Marvin Zuckerman: A Revisit Since LA Fires

This week, we present our second interview in the past year and a
half with Marvin Zuckerman. Our first took place
in his warm and welcoming home in LA’s Pacific Palisades, where
the walls were adorned with beautiful paintings and lined with
bookshelves holding thousands of volumes. Unfortunately, that
house was destroyed in the LA fires of January 2025. Marvin and
his wife, Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, have since
relocated to a rental apartment in Santa Monica, where we
conducted this follow-up interview on June 26, 2025. In this
conversation, Zuckerman reflects on the devastating fire and
shares further insights from his remarkable and multifaceted
life.


Zuckerman was raised in the Yiddish-speaking milieu of the Jewish
Labor Bund in the Bronx, New York. He later became a professor of
English at a Los Angeles college and co-authored the
well-regarded Yiddish textbook Learning Yiddish in Easy Stages as
well as several other works in the field of Yiddish. He also
translated the memoir of prominent Bundist Bernard
Goldstein, Twenty Years with the Jewish Labor Bund: A
Memoir of Interwar Poland (Purdue University Press, 2016). His
latest book is Dickinson in Yiddish & Other Essays &
Translations (Brass Tacks Press, 2024).


Music:

Sveta Kundish & Patrick Farrell: Ikh un di Velt
(words by Avrom Reyzen)

Ida Gillner & Livet Nord:Mayn heym – Mitt hem (words
by Anna Margolin; Swedish translation by Beila Engelhardt
Titelman)

Levyosn: Fisher-Lid (words by Aliza Greenblatt)

Levyosn: Fun der Khupe / Moh Rabu / Kleyne Printsesin

Intro instrumental music: DEM HELFANDS TANTS from Jeff
Warschauer: The Singing Waltz





Air Date: July 15, 2025