Kreutzmüller’s findings were on display earlier this month in an exhibit at the Berlin Chamber of Commerce as part of the city’s yearlong reckoning with the 80th anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power. They can also be found (in German) in his new book, Final Sale: The End of Jewish Owned Businesses in Nazi Berlin, and in an online database of thousands of companies that used to exist in the city. Reporter Brian Zumhagen visited Kreutzmüller in Berlin to talk with him about his research and to visit several sites where Berlin’s forgotten Jewish enterprises once stood. [Correction: Christoph Kreutzmüller is currently a researcher and educator at the House of the Wannsee Conference in Berlin, and not, as stated in the piece, a professor at Humboldt University of Berlin.] [Running time: 13:28.]

Little has changed on B&H’s menu. So says Eve Jochnowitz, a lifelong Greenwich Village resident, Yiddish scholar, and Jewish culinary ethnographer, who has just finished translating and editing a 1930 Yiddish cookbook by Vilna restaurateur Fania Lewando. In anticipation of Shavuot, for which many of us indulge in cheesecake and other dairy delights, Jochnowitz joined Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry for a visit to B&H to talk about the history of dairy restaurants, their forgotten cousin the “appetizing store,” and the unexpected pleasure of a soup made with pickles. Jochnowitz also offers her favorite vegan alternative to the cheesecake. [Running time: 15:00.]

As devastating as that loss was, Gran’s nightmare took a harrowing new turn after the war, when she was suddenly accused by other survivors—including her accompanist, the pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman—of having collaborated with the Gestapo. Her story captivated the Polish writer Agata Tuszyńska, who was born after the war but whose own mother and grandmother struggled to survive in the Warsaw Ghetto and who feels still the effects of that confinement in her own life. Tuszyńska, in New York as part of the PEN World Voices Festival, made Gran’s acquaintance in Paris, when Gran was old and bitter and ever suspicious. Tuszyńska’s new book is Vera Gran: The Accused, and she talks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about how she convinced the paranoid old woman to talk to her, about the nature of the accusations made against Gran, and about the slow process of discovery that has followed from Tuszyńska’s learning, at age 19, that her mother was a Jew. [Running time: 33:38.]

To celebrate Daniel Estrin’s achievement, we re-present his award-winning story and encourage you to listen to his series on Hidden Jerusalem. [Running time: 15:03.]

This week, Tablet is reporting from Warsaw, which is commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The new Museum of the History of Polish Jews, opening today after formal ceremonies, is a spectacular glass-and-concrete structure—still empty, for the most part—that has been 20 years in the making, at a cost of more than 100 million dollars.

Proponents of the museum believe it represents a huge step forward in healing Polish-Jewish relations. Critics say it’s too Jewish, or not Jewish enough. The one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that, like it or not, this museum—which will rely on multimedia exhibits to tell its story—is not, and will never be, a home to artifacts. Yet about a mile away, on a slightly run-down side street, sits an archive that has been collecting Polish Jewish artifacts continually from before the war to the present.

Reopened in 1947, Warsaw’s Jewish Historical Institute is essentially a continuation of an institute started in 1928. Today it holds what is arguably one of the most precious collections of Jewish life: the contents of 10 metal boxes and two milk canisters dug up shortly after the war and then several years later, in near-miraculous survivals of documents, letters, and other records of daily life from the annihilated Warsaw Ghetto.

Vox Tablet’s Julie Subrin went to visit this archive earlier in the week. With her was Agnieszka Reszka, the head of the archive, and Samuel Kassow, an American historian who wrote a book on the archive and its creator, Emanuel Ringelblum. For Reszka and Kassow, the archive offers us the opportunity to breathe new life into a lost world. [Running time: 14:26.]

The short answer is that it’s an extraordinarily difficult commandment to fulfill, and one over which people have puzzled for centuries. Religious Jews believe that the blue used on tzitzit must be the same blue as was used in ancient times, and the source of that blue, referred to in the Bible as tekhelet, has been shrouded in mystery for over a thousand years.

