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Ask Olivebridge musician and Yiddish scholar Henry Sapoznik where to find a good pastrami on rye nearby, and he’s at a loss.
“I’d probably have to bring it back,” he said, referring to New York City, where he grew up as the child of Holocaust survivors and where delicatessens like Katz’s and Pastrami Queen still serve quintessential Jewish deli fare—pastrami sandwiches, knishes, babka, and Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray soda. These were once staples of the Catskills’ Borscht Belt, too.
“Growing up, our favorite deli was Henry’s, right around the corner from my uncle’s clothing store on Orchard Street,” Sapoznik recalled. But it’s clear—from his new book, “The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City,” his pioneering work establishing the Archives of Recorded Sound at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, his role producing KlezCamp, the influential klezmer and Yiddish culture festival, and simply from listening to him speak—that it’s far more than food he wishes to bring back, both to the Catskills and to the wider world.
Henry Sapoznik._Michael Sofronski/The Overlook._
The son of a cantor, Sapoznik, 72, grew up in Brooklyn speaking Yiddish, attending Lubavitch schools, singing in a Jewish chorus, going to synagogue, and absorbing his mother’s old-world cooking. He also spent time around Yiddish cultural stars including musician Dave Tarras, while spending summers and holidays at Loch Sheldrake, the Normandie, and other Borscht Belt hotels at the height of the era, when Yiddish language, humor, music, and style flourished in the region.
As antisemitism declined, air travel became more affordable, and television became popular, the bubbling cultural scene and safe haven of the Borscht Belt nearly disappeared, dispersing and impacting the concentrated Yiddish hub. The world’s Jewish population had been nearly decimated in the prior decades. According to YIVO, before WWII there were almost 11 million Yiddish speakers across the world. Today, even the most generous estimates place the number of active speakers at about 3 million—a loss of nearly three-quarters.
For Sapoznik, the loss is generational—and deeply personal. Now often described as one of the “old guys,” he feels the weight of knowing that the people who directly shaped the Yiddish culture he has spent his life preserving are disappearing.
“My mom was a great cook—but of course not as good as hers was. Each generation loses something,” he said.
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Even klezmer revival bands like Kapelye, which Sapoznik founded in the 1970s and which was once described as “the first ambassador of klezmer,” inevitably convey something different from what earlier generations passed down firsthand.
Sapoznik mourns not just the disappearance of salami manufacturers, matzo factories, and knisheries, but the loss of characters, stories, performance styles, and distinct Yiddish dialects—like those from his family’s hometown of Rovno. These are the elements he seeks to preserve, and they fill both the pages and audio components of “The Tourist’s Guide to Lost Yiddish New York City,” a work that functions as cultural history and performance as much as a guidebook.
“There are many books about Jewish food history that focus on delicatessens and similar but I don’t believe any of them used any actual Yiddish sources. How can you decode a culture without using the language?” Sapoznik said.
His research included downloading more than 5,000 Yiddish-language newspapers.
Henry Sapoznik, a Peabody Award–winning musician and archivist, has spent decades preserving the language, music, and cultural memory of Yiddish America. _Michael Sofronski/The Overlook._
“We were delighted to welcome Henry to our library for a book reading. Between his writing, musical talents, recording, broadcasting and historical research we felt he would be an excellent presenter for our community,” said Christina Sauer, Program Coordinator for the Olive Free Library.
The book is a collection of essays on topics ranging from theater, music, food, and architecture to crime, film, and Black cantors. The project was sparked by a blog post Sapoznik wrote after finally locating a 78 rpm recording of Black cantor Thomas LaRue Jones—something he had been searching for for 40 years. Many of the essays illuminate corners of Yiddish and American history that are deeply intertwined, yet largely undocumented.
Primary sources have always been central to Sapoznik’s work.
Though American popular music and culture were largely absent from his sheltered childhood, his growing independence as a high school student drew him toward the 1960s antiwar movement and folk music scenes. Eventually, he began making a living as a guitarist and banjo player.
