Do you ever wake up with a punim only a mother could love? Do you sometimes schlep through your day feeling like bupkes? Do you ever schmooze with people whose shtick is to prove who has more chutzpah over the others? Don't be so meshuggeneh! Get your tuches out of your head and nosh on this podcast so you can kvell about it to your friends!
Ann Toback of the Workers Circle leads an organization whose roots come from Yiddish. Leading one of the premier Yiddish disciplines in the country, she reveals the strong tie between the Yiddishkeit lifestyle and activism in the United States. Her work reveals the untold importance of Yiddish and how it goes beyond cheap one-liners in Jewish humor-filled Hollywood films. Host of Bad Jew, Chaz Volk, collaborates with Ann to understand her work and bring light to the Yiddish language's value in modern-day society.
About Ann Toback:
Ann Toback is the CEO of the Workers Circle. Ann has served in this position since June 2008. A lifelong progressive activist – whose grandparents met at a union hall - and trained attorney, Ann previously served as the Assistant Executive Director at the Writers Guild of America, East from 1999-2008. A highlight of Ann’s union career was successfully directing and organizing the 2007-2008 Writers Guild strike on the East Coast before coming to lead the Workers Circle. During Ann’s tenure as the nonprofit’s first woman leader, she has led the organization through a reboot process, resulting in today’s Workers Circle, a social justice organization that powers progressive Jewish identity through Jewish cultural engagement, Yiddish language learning, multigenerational education, and social justice activism. Under Ann’s leadership, the organization has established itself as the leading Jewish voice in the fight to protect our democracy. The Workers Circle of today connects the storied activist history of the Jewish people to the modern-day fight to defend democracy and expand the right to vote. Recently, the Workers Circle has launched innovative new programs including Democracy Circles, a grassroots effort to bring activists together to fight back against attacks on the right to vote, and built successful multigenerational and multicultural partnerships with organizations like Black Voters Matter and the Center for Common Ground to advance this important work. Today the Workers Circle is committed to honoring its Yiddish and Bundist roots and has become the largest Yiddish language program in the world, teaching over 1,000 students the Yiddish language and connecting many more to their Yiddishkeit roots. The organization is organizing and working fiercely in support of fights for the dignity and economic rights of immigrants; worker protections, including the right to unionize and collectively bargain; living wage; and currently the organization is fighting the national rise of Fascism, bigotry, including anti-Semitic acts, systemic racism, and hate crimes.
About the Workers Circle
Founded 122 years ago, the Workers Circle (formerly known as the Workmen’s Circle) is a social justice organization that powers progressive Jewish identity through Jewish cultural engagement, Yiddish language learning, multigenerational education, and social justice activism. For over a century, we have provided this 360-degree approach to Jewish identity-building. Through contemporary cultural programs, strategic social justice campaigns, vibrant Yiddish language classes, interactive educational experiences and more, we connect Jewish adults, kids and families of all affiliations with their cultural heritage, working to build a better and more beautiful world for all. Learn more at www.circle.org.
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