Vivi Lachs is a historian of the Jewish East End, a research fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, and a longstanding Yiddish performer. She is the author of Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant Life in Yiddish Song and Verse, London 1884-1914 (2018) and editor and translator of London Yiddishtown: East End Jewish Life in Yiddish Sketch and Story, 1930-1950. She co-runs the Great Yiddish Parade bringing Yiddish songs of union activism and protest from the 1890s back onto the streets of London with a marching band and chorus. She also co-runs the Yiddish Open Mic Café in London and online and leads musical historical tours of the old Yiddish East
End, placing the old songs in the locations they relate to. Vivi sings, records and composes music for Yiddish songs of the Cockney Yiddish music hall with the bands Klezmer Klub (Whitechapel, mayn vaytshepl) and Katsha’nes (Don’t Ask Silly Questions).