JEWISH STORIES
FROM THE OLD WORLD TO THE NEW

This series features Leonard Nimoy, Charlton Heston, Carl Reiner and many other top-name actors.

"Jewish Stories From the Old World to the New" is a complete 18-hour series distributed to public radio stations nationwide via National Public Radio.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, the only Yiddish writer to win the Nobel Prize, said that literature is the window into the soul of a people. This KCRW series reflects the Jewish experience of the last one hundred and fifty years — from the small towns of Eastern Europe to the diversity of the American landscape.

Featuring towering giants of Yiddish writing, such as Isaac Bashevis Singer, Sholom Aleichem and I.L. Peretz, modern masters like Saul Bellow, Bernard Malumud, E.L. Doctorow and Philip Roth, and contemporary writers including Ida Fink, Allegra Goodman and Cynthia Ozick, the new series expands the scope of the station's very popular "Jewish Short Stories from Eastern Europe and Beyond," produced in conjunction with the National Yiddish Book Center, which premiered in July, 1995 and was also distributed by NPR.

The series is again narrated by Leonard Nimoy, who also reads several of the stories. Among the other all-star readers are Edward Asner, Adam Arkin, Richard Dreyfuss, Joanna Gleason, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elliott Gould, Charlton Heston, Ron Leibman, Julie Kavner, Christina Pickles, Carl Reiner, Ron Rifkin, William Shatner, JoBeth Williams and others.

Arthur Hiller, Claudia Weil and Jeremy Kagan are among the who's who of film directors making the transition to radio for this series.

"Jewish Stories from the Old World to the New" features original music composed by Yale Strom, and performed by Klezmer musicians.

The series was produced by KCRW General Manager Ruth Seymour and by Johanna Cooper, recorded by Scott Fritz, edited by Ray Guarna and mixed by Bob Carlson.

Major funding for "Jewish Stories from the Old World to the New" was provided by the Max Zimmer Family Foundation, the Righteous Persons Foundation and California Arts Council.

KCRW-FM, licensed to Santa Monica College, is National Public Radio's flagship station. The station serves Los Angeles and Orange Counties at 89.9 FM, Ventura County at 89.1 FM on KCRU/ Oxnard-Ventura, and the greater Palm Springs area at 89.3 FM on KCRY/Indio-Palm Springs. Translators carry the signal to the Twentynine Palms and Yucca Valley areas at 90.7 FM, Banning at 90.9 FM, the Antelope Valley at 88.1 FM, the Ridgecrest area at 107.1 FM, the Santa Paula, Moorpark, and Fillmore areas at 102.3 FM, and Ojai at 102.1 FM. Every week, more than 400,000 listeners tune to the station for its eclectic and innovative non-commercial program schedule. KCRW can be found on the World Wide Web at KCRW.COM.