New York: National Yiddish Theatre, Dec. 12

Attendees of the 2006 New York international Jewish genealogy conference will remember the hit evening performance by Zalmen Mlotek.
Motek, director of the National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene, will present "100 Years of Yiddish Musical Theatre" with guest Daniella Rabbani and the New Yiddish Chorale at the Kingsborough Performing Arts Center on Sunday, December 12, at 3pm. Tickets are $25.

An internationally recognized authority on Yiddish folk and theater music, he is the artistic director of the nation’s only Yiddish Theatre,, travels the world giving concerts, lectures and other programs.

"100 Years of Yiddish Musical Theatre" was hailed as the “runaway hit” of the Berkeley Jewish Music Festival and was highly praised by Yiddishkayt L.A., while Ms. Rabbani’s performance was deemed “utterly alive” by the New York Observer.

This elegant piece celebrates the Jewish musical accent in American theatre, beginning with the origins of the Yiddish theatre in the wine cellars of Rumania and treating us to operetta arias, humorous vaudeville ballads, backstage renditions of Fiddler on the Roof, and more. Simultaneous English translations are projected on a large screen.

For tickets, click here, or call 718-368-5596.

Music: Golden age of Jewish music

There's nothing like the great cantorial voices or klezmer groups of the past, and a new set of recordings provides a glimpse.

The Wall Street Journal's Nat Hentoff, who usually writes about jazz, reviewed "Cantors, Klezmorim and Crooners 1905-1953."

There are links to audio clips:

'Unsane Toikef' - Cantor David Roitman -- 'Russishe Shehr' - Abe Scwartz Orchestra -- 'Mi Sheoso Nisim' - Cantor Berele Chagy --'Ich Bin a Boarder Ba Mein Weib' ('I Board at My Wife's') - Fyvush Finkel

The story reveals Hentoff's early encounters with jazz and Jewish music, including a hazzan in 1932, a klezmer band at a wedding, Artie Shaw (Russian-Jewish ancestry), Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and the legendary Jewish clarinetist Dave Tarras.

Writes Hentoff:

Still part of both worlds, I have many books on the musical and social history of jazz, including discographies. But until now I've owned nothing of substance on the nearly 6,000 Yiddish or Hebrew recordings released in the U.S. between 1898 and 1942, and especially the golden age of Yiddish 78s from 1905 to 1953.

From Klezmer clarinetist Sherry Mayrent's Yiddish 78s collection - Hentoff believes it is the largest in the world - this new compilation offers 67 tracks on three CDs, including 42 reissued for the first time.

Mayrent gathered her 5,000-and-growing record collection from diverse sources in the US, Canada, Israel, South America, Russia and other locations with transplanted Jewish communities. The University of Wisconsin-Madison will be home to the new Mayrent Institute of Yiddish Culture.

The collection includes several female cantors.

The CD's producer - and track note writer - is klezmer scholar Henry Sapoznik - who will head the new Mayrent Institute. Tracing the Tribe has posted several articles about Sapoznik and his projects (use the search box).

Some "names" mentioned in the article: Latvian-born (1892) Berele Chagy who arrived in the US circa 1909, escaping army conscription; the first klezmer group to record in the US - Elenkrig's Yiddishe Orchestra; star of the Second Avenue Yiddish theater Molly Picon; and Romanian-born Abe Schwartz's Yiddish swing band, with Tarras on clarinet.

Tracing the Tribe readers will remember actor and comic Fyvush Finkel from his TV roles in "Picket Fences" and "Boston Public," whose contribution here is Ich Bin a Boarder Ba Mein Weib ("I Board at My Wife's").

Read the complete story at the link above, listen to the clips, or purchase your own copy of the three-CD set (at Amazon, $25.99; or download the MP3 album,$17.98).

Happy listening!

New York: Yiddish theater program, June 14

Interested in Yiddish theater?

The Congress for Jewish Culture, the CYCO and the Yiddish Artists and Friends Actors' Club will host an evening in memory of the late Yiddish actor David Rogow, with an English lecture on Yiddish theater by Nahma Sandrow and a Yiddish song selection by Allen Lewis Rickman and Yelena Shmulenson ("A Serious Man:).

The event is set for Monday, June 14, and begins with a 6.30pm reception, followed by the program at 7pm, at the Yiddish Artists and Friends' Actors Club, 31 E. 7th St., Manhattan.

Sandrow, author of "Vagabond Stars" ( a world history of Yiddish theater) will give the first Rogow Memorial Lecture on Yiddish Theater, "Melodrama and Truth on the Yiddish Stage."

She also wrote "Kuni-Leml," the long-running off-Broadway musical comedy based on Goldfadn's classic. Her translations of Yiddish plays have been published and performed, and she is currently translating "Yankl der shmid" on a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She has lectured at Oxford, Harvard, Brown and other universities, the Lincoln Center Young Directors' Lab, the Smithsonian and the National Yiddish Book Center.

The event is free and open to the public, but space is limited. To reserve, send an email.

