Speakers/ Performers
Rebekka Helford | Chloe Resler | Justin (Moyshe-tsodek) Goldner | Seth (Shloyme) Weisberg | Mendy Liberman | Malke Morrell | Ethan Kahn | Amie Segal | KAILA
Shiri and the Shiribims | Dan Cantrell | Cindy Paley | Janice Mautner Markham | Lisa Fishman | Di Svingers | Harriet Bennish | Ruth Judkowitz | Michael Morgenstern | Miri Koral | Zach Golden | Sarah Bunin Benor | Caroline Luce
Rebekka Helford
Rebekka has been educating the youngest students of the Sholem Community Sunday School for over 20 years. When Rebekka isn’t busy running Sholem's Alef/Beys class (kinder-2nd grade), Sholem’s klezmer ensemble, or performing her duties as vice principal at Sholem, she is conducting psychotherapy in her Santa Monica private practice as a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, leading parent/toddler groups for Cassidy Preschool, or serving as a freelance consultant for therapists in training. Rebekka is a graduate of Sholem’s secular yeshiva and certified vegvayzer, enabling her to serve as a b’mitsve mentor and officiant for life cycle events. Rebekka was drawn to Sholem because of her love for Yiddishkayt and passion for preserving Jewish cultural heritage in a personally meaningful and relevant way. Check out her musings on parenting and humanity and learn more about her psychotherapy work at https://www.rhelfordmft.com
Chloe Resler
Chloe Shekinah Resler is a multi-instrumentalist, vocalist, and music researcher. She is originally from the Front Range, and is currently based in Los Angeles, California. She completed her BM in Jazz Performance and MM in Music History and Literature at the University of Northern Colorado. During her time there, she earned an Outstanding Performance from the Downbeat Awards as part of Vocal Lab, and contributed a chapter, "The Rise of Queermisia in Jazz: Medicalization, Legalization, and its Effects" to The Routledge Companion to Jazz and Gender (2022). She also recorded the album Under the Maple Tree with Magpie the Band, who went on to play as featured showcase artists at the International Bluegrass Music Association Conference in September 2023. She is currently a member of the UCLA Klezmer Ensemble and, since arriving in Los Angeles, has performed Yiddish music at the Skirball Cultural Center and Der Nister. Chloe works at Stella High Charter Academy, where she is building a new music program and teaches choir, orchestra, concert band, rock band, and regional Mexican music.
Justin (Moyshe-Tsodek) Goldner
Justin (Moyshe-Tsodek) Goldner is a composer, producer, and session musician whose work spans Grammy-, Tony-, and Golden Globe–winning projects with artists across a range of genres. In der Yiddisher velt, Moyshe-Tsodek has overseen and contributed to development and translation of games and digital tools that facilitate the daily use and learning of Yiddish, including Cards Against Humanity, Oylem Goylem, ANKI, and Telegram.
A restless traveler and language junkie, music has taken him to 74 countries in search of exchange and connection with communities from a mélange of traditions. He is currently in the midst of a recording and storytelling project composing original songs based on Yiddish poetry in conversation with other minority-language communities with the support of a 2025 Maimonides Fund grant. @jusgold1, @peripatetish
Seth (Shloyme) Weisberg
Seth (Shloyme) Weisberg is the retired Chief Legal Officer of Stamps.com. He has testified as a legal expert in Congress, and has recited original Yiddish poetry at Yiddishland and Yiddish New York. He has been studying Yiddish in Los Angeles and elsewhere since the early 1990s, and has an AB in Physics and Astronomy from Harvard, an AM in History from Harvard and a JD from Columbia Law School.
Mindy Liberman
Mindy Liberman is the translator of Falik and His House, a novella by Jacob Dinezon, published by Jewish Storyteller Press in 2022. She has translated other material including works by and about Dinezon, and short pieces by Daniel Galay. Translations of two poems by Miriam Ulinover, and a short story by Dinezon have appeared in In geveb. Mindy is active in Yiddish Open Mic, based in London. She grew up in Montreal and was a librarian at the Glendale, California, Public Library for many years. She lives in Los Angeles.
