Skip to content
The logo for Brooklyn Jewish Heritage Initiative whose mission is to Organize Public Events, Create Oral & Video Histories, Provide Resources to the Brooklyn Jewish Community

Brooklyn Jewish
Historical Initiative

bc Home » Henry “Hank” Sapoznik

Henry “Hank” Sapoznik

Henry "Hank" Sapoznik

A pioneering scholar and performer of klezmer music, Sapoznik was the first director of the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, from its founding in 1982, until 1994. As an outgrowth of that work, in 1985 Sapoznik started “KlezKamp: The Yiddish Folk Arts Program”, the world’s most important training venue for practitioners of this nearly lost art and, in 1994, founded the Yiddish arts organization “Living Traditions” to administer it. His book Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World (1999), the first book on the history of klezmer music, was the winner of the 2000 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Excellence in Music Scholarship.

With MacArthur Fellow David Isay, Sapoznik produced the 10-week radio series the “Yiddish Radio Project” on the history of Jewish broadcasting for NPR’s All Things Considered in the spring of 2002. The series won the prestigious Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism for 2002. Source: Wikipedia