The Cockney Yiddish Podcast
Lead Research Organisation:
Queen Mary University of London
Department Name: English
Abstract
Yiddish was the language spoken by Eastern European Jewish immigrants to Britain from the early 1880s. By the 1950s this working-class community was dispersed, communities of origin had been destroyed and Yiddish largely disappeared. Today, the literary and cultural heritage of Yiddish has been lost. As part of the AHRC-funded project 'Making and Remaking the Jewish East End', London Yiddish literary sources from archives across the world were collected, translated and analysed, and the project researchers built a picture of East End working-class Jewish life. Our follow-on project arises from the unforeseen public enthusiasm generated by our stagings of Yiddish performance. It aims to use these texts in Yiddish and English translation to engage a range of public audiences with the history of Jewish immigrants to London's East End, including people with an ancestral connection to this history and those interested in migration history or London cultures. Secondly we aim to stimulate and support the teaching and learning of the Yiddish language, which remains an endangered language in Britain.
The project will produce 'The Cockney Yiddish Podcast', a series of podcasts and linked website about the history of Yiddish culture in London. The series celebrates the richness of Cockney Yiddish culture, and its close intertwinement with British culture and literature, as an integral part of British migration history. The podcasts will be presented by the project team with guest scholars, writers and actors and will explore the experience of immigration and acculturation through the medium of popular culture, especially fiction and song. These lively texts from London's popular Yiddish press will also be made available on the website as teaching and learning resources for intermediate-level Yiddish language, in order to serve the learning needs of the growing Yiddish language learning community. Interactivity among learners and listeners will be fostered through an online discussion forum and live events.
Our UK community partners the Jewish Museum, the Jewish Music Institute, the Holocaust Survivors' Centre and Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives will facilitate the involvement of a number of different audiences in the project, including both younger learners of Yiddish language and elderly native speakers. In turn the project will enable our community partner organisations to expand their provision of Yiddish-focused cultural programming. In addition, the team will use their existing connections to Yiddish language centres in the US and Israel to reach wider international audiences. At the same time, through making texts available in English translation in the podcast and website, the project also addresses people with no knowledge of Yiddish or Jewish culture. By generating engagement with these several audiences through informative, entertaining and provocative content, the project aims to expand knowledge of working-class Jewish history in Britain and to engage more people with Yiddish culture.
The project will produce 'The Cockney Yiddish Podcast', a series of podcasts and linked website about the history of Yiddish culture in London. The series celebrates the richness of Cockney Yiddish culture, and its close intertwinement with British culture and literature, as an integral part of British migration history. The podcasts will be presented by the project team with guest scholars, writers and actors and will explore the experience of immigration and acculturation through the medium of popular culture, especially fiction and song. These lively texts from London's popular Yiddish press will also be made available on the website as teaching and learning resources for intermediate-level Yiddish language, in order to serve the learning needs of the growing Yiddish language learning community. Interactivity among learners and listeners will be fostered through an online discussion forum and live events.
