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mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
anthony russell
@mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
1.4K followers 380 following 270 posts
the other day your bubbe was kibitzing about some black guy who sings in yiddish. it's still me.

he/him - half of yiddish songwriting duo Tsvey Brider - Mandel Institute Cultural Leadership Fellow 2023-25 - afrojudeopessoptimist

anthonyrussellbass.com
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mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
Looking forward to my upcoming conversation with @emilyctamkin.bsky.social in the second installment of our 2-part @workerscircle.bsky.social interview, CRITICAL CROSSROADS:
An promotional image for the Sept 16 program CRITICAL CROSSROADS of multidisciplinary artist Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell and author and journalist Emily Tamkin accompanied by the following information: "Join the Workers Circle's Anthony Russell on either September 9, September 16 — or both — for a conversation on the past, present and future of American Jewish identity and politics. Attend live online to chance to win a free copy of her [Emily Tamkin's] book!"
September 12, 2025 at 4:07 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
There are so many things I’m dying to share with you about this book, mainly: that the stories, backgrounds, social & cultural phenomena that formed every American Jew I’ve had the pleasure (and even occasionally displeasure) of knowing is accounted for here, in straightforward and engaging prose.
Multidisciplinary artist Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell holding up a copy of the book Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities by author and journalist Emily Tamkin.
September 5, 2025 at 5:24 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
Second: Having finally reverted to my US Regional Factory Setting (California), I am pleased to announce my participation in KLEZCALYIDFEST, in my present incarnations as a performer *and* a lecturer!

