Klezmer star Daniel Kahn to receive the 2023 ‘Dreaming in Yiddish Award’
Courtesy of Daniel Kahn
By Forverts Staff November 12, 2023
Daniel Kahn, the Detroit-born, Hamburg-based Yiddish troubadour, is this year’s recipient of the prestigious Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Award. The ceremony will take place at the Yiddish New York Festival in December.
Daniel Kahn performs klezmer and folk ballads in Yiddish, most notably with his band, The Painted Bird. He’s also acted in theatrical productions, playing Perchik in the Folksbiene’s hit show “Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish”; Biff in the New Yiddish Rep’s “Death of a Salesman,” and the badkhn (traditional wedding entertainer) in the Netflix series “Unorthodox.” He works frequently as composer and actor at Hamburg’s Thalia and Berlin’s Gorki Theater and co-founded the Yiddish cultural festival, Shtetl Berlin.
Kahn also helped produce several Forverts videos over the years. In 2016, he recorded his Yiddish translation of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” which received over 2 million views on YouTube. In a 2020 clip he sings his translation of Bob Dylan’s “I Shall be Released” and in a 2021 YouTube video, he performs a Yiddish version of Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” which he co-translated with Linda Gritz and several other Yiddishists.
Kahn is the 12th recipient of this award. Among the previous honorees were Michael Wex, Irena Klepfisz, Nikolai “Kolya” Borodulin, Shane Baker and Rokhl Kafrissen.
The award ceremony and concert will take place at Hebrew Union College in Manhattan at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 27 as part of the Yiddish New York festival. To get tickets, click here.
A message from Forverts editor Rukhl Schaechter
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forverts' 127-year legacy — and its bright future.
In the past, the goal of the Forverts was to Americanize its readers, to encourage them to learn English well and to acculturate to American society. Today, our goal is the reverse: to acquaint readers — especially those with Eastern European roots — with their Jewish cultural heritage, through the Yiddish language, literature, recipes and songs.
Our daily Yiddish content brings you new and creative ways to engage with this vibrant, living language, including Yiddish Wordle, Word of the Day videos, Yiddish cooking demos, new music, poetry and so much more.
— Rukhl Schaechter, Yiddish Editor
