johnny Franks Orchestra, ‘Whitechapel’ (Shellac, 10″, 78 RPM, 1951). Digitised on the CD Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World Yiddisher Jazz in London’s East End 1920s-1950s (Playloud, 2018)

Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad) and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD (Klub Records, 2009)

5. Khanike oder Krismes

Episode 5

Tuesday, March 11, 2025 • Duration 39:05

This episode, entirely in Yiddish, focuses on the pressures on interwar immigrant and second generation Jews to engage with English life and the particular dilemma of what to do about Christmas. We hear Katie Brown’s story of a family negotiating Hanukkah and Christmas and the street song ‘Mayn heym in Ventvort Strit’. This week’s guest, Yiddish teacher Sima Beeri describes her multilingual background and her experience of Lithuanian-Yiddish Christmas. We discuss the way English and Cockney words, like ‘kapati’ (cup of tea), creep into Yiddish texts, with participants of the UK Sof-Vokh Yiddish learners’ and speakers’ Weekend, and the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre Yiddish Group.

The episode is entirely in Yiddish. Go to our website for an English transcript.

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs

Produced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of London

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Guest: Sima Beeri

Contributors: participants from the Yiddish Sof-vokh 2024: Joseph, Pam, Justin, Tamara, Jake, Barry, Motl, and participants of the London Holocaust Survivors Centre Yiddish group

Readers: Vivi Lachs,Sima Beeri

Featured story: Katie Brown, ‘Krismes Prezents’ (Alts in eynem, 1951)

Featured song: Raymond Kalman, ‘Mayn heym in ventvort strit’ (streetsong)

Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad) and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)

Podcast image: © Jeremy Richardson

Hosted on Acast. See for more information.

4. Oy! Who are you laughing at?

Episode 4

Monday, March 10, 2025 • Duration 49:23

Did you hear the one about Haimy and Moishe …? In this episode Vivi and Nadia tell some of their families’ favourite Jewish jokes and find out about Cockney-Yiddish rhyming slang with actor Nick Cassenbaum. We look at Yiddish humour with our studio guest, writer Michael Rosen. We discuss his family’s fragmentary use of Yiddish and how he drew on it in his comic writing. We mull over what is so funny about a story of Jewish technical incompetence, and the outrageous adventures of an East End Jewish wife in a Yiddish music hall parody of a famous ragtime song, Bill Bailey Won’t You Please Come Home.

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs

Produced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of London

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Guests: Michael Rosen and Nick Cassenbaum

Reader: Michael Rosen

Featured story: Asher Beilin, ‘A Jew Takes a Pleasure Trip’, translated by Vivi Lachs. From East End Jews: Sketches from the London Yiddish Press (Wayne State University Press, 2025)

Featured song: Katsha’nes, ‘Vos geyst nisht aheym, sore-gitl?’ (Lyrics: Arn Nager. Music: Hughie Cannon). From the CD Don’t Ask Silly Questions (Katshanes, 2017)

Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad) and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)

Podcast image: © Jeremy Richardson

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

3. When you go to a Yiddish theatre

Episode 3

Monday, March 3, 2025 • Duration 43:30

Pack your picnic, practise your heckles and come with us to the Yiddish theatre. This episode looks at Yiddish theatre and music hall from its early days in the late nineteenth century, from the popular theatre with its cheap songs and audience misbehaviour to highbrow performances of Shakespeare and opera in Yiddish. Nadia and Vivi bring you a short story about audience antics, and ‘Gevalt polis!’ (Help Police!), a comic song about East End crime. We are joined by the actor and writer David Schneider whose family had a leading role in London’s Yiddish theatre. David performs his grandfather’s translation of Shylock’s ‘Hath not a Jew’ speech in Yiddish, and historian David Mazower describes the doomed attempt to set up a London Yiddish art theatre.

