BAD RABBI vs. BAD RABBI: The Yiddish Press and Lost Models of Jewish Identity with Eddy Portnoy

Check out this incredibly fun and lively live podcast recording I did with historian of Yiddish popular culture Eddy Portnoy. Appropriately enough, this episode, which deals with the lost forms of Jewish identity Eddy excavated through his research in to the Yiddish Press, was itself temporarily lost. We recorded it in May 2020; in the interim, Eddy's insights about the lost and latent possibilities of Jewish culture and identity -- and the surprisingly moving, off-beat, often darkly hilarious tales they emerge from -- have only become more urgently relevant. Enjoy!

"Family lore conveniently forgets that Zeide the antiques dealer was actually Zeide the beggar; or that Bubbe the saintly seamstress was also Bubbe the hooker, who turned tricks during the slack season to make ends meet. These elisions are the lies we tell ourselves to elevate our pedigree and to make ourselves look palatable in the mirror of history. But along the way if we decide to ignore the sometimes ugly realities of our past, we lose some of the pieces of the story that make us human, and we do a disservice to the historical record."

- Eddy Portnoy, Bad Rabbi: And Other Strange But True Stories from the Yiddish Press