THE DEKREPITZER REBBE: THE HOLOCAUST & A FIDDLE (Audio/Visual)

Welcome to the show. We are joined by Howard Langer — award-winning writer, attorney, and author of 'The Last Dekrepitzer', a novel that has already earned the National Jewish Book Award and marks his first work of fiction in fifty years. Howard is the founder of a leading antitrust law firm in Philadelphia, an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and a teacher whose work has taken him from Oxford to Tokyo. Yet in this conversation, we meet him foremost as a storyteller — one deeply concerned with memory, justice, and the fragile persistence of the human spirit. The Last Dekrepitzer opens in a New York subway station in 1965, where a lone fiddler braids Hasidic melodies with blues and gospel. He is the Dekrepitzer Rebbe — the final survivor of a vanished Chasidic sect destroyed in the Holocaust. From a lost Polish shtetl to the docks of Naples, from the American South to Manhattan streets alive with music and tension, his journey becomes an odyssey of survival, displacement, faith, and identity. Through encounters that cross cultures and histories, the novel asks a difficult question: how does a person live — spiritually, morally, musically — after everything has been torn away? Howard studied under literary giants Yehuda Amichai and Aharon Appelfeld, and his writing carries that lineage of moral seriousness and poetic depth. Critics have praised the novel for introducing one of the most singular figures in contemporary Jewish fiction — a character haunted by memory, sustained by music, and forever wrestling with God. Today’s conversation is about faith and fracture, about music as a vessel for memory, and about what we continue to carry long after the world tells us to move on. It is a discussion of survival not as an ending, but as a lifelong reckoning — personal, communal, and spiritual. I’m glad you’re here. ——🎧 The Avrum Rosensweig Show —— A one-of-a-kind, intimate schmooze-fest, hosted and produced by the endlessly curious veteran radio and TV personality, Avrum Rosensweig. With warmth and wit, Avrum uncovers the secrets, dreams, and innermost thoughts of people from all walks of life. From local shelf stockers, plumbers, food servers, to crossing guards, stars, public figures, and cultural icons. Join this channel to get access to perks: / @avrumrosensweigshow Listen to The Avrum Rosensweigh Show on: https://open.spotify.com/show/6LZFTR0... https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... https://avrumspodcast.podbean.com/ Instagram: / avrumrosensweigshow TikTok: / avrumrosensweig #podcastcanada #storytellingmatters #jewishpodcast #jewishwisdom #jewishfaith #jewishlearning #jewisheducation #jewishcommunity #jewishheritage #jewishtradition #jewishculture #jewishcommunity #jewishhistory #jewishphilosophy #spiritualwisdom #motivationalpodcast #motivationalinterview #fascinatingpeople #engagingconversations #personalgrowth #lifelessons #leadershipstories #faithandwisdom #jewishinspirations #podcastinterview #theavrumrosensweigshow #TheLastDekrepitzer #HowardLanger #JewishLiterature #HolocaustMemory #ChasidicStories #MusicAndMemory #FaithAndSurvival #JewishPodcast #LiteraryConversation #storiesofresilience