KlezCalifornia Yiddishfest
Friday Sep 12-Sunday 14
Photo collage of performers from KlezCalYidFest
September 2, 2025 at 4:35 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
This conversation will be an incisive look at state of the American Jewish community through the lens of her two books, Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics and Identities and The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society.
The cover of Bad Jews: A History of American Jewish Politics by Emily Tamkin The cover of The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society by Emily Tamkin
September 2, 2025 at 4:35 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
I'm finally back from Limmud South Africa, and just in time, too, because I've some fascinating places and spaces to be stateside in the coming weeks:
Multidisciplinary artist Anthony Russell cutting a fine figure (if he does say so himself) in a blue daishiki Multidisciplinary artist Anthony Russell in a selfie at Camps Bay in Cape Town, South Africa
September 2, 2025 at 4:35 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
VERY pleased to announce CRITICAL CROSSROADS, my 2-part @workerscircle.bsky.social interview with contributing @forward.com columnist and regular contributor at @slate.com and @washingtonpost.com—Emily Tamkin [email protected]!
Image of Emily Tamkin and Anthony Russell accompanied by the following information: CRITICAL CROSSROADS: In conversation with journalist and author Emily Tamkin, featuring Anthony Russell of the Workers Circle. September 9 and September 16 | 7:00 - 8:00 PM ET Join the Workers Circle's Anthony Russell for a two-part conversation with Bad Jews and The Influence of Soros author Emily Tamkin on the past, present, and future of American Jewish identity and politics. Attend live online for a chance to win a free copy of her book!
August 5, 2025 at 3:59 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
RIP Mahler, you would've loved the pre-concert lecture I gave about you at the Atlanta Symphony last month
July 7, 2025 at 10:06 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
HBO’s The Gilded Age
An Edward Gorey illustration from The Blue Aspic (1968) of a group of gloomy opera patrons looking on a box seat.
June 29, 2025 at 11:31 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
greetings from Vienna
Anthony Russell next to a window on a tram in Vienna with a view of buildings outside
June 20, 2025 at 11:46 AM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
always wondered about this passage from Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848), namely: what were the “rudiments” of Hebrew for a couple of Napoleonic-era young British ladies and who exactly had done the rudiment-ing for them
a passage from William Makepeace Thackery’s novel Vanity Fair (1848): “Either of these young ladies is PERFECTLY QUALIFIED to instruct in Greek, Latin, and the rudiments of Hebrew; in mathematics and history; in Spanish, French, Italian, and geography; in music, vocal and instrumental; in dancing, without the aid of a master; and in the elements of natural sciences. In the use of the globes both are proficients. In addition to these Miss Tuffin, who is daughter of the late Reverend Thomas Tuffin (Fellow of Corpus College, Cambridge), can instruct in the Syriac language, and the elements of Constitutional law. But as she is only eighteen years of age, and of exceedingly pleasing personal appearance, perhaps this young lady may be objectionable in Sir Huddleston Fuddleston's family.”
June 11, 2025 at 1:09 AM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
and then there's this:
In The Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath has a gap between her two front teeth. In her prologue, she says that "I always had a colt's tooth. / Gap-toothed was I, and that suited me well; / I had the print of Saint Venus's seal". According to medieval English lore, gap teeth were a sign of "Venus", the goddess of love, meaning that a gap-toothed person was particularly amorous or lustful. The Wife of Bath proudly declares her interest in men and sex, using her teeth as a way to say that it is in her nature to pursue romantic pleasures.
June 8, 2025 at 6:07 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
same, brother
June 8, 2025 at 5:45 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
literally just gave a pre-concert lecture that was, in part, about this kind of guy
June 7, 2025 at 1:05 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
from last night's lecture: 1) discussing how Gustav Mahler jumped so Leonard Bernstein could soar and 2) the baleful presence of Richard Wagner
Anthony Russell on the stage of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra giving a lecture on Mahler before a projection of a caricature of Mahler conducting juxtaposed with a picture of Leonard Bernstein conducting in essentially the same pose as Mahler. Anthony Russell on the stage of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra giving a lecture on Mahler before a projection of Wagner with "Dark Brandon" meme eyes
June 6, 2025 at 3:25 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
Pleased to announce that I'll be joining Shtetl Fest Berlin next week in conversation with Alan Bern about how historical parallels of Black and Jewish experience combined to create culture of enigmatic richness, dynamism and influence—and how that history has informed my own work.
June 6, 2025 at 2:52 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
Shavuot is not going to observe itself...gut yontef!
An image of a masked young woman holding a cheesecake topped with strawberries. A news chyron reads: BREAKING NEWS: PROTEST TURN DESTRUCTIVE - DOWNTOWN SEATTLE. A screen shot of a tweet from Black Ginger (@norallens) in the righthand corner reads: WHOEVER STOLE A WHOLE CHEESECAKE FROM THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY IN DOWNTOWN SEATTLE I HOPE YOU HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY
June 1, 2025 at 2:45 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
:::clears throat in yiddish:::

("Der Emes Vegn Henri Ford"/The Truth About Henry Ford, D.L. Meckler, 1924)
The cover of D.L. Meckler's book, "The Truth About Henry Ford" (1924) depicting a hooded Klansman with his arm around the shoulder of Henry Ford
May 26, 2025 at 4:02 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
...more of an Abbé Prévost guy myself, tbqh
A portrait of Abbé Prévost, (1697-1763) "...enlistments in the army alternated with two entries into the novitiate of the Society of Jesus, from which he was dismissed in 1721. In that year he took vows as a Benedictine monk and in 1726 was ordained a priest. In 1728 he fled to England. One of his numerous love affairs caused him to lose his job there as a tutor and to go to Holland in 1730. In 1735 Prévost returned to England to escape his Dutch creditors and was briefly imprisoned in London for forgery. After secretly returning to France, he was reconciled with the Roman Catholic church (although he may have been a Protestant during his exile)." "Originally published as the final installment of a seven-volume novel, Mémoires et aventures d’un homme de qualité qui s’est retiré du monde (1728–31; 'Memories and Adventures of a Man of Quality Who Has Retired from the World'), Prévost’s Manon Lescaut is the basis of the operas Manon, by Jules Massenet, and Manon Lescaut, by Giacomo Puccini. A classic example of the 18th-century novel of feeling, Manon Lescaut tells the story of a young man of good family who ruins his life for a courtesan."
May 8, 2025 at 10:19 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
will there be memes? maybe...
a meme with four archival pictures of composer Gustav Mahler (July 7 1860–May 18 1911): a business-like picture of Mahler titled "LinkedIn"; a more casual pic of Mahler titled "Facebook", Mahler smoking with some fin-de-siècle homies titled "Instagram" and Mahler in a very sportsmanlike outfit titled "Tinder".
May 6, 2025 at 5:28 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
the average american has three friends (in theory)
Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart in a 2013 production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”
May 2, 2025 at 3:12 AM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
In Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet states, “A fortnight's acquaintance is certainly very little. One cannot know what a man really is by the end of a fortnight.” A fortnight, in this passage, is:

⚪️ a video game
⚪️ a Taylor Swift single
⚪️ two weeks
A picture of a frustrated truck driver
April 28, 2025 at 8:12 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
that said, this story mentions Yiddishkayt, an org that sent me on an ethnographic trip to Belarus and Poland in 2017 via their Helix Fellowship, an experience that changed the entire trajectory of my career in Yiddish:
Anthony Russell standing in front of a Russian Suprematist-style mural in Vitebsk, Belarus. A young woman wearing folk dress and a crown of flowers somewhere in the Belarusian countryside. Anthony Russell sitting on the stairs of a building in Sejny, Poland. A mural of a Leviathan from a rebuilt model wooden synagogue interior in the Polin Museum in Warsaw, Poland.
April 23, 2025 at 8:29 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
image from previous post, now with alt text:
Images: The Scottsboro defendants with their lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz; Professor Amelia Glaser; Heather Klein; Anthony Russell; Uri Schreter. Image Text: WILD BURNING RAGE AND SONG: REPLIES TO SCOTTSBORO. A CONCERT-LECTURE. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2025 • 7:30 PM MILWAUKEE YOUTH ARTS CENTER • 325 W WALNUT ST, MILWAUKEE—The Scottsboro Trials stand as one of the most renowned miscarriages of justice in American history. Beginning in 1931 with a false accusation of rape against nine Black teenagers, the case went on to invigorate the Civil Rights movement, earn the international support of the Communist Party, and establish itself as a watchword on the American Left. It inspired artistic reactions as well, most famously by poets Langston Hughes and Richard Wright and novelist Harper Lee, who adapted its events in To Kill A Mockingbird. The international, politically oriented Yiddish intelligentsia of the 30s was no less galvanized, producing a body of responses that passionately took up the themes of the trial, juxtaposing its American injustices with a diversity of images, tropes, and language imbued with their own distinct histories of oppression. Wild Burning Rage and Song: Replies to Scottsboro brings this world alive as a concert-lecture featuring Professor Amelia Glaser, author of Songs in Dark Times: Yiddish Poetry of Struggle from Scottsboro to Palestine; composer/vocalists Heather Klein and Anthony Russell; and composer/pianist Uri Schreter, performing their new settings of Yiddish and English poetry written in response to the pervasive climate of race prejudice that gave birth to the Scottsboro trials-and to other injustices that would follow.
April 20, 2025 at 8:15 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
this phenomenon, intersecting in interesting ways w/ the Harlem Renaissance and the rise of the Depression-era Left, is explored in my project-in-progress, “Wild Burning Rage and Song: Replies to Scottsboro”, about cultural response to one the most infamous miscarriages of American jurisprudence:
.
April 20, 2025 at 8:09 PM
mordkhetzvi.bsky.social
a couple of years ago I wrote a nifty little article about der driter seder, the third seder, a tradition I encountered in my earliest days as a performer of Yiddish, here at the Yiddish Artists and Friends Actors' Club in the East Village in 2012:
Anthony Russell performing in front a banner emblazoned with the words, "Yiddish Artists and Friends Actors' Club", East Village, 2012
April 16, 2025 at 10:54 PM