Iris (Malke) Morrell
Malke Morrell (Iris in English) is a student, writer, teacher, and translator of Yiddish. She is currently a PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at UC Irvine. In the world of Yiddish, she is most drawn to modernist poetry, Hasidic mysticism, and testimonial writing from pogroms and the Holocaust. She teaches Yiddish, hosts poetry readings, and holds open study hours every Friday at Der Nister.
Ethan Kahn
Ethan is excited by all things Yiddishkeyt, and for the past four years he has been exploring and contributing to the Yiddish scene in Los Angeles. Ethan recently graduated from UCLA, and is currently working at the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum. His first introduction to Yiddish culture was klezmer fiddle, but since then he has expanded his horizons to include playing the tsimbl, Yiddish language, and Yiddish dance. He trained in classical ballet for many years and has retained a love for the sheer joy of moving deliberately, in community, and with music -- in other words, dancing. Through attending the Yiddish New York and KlezKanada festivals, as well as watching archival footage, Ethan has worked to develop a feel for the the style, intentionality, and artistry of traditional Yiddish folk dance, and he is eager to share what he has learned with the Los Angeles community.
Amie Segal
Amie Segal is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and Jewish movement facilitator who has led workshops across the LA and Bay area. She has a BFA in Dance and is the founder of the Jewish Movement Collective which hosts lively events that combine Jewish embodiment, Torah and dance. Having studied numerous movement practices, she is finally exploring her own backyard through Yiddish Dance—a form that has strong ties to Romania where her father was born and raised. She recently began studying Yiddish dancing through scholarly research and events like KlezCalYidFest in Berkeley. She believes in facilitating community through dancing together and she is excited to bring more of this joyful folk style to LA!
KAILA
KAILA (Klezmer Arts Institute of Los Angeles) was born out of serendipity. The group’s roots trace back to UClezLA, a daylong Klezmer and Yiddish culture workshop at UCLA in January 2019. After meeting there, musicians Gustavo Bulgach, Alan Klein, and Karen Golden realized they all shared an interest in bringing more Klezmer music to Los Angeles — a connection reaffirmed a week later by a chance encounter at another event. Within weeks, they began gathering regularly to play, study, and celebrate the spirit of Klezmer, officially founding KAILA.
What began as small workshops at the Westside JCC quickly grew into a vibrant community of musicians. During the pandemic, KAILA thrived virtually, and today the ensemble performs throughout Los Angeles — from the West LA Farmers Market and Manhattan Beach 10K Run to the LA Holocaust Museum, Temple Beth Am fundraisers, and private celebrations.
KAILA continues to rehearse both virtually and in-person and welcomes musicians, singers, and dancers of all levels who want to participate in the joy, tradition, and evolution of Klezmer music.
For more information or to join us as we celebrate "one foot on tradition and the other on the now“ contact KAILA at KlezmerLA@gmail.com.
Shiri and the Shiribims
The Shiribims was founded by Shiri Goldsmith-Graziani. Shiri’s grandparents (on both sides) were Yiddish speakers from various parts of Eastern Europe. Yiddish words and expressions were the soundtrack of her youth.
In 2009, while studying the folk music of Hungary and Romania, Shiri stumbled upon the Krakow Jewish Cultural Festival. This experience opened her up to a new world. She went on to perform Yiddish song throughout her travels in Eastern Europe, including a performance at the Oswiecim Community Center near the infamous Aushwitz concentration camp. A place where Yiddish has rarely been spoken since World War ll. This deeply moving experience fueled Shiri’s continued study of Yiddish music, language and history.