Now, thanks to the efforts of a motley crew of rabbis, chemists, marine biologists, and archaeologists from around the world, it appears the mystery has been solved. Vox Tablet sent reporter Zak Rosen to the Mediterranean coast of Israel to meet tekhelet expert Baruch Sterman, author of The Rarest Blue: The Remarkable Story of an Ancient Color Lost to History and Rediscovered, to find out why this discovery took so long. [Running time: 17:31.]

On today’s Vox Tablet, Kirsch shares some of those reflections with Jonathan Rosen, author of The Talmud and the Internet, and editor of the Jewish Encounters series, published by Nextbook Press. Together, they consider the value of studying Jewish law even if you don’t intend to follow it and marvel at the complex logic, outlandish scenarios, and deeply human responses to be found within these pages. [Running time: 22:28.]

In her new young-adult novel Starstruck, the first of a three-part series, Shukert focuses on pop culture, but from a historical perspective. Set in the 1930s, the Golden Age of Hollywood, the book follows three young women trying to break into the movie industry. The most shocking things in Starstruck happen off-screen, though: betrayals, unimaginable secrets, sexual misconduct, and manipulation from the studio chiefs who run the show. Tablet’s Managing Editor Wayne Hoffman sat down with Shukert to talk about her new book, her own experiences trying to break into show biz, and the changing roles of Jews in Hollywood. [Running time: 16:00.]

Now Alderman herself has written that novel. The Liars’ Gospel tells the story of the life and death of Jesus from four perspectives: that of his mother Miryam (Mary); his disciple and later betrayer Iehuda from Qeriot (Judas Iscariot); the High Priest Caiaphas; and Bar-Avo (Barabbas), the murderer and rebel whom Pontius Pilate releases instead of Jesus. Each of the four characters is drawn from the New Testament, but in Alderman’s telling, they are fully Jews, like Jesus himself, and are steeped in the rituals and beliefs of their time. It’s a provocative and fascinating retelling of one of the foundational narratives of Western culture.

This is not the first time Alderman has used fiction to challenge orthodoxies. Her first novel, Disobedience, told the story of Ronit Krushka, a lapsed Orthodox Jew who returns to London when her estranged father, a revered rabbi, dies. The novel portrays adulterous and lesbian love affairs, among other transgressions, and it offended some in the Orthodox community in which Alderman grew up. It also earned Alderman the U.K.’s 2006 Orange Prize for New Writers.

Vox Tablet’s Julie Subrin speaks with Alderman about how she tackled the story of Jesus, reactions to her novel from Christian readers, and how Jews can and should shed their fear of Christianity. Give a listen, and if the conversation leaves you wanting more, enter our sweepstakes to win a free copy of The Liars’ Gospel. [Running time: 24:35.]

In a new biography, Luft’s daughter Lillian Faderman recounts her mother’s travails. Faderman is an award-winning historian best known for her books on lesbian history and for her first memoir, Naked in the Promised Land. In the new book, called My Mother’s Wars, Faderman draws on her skills as a historian and also as a remarkably empathic daughter, to piece together her mother’s life story and all she endured—the bad relationships, exploitative sweatshops, secret abortions, and the crushing guilt she felt for failing to save her family. Tablet Managing Editor Wayne Hoffman spoke with Faderman about her mother’s tragic yet heroic life story and how writing this biography helped her view her mother in a new light. [Running time: 15:30.]

But how many people know that the song originated not in Israel (Hebrew lyrics not withstanding) but in Ukraine, and that its greatest ambassador was not Jewish at all? In Hava Nagila (The Movie), a documentary that opens in a limited theatrical release this month, director Roberta Grossman traces the song’s history from a Hasidic enclave in the Pale of Settlement to Palestine and then the United States. She also looks at how affection for the song has waxed and waned, in some ways reflecting American Jews’ (and others’) relationship to Jewishness, through interviews with actor Leonard Nimoy, singers and musicians Regina Spektor, Harry Belafonte, Henry Sapoznik, ethno-musicologist Josh Kun, and many others. (If, after seeing the film, you feel that you still haven’t had your fill of “Hava Nagila” history, there’s also an exhibit on the song on view at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage.)

