Ethel Raim

Yiddish Singing

Ethel Raim is widely recognized for her expertise in Yiddish singing, and specializes in the repertoire of unaccompanied Yiddish ballads and lyrical love songs. She was the co-founder and director of the influential all-women’s a cappella group, The Pennywhistlers, and has had a distinguished career as a performer, workshop leader, master singing teacher, and recording artist for the Elektra and Nonesuch labels. Raim has taught unaccompanied Yiddish singing for the past two decades at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Yiddish Summer Weimar, KlezKamp, KlezKanada, Yiddish New York, and workshops at community centers in the US and beyond. For her profound career impact on preserving immigrant performing arts traditions in the US, Raim was named the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellow in 2018 by the National Endowment for the Arts.