ChaiFlicks, the world’s leading streaming platform for Jewish storytelling, has entered into a content partnership with the Yiddish Book Center, the Amherst, Mass.-based nonprofit organization dedicated to Yiddish literature and culture, it was announced by ChaiFlicks’ co-founder Neil Friedman.

Starting today, ChaiFlicks will begin rolling out a variety of documentaries from the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project, including films about actor and director Leonard Nimoy of “Star Trek,” musicians Peter Sokolow and Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell, as well as Yiddish writers Avrom Sutzkever, Solomon Simon, Ida Maze, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman and Alter Esselin.

The Yiddish Book Center, founded in 1980, recovers, preserves, teaches and celebrates Yiddish literature and culture to advance a fuller understanding of Jewish history and identity.

ChaiFlicks, which is home to over 3,000 hours of top Jewish films, in now available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

“We are thrilled to partner with the Yiddish Book Center and continue their mission of disseminating and sharing the beauty of the rich Yiddish language and culture to as wide an audience as possible,” said Friedman. “We know that our subscribers globally will enjoy and thoroughly appreciate the wide variety of Yiddish content that features the likes of Leonard Nimoy, Peter Sokolow and many others.”

“Through this partnership, we can amplify the stories that we are capturing by sharing them with ChaiFlicks’ extensive audience,” said Christa P. Whitney, director of the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project. “ChaiFlicks is committed to presenting high-quality Jewish-themed content honoring the vastness of Jewish history and experience. We are honored to be included in their offerings.”

ChaiFlicks programming from Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project includes Leonard Nimoy’s oral Yiddish history. Nimoy was interviewed by Whitney in 2013 and parts of his interview are in Yiddish and subtitled in English.

Additional content coming to ChaiFlicks include the documentary short “What’s the Matter with the Klezmer? The Peter Sokolow Story,” a lauded featurette about beloved Yiddish poet-songwriter-painter Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, and the award-winning feature “Ver Vet Blaybn?” (“Who Will Remain?”) — all of which illustrate the project’s capacity to capture and illustrate the impact artists of various backgrounds have had on Yiddish language and culture.

The Yiddish Book Center launched its Wexler Oral History Project in 2010 growing it into a collection of in-depth video interviews with people of all ages and backgrounds whose stories about the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture offer a rich and complex chronicle of Jewish identity.

Since 2010, the project has traveled around the world —from London to Los Angeles, Toronto to Tel Aviv — to record more than 1,300 video interviews with native Yiddish speakers, world-renowned klezmer musicians, descendants of Yiddish writers, students and many others. The interviews are focused life histories, covering family background, Jewish identity and the transmission of culture and values across generations and communities. Together these stories provide a deeper understanding of the Jewish experience and the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture.

Additionally, ChaiFlicks is set to launch, on June 6, “Kafka,” a six -episode series based on the life of famed Bohemian writer Franz Kafka. Timed to the 100th anniversary of his death, the series follows the life of Kafka, widely regarded as one of the leading literary figures of the 20th century, whose troubled personal life influenced his writing that fused elements of realism and the fantastic.

For more information, contact: Joe Schlosser (ChaiFlicks)
joe@schlossercommunications.com; Stacey Davis Levy (ChaiFlicks)
stacey@davispr.com; Rebecka McDougall (Yiddish Book Center) rmcdougall@yiddishbookcenter.org.