On today’s podcast, guest host Rebecca Soffer, a New York-based producer and writer, talks to Grossman about how this project came to be, the song’s status among American Jews today, and Bob Dylan’s “talking blues” interpretation which is, depending on your perspective, a mangling or a brilliant articulation of Jewish ambivalence. [Running time: 19:50.]

Josh Gondelman, “The Kindness of Strangers”

Emily Heller, “Bait and Switch”

Rob Kutner, “Skiing With Jesus”

Judy Batalion, “Chicken”

Bazelon speaks with Tablet Magazine’s Liel Leibovitz about bullying and the role schools, parents, Jewish values, and Mark Zuckerberg could play in stopping it. [Running time: 24:23]

Gottesman later found herself provoking and entertaining readers with a different marketing effort. Despairing over the take-it-or-leave-it attitude many of her Jewish friends and neighbors held with regard to their religious birthright, she published a call to arms that she dubbed a “New Ten Commandments.” We invited Gottesman to speak with guest host Julie Burstein about this new mission, figuring if there’s anyone who can reengage Jews in Jewishness, it’s the woman who made many, if not all, New Yorkers come to have feelings of affection for a storage company. [Running time: 26:28.]

Today, on Vox Tablet, Liel Leibovitz looks at the too-short life, and enduring afterlife, of this remarkable man and considers what it is that makes his ballads so resonant for so many. [Running time: 10:11.]

Tablet Magazine’s Liel Leibovitz speaks to Rabbi Shai Held, co-founder and dean of Mechon Hadar, an egalitarian yeshiva in New York, about the Kooks, the history of the religious Zionist movement, and why it is such a force in Israeli politics and culture today. [Running time:39:20.]

For those who aren’t familiar, the No Pants Subway Ride invites participants to ride together without acknowledging one another or the fact that they are significantly underdressed. (Nudity is not allowed; participants must sport some form of underwear.) Since its inception, it has grown exponentially. Four thousand New Yorkers participated this past Sunday, along with thousands more across the United States and in 17 countries around the world.

But Jerusalem? A town where, in some quarters, visitors may be assaulted for “immodest dress” even when they are fully clothed? Estrin decided to tag along to see how the pantsless commuters fared. His dispatch is the second installment in our Hidden Jerusalem series, which reports on aspects of Jerusalem life that are usually obscured—like underwear. [Running time: 11:37.]

As she chronicles in her new book, Searching for Zion: The Quest for Home in the African Diaspora, Raboteau learned how difficult and disappointing the pursuit of Zion can be and came to recognize Zion less as a geographical destination and more as a place of inner strength and well being. In this episode of Vox Tablet, she speaks with Julie Subrin about these and other discoveries. [Running time:23:28.]

This conversation is the first in a new series we’re calling Hidden Jerusalem. Over the course of the next few months, with Estrin as our guide, we will peel back the layers that cloak this monumental, mythical city, looking at familiar sites and neighborhoods from new angles, and striking up conversations about topics that are usually hushed. [Running time: 28:53.]

This month, Meyerowitz’s half-century of work is being honored with a two-part retrospective at the Howard Greenberg Gallery in New York City and with the publication of a deluxe, two-volume limited-edition monograph of that work titled Taking My Time. (You can also get a sense of his work in our slideshow, above left.) Vox Tablet invited Meyerowitz to talk about how his Jewish family and upbringing have influenced his photography. He speaks with guest host Julie Burstein, author of Spark: How Creativity Works, about the Bronx tenements where he grew up; about his father the dry-cleaning-supplies salesman, boxer, and Catskills emcee; and about the spiritual weight he felt at Ground Zero during the months he spent there. [Running time: 45:16.]

