About the Organizers:

Sam Shokin is a musician, writer, and cultural worker whose essays on Jewish culture and immigrant communities have appeared in The Forward, Tablet Magazine, Jewish Currents, and VICE. Her passion for Yiddishkayt stems from her vibrant upbringing as the child of Soviet Jewish refugees whose parents all possessed varying degrees of Yiddish fluency. Originally from Brooklyn but proud to call Richmond home since 2023, Sam has held roles with the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York, as well as the European Jewish Cemeteries Initiative (ESJF), an international NGO based in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Danny Kraft is a writer, poet, and translator. His poems and essays appear in many publications, and his translations of Yiddish, along with brief personal and critical essays, can be found in his newsletter, Di Freyd Fun Yidishn Vort/The Joy of the Yiddish Word, at danielkraft.substack.com. He has taught at various institutions, including the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard University, the Drisha Institute for Jewish Education, and the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków. He is currently the program manager for the literary nonprofit Yetzirah: a hearth for Jewish poetry, an organization dedicated to supporting writers and readers of Jewish poetry, and is a cofounder of Gashmius Magazine, an online journal.