Shiri has been the recipient of scholarships to both KlezKamp in the Catskills and KlezKanada in Montreal. She has studied with many renowned Yiddish and Klezmer scholars and linguists and has teamed up with some of the finest musical talent Los Angeles has to offer: Andres Trujillo (sousaphone), Viktor Babusenko (clarinet), Jim Sherry (trumpet), Isaac Schankler/ Joellen Lapidus (accordion), Jesse Ward/ Luca Pino (guitar), and Nick Stone (drums). It’s out of this sense of purpose, passion and delight that the Shiribims was founded, creating a musical snapshot of the magical era when Klezmer music migrated from the Old World to the streets of New York, and fuses effortlessly between klezmer, yiddish song, vaudeville, hot jazz, and European Cabaret music in their own charming way.
Dan Cantrell
Dan Cantrell is an Emmy award winning composer and multi-instrumentalist known for his innovative film scoring approach, and his virtuosic abilities on the accordion, piano and musical saw.
“Hauntingly beautiful…quirky and energetic” says the San Francisco Bay Guardian. His extensive scoring catalogue spans a wide range of emotion and style.
Dan’s compositions for film and television have earned him numerous awards including an Emmy Award for KQED’s Home-Front, a Golden Gate award for the soundtrack to the documentary Divided Loyalties, and an Annie nomination for his work on three seasons of Cartoon Network’s the Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.
His Orchestral music was recently featured by the Oakland Symphony, and his chamber music was performed at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the arts, and in Washington DC’s Kennedy Center. Dan also recently composed a suite of choral music performed by the Oakland Interfaith Gospel Choir as part of their yearly concert series.
Cindy Paley
Cindy Paley is a beloved performer, song leader, recording artist, educator, and cantorial soloist who has inspired generations across Jewish communities nationwide. With a teaching credential in French from UCLA, Cindy chose a path that fused her love of music, language, and Jewish tradition—creating a lifelong career of joyful, intergenerational connection.
For 36 years, Cindy taught at Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles, where she enriched the lives of thousands of children through music and Jewish learning. For the past 26 years, she has also served as the cantorial soloist for two spiritually uplifting women’s Shabbat services: the VBS N’shama Minyan and Lev Eisha.
A dynamic and versatile musician, Cindy’s repertoire spans liturgical music and Jewish folk songs in Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. Her ten acclaimed albums have become treasured staples at Jewish holiday celebrations, often cited by fans as the soundtrack of their childhood and family traditions.
Since retiring from classroom teaching, Cindy has deepened her dedication to Yiddish language and culture. She has led music for the Workers Circle’s Trip to Yiddishland in New York for seven consecutive summers and was a featured performer and workshop leader at the Krakow Jewish Culture Festival in 2017, 2018, and 2019. She has also taught Yiddish music courses at the Skirball Cultural Center, KlezCalifornia, and the Workers Circle in New York.
While best known for her contributions to Jewish music, Cindy also shares her passion for American folk traditions as a member of The Folk Experience, a trio celebrating the iconic sounds of the 1960s.
Janice Mautner Markham
Janice Mautner Markham is a Los Angeles-based violinist, theater artist and activist. She is a founding member of the klezmer-rock band Mostly Kosher and her global string ensemble, The JAC Trio. Janice was understudy to The Klezmatics’ violinist Lisa Gutkin for the Broadway tour of Indecent at the Ahmanson Theatre, and performed in the LA Philharmonic Association’s Weimar Cabaret, Musik! Fantasie! Revolution!. Janice is on faculty of the Herb Alpert School of Music at UCLA where she directs the Klezmer Ensemble, and she is a PhD Research Scholar at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her favorite pastime is working on crazy arts projects with her husband, Gideon. FB/IG: @janiviolin and janicemarkham.com
Lisa Fishman
Singer, actress, songwriter and recording artist, Lisa Fishman, has performed throughout the U.S. and Europe - starring in Off-Broadway and Regional Musical Theater, performing her own original music, singing and recording with several of the Country's top 'Klezmer' bands (including Chicago's Maxwell Street Klezmer Band), starring in productions with New York's National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene, entertaining children on television, singing everything from jazz, rock and blues to light opera and heavy metal, and working in voiceover.
