The 13th Annual Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Concert & Award

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This event is produced in cooperation with GOH Productions. In-Person Event at Hebrew Union College, 1 West 4th Street in Manhattan. Admission: $25 in-person/$17 livestream (admission is included in the YNY Full Festival Pass).

Adrienne Cooper (1946-2011) was an inspirational performer, activist, teacher and mentor to so many of us in the Yiddish velt. Each year, YNY and the AC-DIY Committee remembers Cooper with the annual Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Concert and Award, the centerpiece of the festival’s programming. Now in its 13th year, the concert is always a spectacle, and serves as a place for the community to honor an individual who has made an outstanding contribution to Yiddish language, arts, scholarship and/or activism.
The Dreaming in Yiddish Award was created to support artists and scholars as they embark on, in Adrienne’s words, “the boundless, utterly unexpected adventure of working in Yiddish.” Each year we honor Adrienne’s memory by gathering musicians, artists, activists, Yiddishists and friends in celebration of the world that she helped create and grow. Previous awardees: Jenny Romaine, Michael Wex, Joshua Dolgin, Irena Klepfisz, Shura Lipovsky, Yefim “Fima” Chorny & Suzanna Ghergus, Nikolai “Kolya” Borodulin, Shane Baker, Jeffrey Shandler, Rokhl Kafrissen and Daniel Kahn.
We are delighted to announce that the 2024 recipient of the Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Award is klezmer violinist and educator, Deborah Strauss, who will be featured in the concert.
In addition, the concert will present the official launch of a new recording of Adrienne Cooper recording with composer/ pianist Marilyn Lerner, All Silent Things Speak Today (The Yiddish Poetry of Anna Margolin). The program will be followed by a Tantshoyz Yiddish Dance Party led by the versatile Ms. Strauss.
About Deborah Strauss:
Since the mid-1980s, klezmer violinist and educator Deborah Strauss has found her life’s passion in the world of Yiddish music and culture. Raised in a traditional home filled with European cantorial music, family melodies, Ashkenazic liturgy, Hasidic nigunim, and Jewish art song, Strauss’ childhood paved the way to a deep and compelling connection to klezmer and Yiddish music. In her early klezmer years, Strauss was fortunate to be guided, in particular, by Michael Alpert and Kurt Bjorling. Thanks to their generosity and insight, Strauss went on to forge a style grounded in tradition, yet uniquely her own.
Strauss was a member of the Chicago Klezmer Ensemble, was featured in the Emmy Award-winning film, Itzhak Perlman: In the Fiddler’s House, and was a member of the Klezmer Conservatory Band. She is also in a duo with her husband, guitarist, mandolinist and singer Cantor Jeff Warschauer, and the two have been performing, recording, and teaching together worldwide for nearly 30 years.
Strauss has performed across North America and in Western and Eastern Europe, Great Britain, Australia, Brazil, and Israel. As both a performer and teacher, Strauss is a mainstay at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, Yiddish Summer Weimar, and Trip to Yiddishland. She has been part of KlezKanada since its inception.
Strauss has had the great pleasure to work and record with master singer and composer, Josh Waletzky, and with Andreas Schmitges, Michael Alpert, Sveta Kundish, Alan Bern, and German folk fiddle star Vivian Zeller in the Voices of Ashkenaz Project.
Strauss is also a highly regarded Yiddish dancer and teacher and an award-winning children’s educator who has taught Jewish culture, history, and music at Workers Circle Yiddish secular schools for more than 20 years, in the process mentoring countless students for their cultural b’nei mitsve.
Strauss served as Education Director of Reconstructionist Congregation Kehilat Shalom, Belle Mead, New Jersey, and as of September 2024, is the Yiddish Culture Organizer for the new Arbeter Ring/ Workers Circle Sixty Plus initiative.
Strauss studied violin at Rutgers University and ethnomusicology at the University of Chicago. Her Yiddish studies have included three YIVO summer programs, the Warsaw International Summer Seminar, private tutoring, and numerous Workers Circle courses.
With Ilya Shneyveys, Deborah is co-coordinator of the instrumental program at Yiddish New York and, with Alan Bern, is the co-author of Klezmer Duets for Violin and Accordion, published in 2017 by Universal Edition.
This event is produced by YNY in partnership with GOH Productions and the Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish Committee. Photos of Deborah Strauss by Shendl Copitman. Image of Adrienne Cooper by Eric Drooker.

Host or Publisher Yiddish New York