Rokhl Kafrissen

Rokhl Kafrissen is a journalist, teacher, and playwright and the winner of the prestigious 2022 Adrienne Cooper Dreaming in Yiddish prize. Between 2017 and 2024, her “Rokhl’s Golden City” column appeared monthly in Tablet magazine, covering the length and breadth of Yiddish culture. In 2021, her song “Kum tsu mir” (a Yiddish translation-adaptation of Jimmy Buffett’s Why Don’t We Get Drunk …) was recorded by an all-star klezmer trio and in 2024, the Israeli funk-jazz band Malox released an album featuring another of her Yiddish song translations, "Makhn a vayivrekh (Breakthrough)." Her classes on "Everyday Ashkenazi Magic" continue to be popular with students around the world.