Lisa played the role of Yente the Matchmaker and Bobe Tsaytl (aka: "Grandma Tzeitl) in the Off-Broadway hit, "Fiddler on the Roof" in Yiddish, directed by Oscar and Tony winning actor/director, Joel Grey, and reprised those roles at the recent concert version of the production at The Soraya in Northridge. Lisa has shared the stage with many of the greats from the world of the Music, Theater and Klezmer, including Itzhak Perlman, Mandy Patinkin, Theodore Bikel, Jerry Stiller, Lainie Kazan, Tovah Feldshuh, Mike Burstyn, Bruce Adler, Peter Yarrow, Renee Taylor, Claire Barry of the Barry Sisters, Fyvush Finkel, Dudu Fisher, Adrienne Cooper, Daniel Kahn, Frank London, Alicia Svigals, Lorin Sklamberg and other members of The Klezmatics, Michael Alpert and members of Brave Old World, Hankus Netsky and members of The Klezmer Conservatory Band, Zalmen Mlotek, Debbie Friedman, Seymour Rechzeit, Deborah Strauss and Jeff Warschauer.
Lisa can be heard as the role of Miss Dogma on the animated series, “God’s Gang,” has provided many English dubs for Netflix films and series - including the leading role of Adina on the Netflix hit, “Rough Diamonds," and provided the voice for the dancing "My Yiddishe Bubbie" doll. Lisa is currently performing her original, one-woman musical, “Dating (And The Search For Love)” around the country. More info on Lisa can be found at www.LisaFishman.com
Di Svingers
Ilana Zackon and Chloe Shekinah Resler met this summer, as Azrieli Scholarship recipients at KlezKanada, and formed the Yiddish Swing band Di Svingers. Ilana is an award-winning multidisciplinary performer and creator, originally from Montreal, who recently entered into Yiddishland. She is an alumni of the Segal Centre for the Performing Art's Jewish Arts Mentorship program, as well as the Museum of Jewish Montreal's micro grant program - where she developed and performed her Yiddish concert lecture "Kemfn Tsuzamen" last March. Chloe is an award-winning vocalist, fiddler, and dulcimist originally from Colorado's Front Range. In 2025, Chloe began working on a research fellowship at the University of Denver and the Beck Archives, where she is currently studying the history of Yiddish song in Denver. Ilana and Chloe's meeting at KlezKanada, in the mountains north of Montreal, was besheret--as both are now based in Los Angeles. Inspired by the Yiddish Swing Movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which infuses their mutual love of Yiddish, jazz and swing, the two are doing a deep dive into the music of this era including the Barry Sisters, Moishe Oysher and more.
Harriet Bennish
Harriet Bennish has a lifelong history with Jewish music. When she was 9 years old, the Rabbi teaching her Hebrew school class would stop the class and say to Harriet, “Chanala (her Hebrew name) go upstairs to my wife. She will teach you some songs”. Harriet attended the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and obtained a music degree in vocal performance, from West Virginia University in Morgantown. Harriet pursued a lifelong career in the performing arts. Early on in Harriet’s career she was selected as a quarter-finalist in the Los Angeles Regional Metropolitan Opera auditions. For 10 years she was the Soprano section leader for the Long Beach Chorale. Returning to her first love, musical theater, she played two roles in Fiddler on the Roof; first as Tevya’s oldest daughter Tzeitl; and then 30 years later she was cast as Grandma Tzeitel.
Harriet was part of the Los Angeles adult cast of the American Girl’s Review for close to 3 years. Always drawn to Jewish music, she sang in the High Holiday Choir at Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles for 14 years and has continued singing with several synagogues. Most recently she began volunteering her time to sing in Temple Israel of Long Beach’s High Holiday choir. Harriet also gives private voice lessons online with her students ranging from age eleven to eighty-four.
