• About Vivi Lachs

  Vivi Lachs is an academic historian of London’s Jewish East End, a Yiddishist, a Yiddish singer, and performer. She is a post-doc researcher at Queen Mary University of London. Her book Whitechapel Noise draws new historical detail from Yiddish poetry and song of the Jewish East End. London Yiddishtown is, in part, a result of a 2019 Yiddish Book Center translation fellowship. Lachs records London Yiddish songs with the bands Klezmer Klub and Katsha’nes, co-runs the Yiddish Open Mic Cafe and the Great Yiddish Parade – a marching band bringing Yiddish songs of protest back onto the streets. She also leads East End tours.

• About Sheva Zucker

  Sheva Zucker is the author of the textbooks Yiddish: An Introduction to the Language, Literature & Culture, Vols. I & II, published by the Workers Circle, and the editor and producer of the CDs The Golden Peacock: Voice of the Yiddish Writer. She has taught and lectured on Yiddish language, literature, and culture on five continents and has taught Yiddish for over two decades in the Uriel Weinreich Program in Yiddish Language, Literature and Culture, currently under the auspices of Bard College and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. She served for 15 years, from 2005-2020, as the director of the League for Yiddish and the editor of its all-Yiddish magazine Afn Shvel.