Curses and Code Switching: Dreaming in Yiddish with Sheldon Londner

Sheldon Londner, a secular Yiddishist raised in Los Angeles, shares the powerful legacy of his Polish survivor parents and his lifelong bond with the Yiddish language. Sheldon recounts his parents' miraculous survival of the Holocaust, their journey to America, and how they passed down Yiddish as his first language. He discusses the unique linguistic gift of growing up bilingual, the cultural concept of the "Yiddish gas" (Yiddish street), and the challenges of maintaining fluency without an active speaking community. Today, Sheldon actively preserves this heritage by organizing a weekly Yiddish reading circle.

Heritage Words – conversations about the words we inherit and the meaning they bring to our lives – is produced by the HUC Jewish Language Project and HUC Connect.

Host and producer: Sarah Bunin Benor

Assistant producer and video editor: Kyle Elbaz Fingerhut

Editor: Avishay Artsy

Theme music: Maurice El Medioni’s French and Algerian Judeo-Arabic album “Cafe Oran,” featuring the Klezmatics’ David Krakauer and Frank London, courtesy of Piranha Records.