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Published Writing: Some Selections

A few selections from Rokhl’s Golden City, 150 columns filed between 2017 and 2024  


Holidays 

Shvues/Shavuot  

Sukes/Sukkot  

Hanukah  


Everyday Ashkenazi Folk Magic and Folk Religion 

Folk medicine  

Making Soul Candles  

Women’s Yiddish Prayers (tkhines)  

The many incarnations of the Dybbuk  

Talking to the Dead  


Profiles of women 

Regine: Queen of the Night and French-Jewish Pop Star Extraordinaire  

Ruth Rubin: Between the American folk music revival and Yiddish folk song collecting  

Jewlia Eisenberg: A Great Channel of Spirit 




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Rokhl Kafrissen is a teacher, cultural critic, and playwright and the winner of the prestigious 2022 Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish prize. She’s been writing about life in the capital of Yiddishland since 2005, when her “Rootless Cosmopolitan” column began appearing in Jewish Currents . Between 2017 and the end of 2024 her “Rokhl’s Golden City” column appeared in Tablet magazine 150 times, covering the length and breadth of Yiddish culture.  Her opinion pieces, reviews, and essays have appeared in publications all over the world, including Haaretz , Forward , Lilith , Pakn Treger, J ewish Week , and Sapir Journal , and her work has been cited in numerous academic books and articles. She has gained a following for her classes on “Everyday Ashkenazi Magic” and her unique teaching style allows students to discover Ashkenazi folk culture through Yiddish texts: literature, journalism, ethnography, folk song, and more.  Having lived in New York City for over 25 years, Rokhl ...
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