Producing and Directing…

BINYUMEN (BEN) SCHAECHTER

Executive Producer, "Pripetshik Sings Yiddish!"

Founder and Musical Director, the Pripetshik Singers

Binyumen Schaechter is an award-winning composer whose music has been heard in five off-Broadway shows, on major TV networks and on five continents.  He is the conductor of the Yiddish-singing Jewish People's Philharmonic Chorus mailto:jppc@nyc.rr.com, which just concluded an 11-performance season and will be recording its 1st CD in 2005.  He has toured with his two one-person shows, "The Shtetl Comes to Life" (Dos shtetl vert vi lebedik) and "From Kinehora to Kuni-ayland". The latter premiered in 2004 in honor of 350 years of the Jewish presence in North America.  Ben was the translator into Yiddish of the first-ever DVD with Yiddish subtitles, “The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg”.  He is the founder and moderator of VZMAY, the one worldwide e-mailing list dedicated solely to answering questions on the Yiddish language, and more specifically, "Vi Zogt Men Af Yidish ___?" (How do you say ______ in Yiddish?) mailto:VZMAY@nyc.rr.com .  He is also the coordinator of the Yidish-vokh mailto:yvokh@yugntruf.org, the annual end-of-summer week-long all-Yiddish retreat, attended by 150-170 participants of all ages, and sponsored by Yugntruf Youth for Yiddish (see on this website).  Ben and his 3 sisters all speak Yiddish with their children, giving his parents 16 fluent-Yiddish-speaking grandchildren.

JOSHUA WALETZKY

Director and Producer, "Pripetshik Sings Yiddish!"

Joshua Waletzky is a documentary filmmaker who has often focused on Eastern European Jewish themes, as in "Image Before My Eyes" and "Partisans of Vilna".  As songwriter/pianist, he is a founder of the klezmer revival;  his Yiddish songs were first recorded on the Yugntruf album "Vaserl", and have been performed all over the world. His two children speak Yiddish and attended the Pripetshik-shule.mailto:josh@waletzky.com.