Asya Vaisman was born in Chernovtsy in 1983
and lived in
Moscow before moving to the US in 1991. She received her BA (summa cum
laude) in
Yiddish and Linguistics, with a minor in Psychology, from Barnard College
(Columbia
University) and her AM and PhD in Yiddish from Harvard.
Her PhD dissertation, Being Heard: The Singing Voices of Contemporary
Hasidic Women is about the
Yiddish
songs and singing practices of Hasidic women.
Asya is also a Yiddish singer and songwriter. She has composed music to
the lyrics of
several Yiddish poets, and one of her songs recently appeared as the title
track on the
CD "Shtile Trit" of the Munich klezmer band, Massel Tov. She performs and
teaches
Yiddish songs in the US and abroad.
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