Revolutionary Yiddish Singalong

Join Booklyn-based DJ Chaia and Peretznik Daniel Carkner for a sing-along meets historical adventure. In this workshop, we’ll explore five Yiddish folk songs from the early 20th century that Jewish radicals sang while fighting tyrants, resisting Zionism, and organizing on the shop-room floor.

Drawing from their ongoing research into Yiddish anti-authoritarian songs from the 1905 Russian Revolution, Chaia and Dan will present little-known sources and songs translated into English for the first time. These songs paint a vivid portrait of the passions, politics, and grief of Jewish revolutionaries at the turn of the century, and resonate as strongly today as they did 120 years ago.

At the end of the workshop, participants will receive a zine booklet with all five songs to take home, including more information about the context in which they were written and how to access Yiddish music archives (created by Chaia and Dan). No prior knowledge of Yiddish or singing is required to participate (though texts will be provided in transliterated Yiddish too), just curiosity and an interest in stories told through song!

Sunday, May 10, 2026 (12:30–1:30pm)

Gallia & Ben Chud Auditorium at the Peretz Centre

6184 Ash St., Vancouver, BC V5Z 3G9​

➤   How to Get Here / Building & Accessibility Information

Free parking is available on the street or in the underground parkade.

Registration is required in advance as space is limited. Please note that this event will include mature themes. Admission is by donation (suggested: $25, no minimum).

This event is sponsored by the Peretz Community Anti-Racism Taskforce, which is part of our 2025-2026 Discovering Doikayt initiative. We acknowledge the support of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation with funding provided by the Government of Canada.

Our Workshop Leaders

Chaia is an electronic composer working at the intersection of Yiddish culture and electronic club music. She weaves archival Yiddish samples with techno and ambient frameworks, creating hybrid folkloric-electronic compositions that situate ancestral sound within global and liberatory rave ecologies. Her sampling collaborators include the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Itzik Gottesman and the Yiddish Song of the Week Blog, Susan Watts and the Hoffman Watts family materials, Hankus Netsky, Zalmen Mlotek, and more.

Chaia released her debut album “Yiddish Electronic” in 2025. Her next EP, “Romanian Fantasies,” will be released on Delusional Records in Fall 2026. https://chaia.online/

Daniel Carkner is a historian (MA UBC '20) who works as a library technician at Langara College. He has been a member of the Peretz's Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir since 2017. His current research interests relate to immigrant klezmer musicians in New York from the 1890s to 1920s, including their biographies and family histories, their professional relationships, and their efforts to copyright their compositions with the U.S. Library of Congress during the interwar years.

Dan was a Music Editorial Board member of the Klezmer Institute's Scholarly Editions Project (2023–24), an active volunteer for the Institute's Kisegof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project (KMDMP), and recipient of the YIVO Institute's Ruth and Joseph Memorial Fellowship in East European Arts, Music, and Theater (2025). He shares his research on klezmer music and musicians on his blog, Old Klezmers.

Also on Sunday, "Yiddish Electronic: A Spatial Sound Experience" with Chaia & Exiliahu

Chaia will be performing with local artist Exiliahu (Elijah Holstein) at the Lobe Studio (713 E. Hastings) at 5pm & 7pm, co-sponsored by the Peretz Centre. Get tickets via Eventbrite

Yiddish Electronic: A Spatial Sound Experience is an immersive night of deep listening and diasporic ritual, tracing the echoes of Yiddish culture through electronic music, ancestral memory, and political resistance. Exiliahu performs organic lullabies built from anti-State and anti-imperialist Yiddish poetry and protest songs, paired with tactile percussion sounds, layered vocals, and angular guitar lines. Closing the night, Chaia brings her signature blend of archival Yiddish recordings, atmospheric drones and deep techno to the space.

Designed for a Lobe's spatial sound system featuring 35 speakers, this event invites you to listen with your whole body. Come dance, mourn, sleep, and enjoy dreams of Yiddishland.

Image credit: Photograph by Dan Carkner, materials from the YIVO archive collection, Records of Grodner-Lipkaner Branch 74, Workmen's Circle, 1919 - 1964 (RG 782). The original photograph depicting 1905 revolutionaries from the city of Grodno was reprinted in a Yiddish newspaper and kept, repaired, and eventually archived by a member of the landsmanshaft, suggesting it was a treasured memory of someone living in New York.