Ellen Cassedy and Andrew Cassel joined The Shmooze to talk about their work translating So We Died: A Memoir of Life and Death in the Ghetto of Šiauliai, Lithuania, by Levi Shalit. Few accounts of the Šiauliai, or Shavl, Ghetto survived the war. Shalit’s work offers English-language readers a rare insight into a vital chapter of history. In conversation we learn about Levi Shalit the writer and how his literary and journalist style illuminates the Shavl Ghetto’s daily struggles, false hopes, and atrocities.
Episode 399
October 30, 2025
Amherst, MA
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Ellen Cassedy and Andrew Cassel joined The Shmooze to talk about their work translating So We Died: A Memoir of Life and Death in the Ghetto of Šiauliai, Lithuania, by Levi Shalit. Few accounts of the Šiauliai, or Shavl, Ghetto survived the war. Shalit’s work offers English-language readers a rare insight into a vital chapter of history. In conversation we learn about Levi Shalit the writer and how his literary and journalist style illuminates the Shavl Ghetto’s daily struggles, false hopes, and atrocities.
Episode 399
October 30, 2025
Amherst, MA
Episode 393: The Backstory of Chaim Grade’s Novel Sons & Daughters
The Shmooze, The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast
26 minutes 44 seconds
4 months ago
Episode 393: The Backstory of Chaim Grade’s Novel Sons & Daughters
Editors Altie Karper and Todd Portnowitz sat down with "The Shmooze" to talk about Chaim Grade’s novel "Sons & Daughters" (Knopf)—newly translated into English by Rose Waldman. Originally serialized in the 1960s and 1970s in New York–based Yiddish newspapers, Grade’s "Sons and Daughters" tells the story of a way of life that is no longer. In conversation Altie and Todd tell the incredible backstory of how the work came to publication and why the newly translated novel has been lauded as the “last great Yiddish novel.”
Episode 393
June 30, 2025
Amherst, MA
The Shmooze, The Yiddish Book Center's Podcast
Ellen Cassedy and Andrew Cassel joined The Shmooze to talk about their work translating So We Died: A Memoir of Life and Death in the Ghetto of Šiauliai, Lithuania, by Levi Shalit. Few accounts of the Šiauliai, or Shavl, Ghetto survived the war. Shalit’s work offers English-language readers a rare insight into a vital chapter of history. In conversation we learn about Levi Shalit the writer and how his literary and journalist style illuminates the Shavl Ghetto’s daily struggles, false hopes, and atrocities.
Episode 399
October 30, 2025
Amherst, MA