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs

Produced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of London

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Guests: David Schneider and David Mazower

Reader: David Schneider

Featured story: A. M. Kaizer ‘When You Go to a Yiddish Theatre’, translated by Vivi Lachs. From London Yiddishtown: East End Jewish Life in Yiddish Sketch and Story, 1930-1950 (Wayne State University Press, 2021)

Featured song: Katsha’nes, ‘Gevalt Police’ (Lyrics and music: Anon). From the CD Don’t Ask Silly Questions (Katshanes, 2017)

Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad) and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

2. Forverts! Politics and protest

Episode 2

Monday, February 24, 2025 • Duration 47:47

The East End of London has always been a place of political protest and activism and this episode focuses on East End Jewish radicalism. From the union protests of the 1880s through to fighting fascism in the 1936 Battle of Cable Street, Nadia and Vivi discuss Yiddish-speaking activists in East End politics with historians Professor Ruth Livesey and Dr Sarah Glynn. Join us in listening to Morris Winchevsky’s attempts to cajole Victorian Jewish workers into action with one of his Meshugener Filozof (Crazy Philosopher) columns, read by Nick Cassenbaum, and Winchevsky’s angry ballad ‘London bay nakht’ (London at Night). Join in singing stirring protest songs with the Great Yiddish Parade and the strike songs of the Rego-Polikoff factory women!

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs

Produced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of London

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Guests: Professor Ruth Livesey and Dr Sarah Glynn

Reader: Nick Cassenbaum

Featured story: Morris Winchevsky, ‘How Do You Become a Poet’, translated by Vivi Lachs, from East End Jews: Sketches from the London Yiddish Press (Wayne State University Press, 2025).

Featured songs:

Klezmer Klub. ‘London bay nakht’. Words: Morris Winchevsky. Music: Vivi Lachs, 2024. http://www.klezmerklub.co.uk.
‘Mare Street, Hackney’ (1929) (Rego and Polikoff Strike Songs, 1983)

Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad), and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)

1. Now you're talking Cockney Yiddish

Episode 1

Monday, February 17, 2025 • Duration 41:39

How did London change the lives of Yiddish-speaking immigrants? How did the English language turn Yiddish into Cockney Yiddish and how did Yiddish infiltrate Cockney English? Nadia and Vivi discuss how London’s English has changed over a century with linguist Professor Paul Kerswill. They follow the decline of East-End Yiddish through two generations and its re-emergence in the Yiddish revival today. They listen to a comic Yiddish music-hall song that describes how for new immigrants in the East End, the world felt turned upside down. They discuss a Yiddish story in translation, read by Miriam Margolyes, that tells of the rupture between a grandmother and granddaughter as they struggle to communicate.

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs

Produced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of London

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Guest: Professor Paul Kerswill

Contributors: Katy, participants from the Holocaust Survivors Centre Yiddish group and the Yiddish Sof-vokh 2024: Divyam, Zack, Doris, Misha, Dawn and Irmiye. Extract from oral history interview with Heimi Lipschitz, courtesy of Jewish Museum London

Reader: Miriam Margolyes

Featured story: I A Lisky, ‘A London Girl’s Secret’, translated by Barry Smerin. From East End Jews: Sketches from the London Yiddish Press (Wayne State University Press, 2025)

Featured songs:

Katsha’nes, ‘London hot zikh ibergekert’ (Lyrics: Sam Levenvirt. Music: Vivi Lachs). From the CD Don’t Ask Silly Questions (Katshanes, 2017).
Great Yiddish Parade, ‘Der frayhaytsgayst’ (Ensemble Festival, 2024)

Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad), and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD (Klub Records, 2009)

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast Trailer

Tuesday, January 21, 2025 • Duration 01:41

Cockney Yiddish? What’s it all about? Meet historians of the Jewish East End Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs who are passionate about sharing their journey into London’s forgotten cultural history. So with a Klezmer fanfare and a bit of chutzpah, we’re all set to go. Come and join us.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

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