For listeners who might want a preview of the longer conversation, here’s a short clip where Meyerowitz recalls the day he decided to become a photographer. It was 1962. He was working at a New York City ad agency and had been sent by his art director to accompany a photographer who was taking photos for a pamphlet he’d written. The photographer was Robert Frank. Seeing this master in action was a revelation to Meyerowitz and changed his career from that point forward. Here’s what happened next:

In his book Ajax, the Dutch, the War: The Strange Tale of Soccer During Europe’s Darkest Hour (just out in the United States), Kuper looks at soccer culture during the war and offers fresh insight into the treatment of Dutch Jews. In particular, he digs into the archives and institutional memory of Ajax Amsterdam, the country’s premier club and one that has long been associated with the city’s Jews.

Kuper, who has written three other books about soccer, spoke from Paris with Vox Tablet’s Sara Ivry about what he uncovered in his research and about how echoes of wartime anti-Jewish attitudes still reverberate in the Netherlands today. [Running time: 20:54.]

The last few weeks have been particularly tumultuous for her, with the last-minute cancellation of her Carnegie Hall concert because of the danger posed by a crane dangling above the concert hall as a result of Hurricane Sandy, and then the death, at age 103, of Carter, whom she greatly admired. And then there was last week’s last-minute invitation, which she accepted, to play Brahms with the New York Philharmonic, stepping in for the principal cellist, Carter Brey.

Still, she made time to come to the studio, cello in hand, to talk about the new CD and her work with Barenboim, to remember Elliott Carter, and to play, quite beautifully, two movements from Bach’s Cello Suite in C Major. [Running time: 27:45.]

It would take a few years before Israel got a hip-hop scene of its own, and its output, quality, and popularity have waxed and waned in the intervening decades. (We have an essay on some of the best new talent here.) Leibovitz, now living and raising a family in New York, finds that his feelings toward his homeland have followed a parallel course. [Running time: 8:41.]

In The Canvas, a novel just translated from German into English, Stein takes that encounter and builds from it a riveting story, told in two parts, about two fictional men who become intimately involved in the rapid rise and subsequent fall of a Wilkomirski-like character named Minsky. One protagonist is Amnon Zichroni, who is sent away from his ultra Orthodox Jerusalem community after he’s discovered reading secular literature. Zichroni remains religious but also pursues training as a psychotherapist and later aids Minsky in delving into his traumatic past. The other protagonist is Jan Wechsler, the writer who exposes Minsky only, it seems, to then flee from his own past in a similar fashion. These two stories meet, literally (and dramatically), at the center of the book—you can begin either with Zichroni’s life or with Weschler’s and must turn the book over to get from one to the other.

Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry speaks with Benjamin Stein about this unusual novel and about the ruptures in his own past, first when as a teen he decided to become a practicing Jew (having been raised in a nonreligious, staunchly Communist family) and later with the fall of the Berlin wall. We also hear from the book’s translator, Brian Zumhagen, whose voice and name may be familiar to New York City listeners from his day job as a news anchor at WNYC. [Running time: 26:42.]

How did this happen? In 1960, Streisand was a 17-year-old kid from Flatbush trying to make it big in Manhattan. Four years later, she was the country’s top-selling female recording artist and was starring on Broadway as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl. How she and her loyal associates transformed her into a beloved and critically acclaimed star is the subject of Hello, Gorgeous: Becoming Barbra Streisand, a new biography by William Mann. (Mann’s previous subjects include Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn.) Mann joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about how Streisand exaggerated her “kooky” persona—since traded in for a more poised demeanor, how she sassed Mike Wallace on national television, and how she capitalized on her nontraditional looks. [Running time: 23:05.]

Kushner talks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about the very personal roots of this exploration, dating back to the 1970s, when his son Aaron was diagnosed with a rare and incurable disease (Aaron died in 1977, at age 14); about the depth and complexity of the Job verses; and about why he believes we must choose between an all-loving God and an all-powerful one. [Running time: 19:57.]

Tyler speaks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about the similarities between the ancient Greek warrior state of Sparta and modern Israel, about the “sabra code” to which Israel’s leaders largely adhere, and about the influence of the past on the current stand-off with Iran. [Running time: 22:48.]