Our UK community partners the Jewish Museum, the Jewish Music Institute, the Holocaust Survivors' Centre and Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives will facilitate the involvement of a number of different audiences in the project, including both younger learners of Yiddish language and elderly native speakers. In turn the project will enable our community partner organisations to expand their provision of Yiddish-focused cultural programming. In addition, the team will use their existing connections to Yiddish language centres in the US and Israel to reach wider international audiences. At the same time, through making texts available in English translation in the podcast and website, the project also addresses people with no knowledge of Yiddish or Jewish culture. By generating engagement with these several audiences through informative, entertaining and provocative content, the project aims to expand knowledge of working-class Jewish history in Britain and to engage more people with Yiddish culture.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
Nadia Valman (Principal Investigator) |
Description | The project produced a podcast series of seven episodes. Research on Yiddish popular culture conducted during the earlier AHRC-funded 'Making and Remaking the Jewish East End' project was successfully used to create content for the podcasts. The researchers/presenters discussed songs and texts (in translation) from the Yiddish-speaking East End of London with guests including actors, historians and writers. Further content was created through partnerships with the Holocaust Survivors' Centre, London which hosts elderly native Yiddish speakers, and the Yiddish sof-vokh immersive language weekend, which hosts new learners. The researchers also created a website to accompany the podcast series with original Yiddish texts and audio recordings to promote Yiddish language learning. Episodes have been released weekly: to date five episodes have been released with over 3200 downloads by listeners from all over the world and 4,400 views of the website (over the first month). These figures demonstrate that the research has been made accessible to thousands more people than we previously reached through our public engagement activities. Project partners including Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives and the Jewish Museum London have supported the project with publicity enabling it to reach wider and more diverse audiences. Collections interpretation at the Jewish Museum London has been enhanced by the project findings, which are on display in an exhibition running concurrently with the episodes. The podcast has been very favourably reviewed by the major London events magazine Londonist. Impact analysis will take place over the next few months as we examine responses to the podcast among different groups of users. |
Exploitation Route | It is too early to assess the full impact of this project but we expect the podcasts and website to be used as teaching resources by Yiddish teachers and by social workers working with Yiddish-speaking elders. We also expect that listeners with interests in Jewish history and London subcultures, who expressed interest in learning more at our public engagement events, will be able to do so by listening to the podcast and following up the resources provided on the website. |
Sectors | Education Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
URL | http://cockneyyiddish.org |
Description | Impact funding |
Amount | £7,000 (GBP) |
Organisation | Queen Mary University of London |
Sector | Academic/University |
Country | United Kingdom |
Start | 03/2025 |
End | 08/2025 |
Description | Collaboration with Jewish Museum London to create pop-up exhibition |
Organisation | The Jewish Museum of London |
Country | United Kingdom |
Sector | Charity/Non Profit |
PI Contribution | The researchers wrote exhibition labels for materials curated by the Jewish Museum London and displayed at the JW3 Jewish Community Centre, London. The exhibition linked materials from the Jewish Museum's collections to each episode of the podcast. The collaboration supported the Museum, which currently has no permanent exhibition space, in sustaining its public presence in London. |
Collaborator Contribution | The exhibition and the Museum's promotion of it created additional publicity for the podcast. |
Impact | Pitch-Up exhibition at JW3 Community Centre, January-July 2025 |
Start Year | 2025 |
Description | Blog article (Spitalfields Life) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | The researchers wrote a guest article on a well-known blog, Spitalfields Life, on 17 February 2025 to coincide with the launch of the podcast series. Many positive comments on the blog expressed increased interest in the research. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
URL | https://spitalfieldslife.com/2025/02/17/cockney-yiddish/ |
Description | Cockney Yiddish Podcast website |
Form Of Engagement Activity | Engagement focused website, blog or social media channel |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | The website provided Yiddish-language original texts and audio recordings, as well as information about the songwriters and authors. Over 4,400 people have viewed the website in its first month of publication, including the pages that provide information on Yiddish-language classes. It is too early to assess the impact of the website as yet. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
URL | http://cockneyyiddish.org |
Description | Podcast series (7 episodes) |
Form Of Engagement Activity | A broadcast e.g. TV/radio/film/podcast (other than news/press) |
Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
Geographic Reach | International |
Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
Results and Impact | Seven podcasts have been recorded for weekly release, on Yiddish popular culture in the Jewish East End. They are intended to spark interest in people with no knowledge of the subject, to enhance cultural awareness and enable people with Jewish ancestry to connect with cultural heritage and to promote and extend Yiddish-language learning by means of the dedicated website. We have only just begun to release the episodes but there have been over 3200 downloads to date. Social media conversations and media reviews of the podcast demonstrate great appreciation and increased interest among listeners who had little previous knowledge of the subject. Further research on impact on Yiddish speakers and learners will take place over the next few months. |
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2025 |
URL | http://cockneyyiddish.org |