Introduction

Yiddish playwright, actor, and linguist Nahum Stutchkoff (1893-1965) authored some of the most intensely emotional dramas ever broadcast on radio. Every week, his Yiddish radio plays portrayed a different fictional Jewish family struggling to adapt to life in America. 

Only 26 episodes from his long-running series Bei Tate-mames Tish (Round the Family Table) survive. These recordings are as close as we'll ever get to hearing what life was like in the tenements of New York City in the 1930s and '40s.

When not writing or acting in one of his eight weekly radio programs, Stutchkoff penned reference books, including a monumental Yiddish thesaurus that breathes with the linguist's genius. The gift is as evident in Stutchkoff's exhaustively versatile matzo commercials, which listeners loved almost as much as his dramas.