Otto Frank granted Levin the rights to adapt the diary for stage, but Levin would never see that dream realized. The production only got as far as a preliminary radio play. It’s hard to pin down why. Some say the Anne Frank that Levin was so moved by—indeed revered—was too Jewish a character for early 1950s American audiences. Others say Levin’s difficult personality and lack of writing ability scuttled the project. Either way, Levin eventually relinquished the stage rights, shunned by Frank and his cohort. The failure left Levin embittered.

Now, three decades after Levin’s death, L.A. based theater director Jennifer Strome is resurrecting Meyer Levin’s Anne Frank, with a new production of Levin’s 35-minute radio play. Sixty years after its poorly received national broadcast, Levin’s rendering of Anne Frank will meet a new audience, one perhaps better equipped to judge her authenticity. Strome’s production will be available as a podcast from Sept. 15 to 18 here. Producer Eric Molinsky brings us the story of Meyer Levin and his legacy. [Running time: 10:43.]

Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry is joined by Andy Bachman, rabbi of Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn (and U.S. history and politics buff), and Shifra Bronznick, founding president of Advancing Women Professionals and the Jewish Community, to discuss Rosin’s thesis, and how it might resonate in a Jewish context. They speak as Jewish leaders, as people who are privy to the private concerns of Jewish men and women who are struggling with these changes, and as parents of sons and daughters who will have to navigate this new world. [Running time: 23:18.]

For lyrics, he turned to Torah and other religious texts. For collaborators, he turned to musicians whose work, like his, isn’t easily categorized. Perhaps most surprising is his singer Alsarah, a Muslim woman who grew up in Sudan and Yemen, went to Wesleyan University, and now leads the band Alsarah and the Nubatones from her base in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Together, the 10-person band, which is called the Epichorus, is releasing their first album, One Bead, available here at the end of this week.

Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry talks with Zach Fredman and Alsarah in Fredman’s Harlem apartment about their musical influences, what they’re trying to accomplish with this project, and how they owe their collaboration, at least in part, to a late night YouTube bender. [Running time: 21:54.]

Ross writes about these journeys in Am I a Jew? Lost Tribes, Lapsed Jews, and One Man’s Search for Himself. He joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about why his mother demanded that he hide his religious identity, what it was like pretending not to be entirely himself, and why he chose to spend time with non-mainstream Jews as a way to re-engage with what being Jewish might mean for him. [Running time: 18:50.]

This month, the Alaevs concluded a world tour with a gig at Lincoln Center’s Out of Doors Festival. They also have a new CD, produced with Tamir Muskat, the drummer of the high-energy dance band Balkan Beat Box. And, come fall, they’ll be hitting the road once again, bringing their singular sound to the Netherlands and South Africa. Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry met most of the Alaev family in their midtown Manhattan hotel just days before their Lincoln Center performance. They spoke about how they came by their musical talent and about the origins of the songs they perform. And, periodically, they broke into spontaneous song. [Running time: 15:30.]

Some years ago, Rakoff wrote an essay on the life and work of Viennese writer Felix Salten. The creator of Bambi, Salten was a European Jew who wrote soft porn and a prominent critic in early 20th-century Austria. In concert with this essay, Rakoff joined Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry for a podcast conversation about the brutality in Bambi, about Salten’s place in literary society, and about the dark side of fairy tales—and life.

We re-run this piece now to celebrate David Rakoff, whose wit, warmth, and grace come across in every utterance, and whose reading of a particularly wrenching scene from Bambi gives a sense both of the work’s violence and of Rakoff’s own captivating voice. [Running time: 19:12.]

May his memory be for a blessing.

Miami-based radio producer Trina Sargalski trailed Betty on one of her Sunday-morning shifts and sent us this dispatch. This segment, from our archive, first ran on June 27, 2011. [Running time: 7:05.]

In a new memoir, The Forgetting River, Carvajal describes her search for definitive answers to questions about her identity. That search took her to Costa Rica, university archives and genetic specialists, frontier towns in Spain, and her own cache of forgotten memories and keepsakes. She speaks with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry about what she found out. [Running time: 17:30.]

