If you’re going to showcase Brooklyn, where better to start than the neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Crown Heights, and Borough Park where the Yiddish language thrives? That’s exactly what non-profit public access network BRIC TV, in partnership with CUNY’s Center for Urban Research, did for the recent premiere of its show On the Grid with Zephyr Teachout.
In the series, host Zephyr Teachout—the current CEO of Democratic presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig’s PAC who lost the 2014 New York gubernatorial election to Andrew Cuomo—seeks to “redraw” Brooklyn’s outdated traditional neighborhoods by redefining New York’s most populous borough based on its outward cultural and economic characteristics, or “pockets.” The first episode, titled “Yiddish–Speaking Brooklyn” takes a closer look at the thousands of Yiddish speakers in the borough, where Teachout briefly encounters the socioeconomic challenges and ideological distinctions between Hasidic groups, while trying to keep the conversation focused on linguistics. The show’s description is as follows:
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