“Studying with teachers in New York just didn’t feel good enough for me. If I was going to learn, I knew I had to make a pilgrimage so I spent a lot of time in the South,” he said. “Immersive experiences are key. The context of whatever the thing is—is critical.”
Part of his career was spent performing and teaching old-time banjo at the Ashokan Center in Olivebridge, after an invitation from Jay Ungar, American folk musician and composer who together with his partner Molly, founded the center and its original fiddle and dance camps.
Inspired by the intensive, hands-on environment at Ashokan, informed by his archival work at YIVO, and grounded in his own musicianship, Sapoznik founded KlezCamp in 1985. The intergenerational gathering ran for 30 years and was designed to facilitate the transmission of Yiddish culture from one generation to the next.
The festival began at the Paramount Hotel in the Borscht Belt, later moved to the Ashokan Center and Swan Lake—what Sapoznik remembers as the Granit, now Hudson Valley Resort and Spa—and concluded its final year in New York City.
“There was so much learning taking place and we also matched up a lot of the old musicians who had stopped playing—and reinvigorated their performing and teaching,” Sapoznik said. “My work at YIVO and KlezCamp exposed Yiddish as much more than just a language. The characters, stories, and cultural history of the Yiddish-speaking world were uncovered and living on.”
Sapoznik’s name, research, songs, and stories surfaced repeatedly during sessions at the 2025 Yiddish New York festival, an annual December gathering in New York City widely seen as KlezCamp’s successor.
“Through his work with KlezKamp, Living Traditions and Kapelye, Henry taught me and several generations of artists and activists how to engage with Yiddish culture as a heritage to be treasured and as a sandbox where serious learning and joyful play happily coexist,” said Peter Rushefsky, a klezmer musician and the executive director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance, which sponsors the Yiddish New York festival. “We are proud to carry on KlezKamp’s legacy at Yiddish New York,” he added while referencing the words of Ethel Raim, the organization’s founder, an American folklorist recognized as a Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts, and revered for her expertise in Yiddish singing: “each generation has a choice whether to ignore this inheritance or to live life with its benefits.”
Over the course of his career, Sapoznik has recorded and/or produced more than 35 albums of traditional Yiddish and American music. He won a Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism for his 2002 NPR series “Yiddish Radio Project” and has received Grammy and Emmy nominations.
His advice for aspiring artists is simple and exacting: “Listening. Immersing. Internalizing. Unlearning. Like a hot-house,” he said. “When I decided to start playing klezmer music, I didn’t actually play it for the first couple of years. I was already deep in the style of southern banjo music and needed a sorbet between courses. I spent years just researching and listening first, to internalize it.”
Henry Sapoznik and his dog Nipper. _Michael Sofronski/The Overlook._
These days, Sapoznik’s yellow Labrador, Nipper, largely dictates his schedule. Sapoznik can sometimes be found writing at the Olive Free Library, but most days Nipper insists on a walk past a nearby abandoned quarry.
“It’s hard to pull myself away. I could work for 10-hour days and not feel like I was missing anything,” Sapoznik said.
His next book, which will focus on Yiddish-American radio, is due out in 2026.
Is he still playing music?
“I’m not really playing out but I’m still playing,” he said. Sapoznik is currently experimenting with klezmer music on lap steel guitar. “It’s anachronistic and I’m still inventing. Definitely not prime time yet.”
As for Olivebridge: “I moved here full-time in 1993 but still don’t consider myself a local,” he said. “Maybe in another generation or two!”
_Chana Widawski is a contributing reporter. Send correspondence toreporting@theoverlooknews.com_
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Henry Sapoznik On Keeping Yiddish Culture Alive Ask Olivebridge musician and Yiddish scholar Henry Sapoznik where to find a good pastrami on rye nearby, and he’s at a loss. “I’d probably have...
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