The United States, Germany, Australia, and Israel have called for a public remembrance at this summer’s games in London. Their efforts have been for naught. The IOC says it does not want to “politicize” the event with a memorial service even while international pressure—including from President Obama—to hold such a commemoration mounts.

David Clay Large is a historian of modern Germany who has written about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Munich under Nazi rule, and, most recently, about the 1972 Olympic Games. He joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to discuss what role Germany’s and Israel’s national identity played in the events leading up to the 1972 massacre, how the event is remembered in Germany and Israel today, and why the IOC is disingenuous in its refusal to have a memorial service this summer. [Running time: 22:00.]

Meltzer and Nix join Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about the difficulties they had filming as American women—one Jewish, one Christian—in Syria and about their audiences’ reactions to the seemingly contradictory values and aspirations expressed by al-Habash and her students.

The Light in Her Eyes airs on the PBS series “POV” on July 19, 2012, and streams online from July 20 through Aug. 19. You can also see a clip from the film here. [Running time: 18:27.]

One of the greatest strongmen of all time was one Joseph Greenstein, born Yossele in 1893 in the small Polish town of Suvalk. At a young age, Greenstein ran away to join a Russian circus, then made his way to the Texas oil fields, and finally to Brooklyn, where, as the Mighty Atom, he would earn a place in Ripley’s Believe It or Not and the Guinness Book of World Records for his extraordinary feats (for instance, in 1928, resisting the pull of a plane with a 220 horsepower using ropes tied to his long hair).

The Mighty Atom died in 1977, at age 84. Reporter Jon Kalish presents this profile of him, drawing on archival interviews as well as conversations with his protégés and with his son Mike Greenstein, now 91. [Running time: 12:51.]

Now the government has embarked on a crackdown—not the first but certainly the toughest so far—deporting hundreds of migrants from South Sudan, which it says is safe enough for them to return to. Migrants from Ivory Coast are up next: This past Thursday, the government announced they have two weeks to leave voluntarily. Israeli officials argue that the deportations are necessary because the migrants are a burden and a threat to the country’s Jewish majority. Critics say the policy violates human rights, not to mention Jewish values.

Itamar Mann has worked directly with Israel’s African migrants as a co-founder of We Are Refugees, an organization providing pro bono counsel to asylum-seekers in Israel. But he also views immigrant questions from a wider perspective. Mann is a lawyer and a doctoral student at Yale University studying the history of refugee policies in Europe, the United States, and Australia. Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry speaks with Mann about the underlying causes of, and possible solutions to, Israel’s immigrant situation. [Running time: 16:44.]

Hoffman, the managing editor of Tablet Magazine, will accept the prestigious Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award at the annual American Library Association conference today. To celebrate his accomplishment, we re-present his conversation with Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry. They discuss Sweet Like Sugar, how his two careers—novelist and editor—influence one another, and his own experience finding acceptance as a gay Jew. [Running time: 16:54.]

This podcast was originally published on Aug. 17, 2011.

For a few weeks this past spring that changed, as the synagogue’s prayer hall was transformed into a wartime café, in which was set a historical drama called North Bank Suzhou Creek. (The play has since had a three-night run in New York City, and there are plans in the works for additional performances.) The production, a love story full of musical numbers, is by Chinese playwright William Sun and was co-directed by Michael Leibenluft and Jeffrey Sichel, both American. The six-person cast was a mix of French, British, Chinese, and American performers. Shanghai-based reporter Rebecca Kanthor visited the set during rehearsals and sold-out performances and talked to the actors and directors about the pleasures and pains of putting on a bilingual, bi-cultural production of this kind. [Running time: 7:51.]

Silver joins Vox Tablet host Sara Ivry to talk about some of the unique voices he’s discovered, what happened to Jewish Moroccan singers once they left the country in the 1950s and ’60s, and where he gets his missionary zeal (hint: It has to do with Bob Dylan; Mama Cass; Bill Cosby; and Chris’s dad, Roy). [Running time: 25:55.]

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Here’s their conversation. [Running time: 18:53.]