Harriet Bennish is currently accepting engagements to perform her moving, newly staged production of Tears, Joy, and Hope: Yiddish Songs Written in the Jewish Ghetto. To learn how to book this moving ‘One-Woman-Show’ visit Harriet’s website for her contact information. www.harrietbennish.com
Ruth Judkowitz
Ruth Judkowitz is currently the chairmentsh of the Southern California Arbeter Ring Educational Center. She teaches three levels of beginning Yiddish, directs two choruses, and runs the programming and general operations of the SoCal Arbeter Ring. She is a composer/arranger/multi-instrumentalist, currently working on Yiddish chorale arrangements and translations of Los Angeles-based Yiddish poets' oeuvre.
Ruth is presenting new English translations of Los Angeles Yiddish poet Chaim Schwartz, along with musical settings by four different composers performed in their original Yiddish.
Michael Morgenstern
Michael Morgenstern currently serves as Public Programs Manager at Holocaust Museum LA. He is a native of Los Angeles, California and has been with the Museum since 2014. As an avid genealogy researcher for almost 20 years, he has presented research at worldwide conferences. Additionally, he has lectured on Jewish Heritage themed Uniworld River Cruises in Europe. For the last several years, he has volunteered genealogy research for the Holocaust survivor community with the aim of reconnecting them with any existing documents on their families, including photographs on some rare occasions.
Miri Koral
Miri Koral has a passion for Yiddish which she has exercised for over 30 years as an educator, translator, prize-winning bilingual writer, dialect coach for tv and film, events producer, and international speaker. As founding CEO of the California Institute for Yiddish Culture and Language (CIYCL), her mission is to help safeguard and disseminate Yiddish language and culture. Since 2000 CIYCL has been an innovator in the field of Yiddish and has offered the most consistent, high quality and comprehensive Yiddish cultural and educational programming on the West Coast (www.yiddishi.org), and now globally through ongoing online programming.
At UCLA she has taught upper division courses in Yiddish language, literature, and film for over 25 years. She also teaches Yiddish language at all levels online for various organizations and privately. Her original Yiddish works and English translations have appeared in numerous print and on-line publication. She holds degrees from Barnard College and Columbia University and is a native Yiddish speaker.
Zach Golden
Zach was ordained as a rabbi at the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles in 2020, and received his BA at Macalester College in St. Paul, MN in 2013. Zach has given sermons and lectures from Stockholm to Vladivostok, performed as a cantorial soloist for multiple High Holiday services across the country, and teaches Yiddish and Hebrew professionally. He is the co-founder and executive director of Der Nister Downtown Jewish Center. Zach was previously the Deputy Yiddish Editor of the Forward (Forverts).
Dr. Sarah Bunin Benor
Sarah Bunin Benor is Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College and Adjunct Professor in the University of Southern California Linguistics Department. She received her B.A. from Columbia University in Comparative Literature in 1997 and her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. She is the author of Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Rutgers University Press, 2012) and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers University Press, 2020), as well as many articles about Jewish languages, Yiddish, and American Jews.
Dr. Benor has received several fellowships and prizes, including the Dorot Fellowship in Israel, the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, the Sami Rohr Choice Award for Jewish Literature, and the National Jewish Book Award in Education and Jewish Identity. She is founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages and co-editor of Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present (De Gruyter Mouton, 2018) and We the Resilient: Wisdom for America from Women Born Before Suffrage (Luminare Press, 2017).
She founded and directs the Hebrew Union College Jewish Language Project, which runs the Jewish Language Website and the Jewish English Lexicon. Dr. Benor hosts the podcast Heritage Words, serves as an expert witness, and is a sought-after speaker for synagogues, JCCs, and other Jewish venues. Her current research projects analyze the experiences of Sephardi/Mizrahi Jews in Los Angeles and the names of American Jews and their pets.
Professor Caroline Luce
Caroline Luce is a historian whose work sits at the intersection of labor history, Jewish studies, and digital humanities. She served as Chief Curator of Mapping Jewish LA, a project of the UCLA Leve Center for Jewish Studies, and is the current chair of the Communications Committee of UC-AFT. Her specialty is immigration, labor, and working-class culture in the American West, and she is currently writing a book about the Yiddish-speaking Jewish diaspora in Los Angeles.