Library of Congress: Yiddish radio webcast

Scholar Henry Sapoznik of the Yiddish Radio Project spoke on the Yiddish radio phenomenon at the Library of Congress.

View the webcast - "Hear, O Israel: Yiddish-American Radio 1925-1955" (recorded in October 2009) - here.

Sapoznik says Yiddish radio existed only in America. At one time, 180 stations were broadcasting (1925-1955) in mame loshen; 25 in New York. Most were in large cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, but Yiddish programs were also broadcast in Memphis, Dallas, Salt Lake City and Sioux City, Iowa

While some stations reached a large geographical area, one small 50-watt station in Brooklyn broadcast from a clothing store. If they opened the window, he said, they'd reach more people!

The lecture offers a glimpse of the most memorable and powerful moments in this nearly lost world of ethnic American broadcasting.

In the 1940s, the New York radio stations provided a place for the community's diversity to show. Programs included cantorial music (and even female cantors, who couldn't then sing in synagogues but reached listeners on the radio), pop music, quiz shows (with Victor Packer), rabbinical advice programs, live Yiddish theater acts, man-on-the-street interviews to the news of the day in verse (with Zvee Scooler) and much more.

To hear 26 gems from these shows, click here.

In 1933, the first-ever broadcast court program was House of Justice, with Rabbi Rubin, who listened to problems listeners brought to him. It was a first time for public mediation.

Yiddish radio also kept Yiddish theater alive. One anecdote concerned a series, "Men Without Eyes," the story of a girl disfigured in a fire and married off to a blind man. One episode announced there would be a live wedding and invited listeners to attend. Not only did they come, but they also brought wedding gifts!

According to Sapoznik, the radio took a folk culture and adapted it to a popular culture. And there were shows that showed how people really interacted in their own language.

An announcement was made on one station that Mr. Goldberg was 111. There was a musical interlude, and the announcer returned with a correction. Goldberg was ill, not 111 years old.

Commercials were important, giving local businesses and local products an opportunity to be a patrons of the arts, to buy air time to support specific shows.

Do you remember My-T-Fine pudding? It was one show's sponsor. Usually the ad was for chocolate pudding. One day, the company announced a new flavor, nut-chocolate. Of course, it was broadcast in Yiddish. Listeners called in and asked "If it is NOT chocolate, so what flavor is it?" Accents and language were everything.

Another popular show was "The Jewish Philosopher" (Der Pilosof), the Dr. Phil of his day - even though the supposed letters from listeners were written by his brother-in-law. What was more interesting was that St. Joseph Aspirin, a national product, was the sponsor.

Manischewitz sponsored the Jewish Children's Hour. Its producer had seven shows running simultaneously. It focused on Yiddish cultural education in New York among listeners who came from various communities (Yiddish, religious, social, etc.). Sholom Segunda was its musical director, and he wrote "Bei Mir bist du schoen."

"Song Book" aired Yiddish songs and compiled a book of favorites for their audience. If a listener sent in a postcard, s/he would receive the songbook. It may have been the first audience survey and done on a very low budget. It helped the show to understand its audience size.

Some announcers, like Zvee Scooler, read the news in verse. mixing daily folk and culture life with the responsibilities of a news show. This wasn't found in mainstream media.

Read more about the Yiddish Radio Project and view the 57-minute webcast by Sapoznik.

Sapoznik is a record producer (four Grammy nominations), a radio documentarian, an author, and a performer of traditional Yiddish and American music. He received a 2002 Peabody award for his 10-week National Public Radio series on the history of Jewish broadcasting, The Yiddish Radio Project, the 2000 ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for Music Scholarship for his book "Klezmer! Jewish Music from Old World to Our World," and an Emmy nomination for his score to the documentary film, "The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg." He founded the Max and Frieda Weinstein Archives of Recorded Sound at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, as well as Living Traditions' annual KlezKamp: The Yiddish Folk Arts Program.

Museum of Family History: New this month

There's always something new at Steve Lasky's virtual Museum of Family History. Here's the March update:

- “Churbn Lettland: The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia” – Very important telling of events, written in 1947 by a survivor. More material from the English translation has been added, mainly about the Small Riga Ghetto. Also included, an index of all surnames in the book. Visit the “Wall of Remembrance,” with photos of some who died or were killed in Latvia during WWII. Add your own photos and biographies;

- The the film preview for "Horodok: A Shtetl's Story 1920-1945" is now online. Just scroll down to no. 19 and click. Make sure your speakers are on before you do, as the film clip begins once the page opens. The film is in Hebrew with English subtitles. There are several places named Horodok/Gorodok. This one is north of Minsk in the area between Rakov, Radishkovitz and Moladechna.

-Yiddish Theatre: Morris Axelrad, Yiddish actor; Placards of the Yiddish Theatre.

- Postcards from Home: Budapest, Hungary; Ilza, Poland; Czernowitz, Ukraine.

- World Holocaust Memorials: Lithuania – Kupiskis, Rokiskis.

- Living in America: The Jewish Experience – Thomas Jefferson High School, Brooklyn, New York. Currently, 32 yearbooks (1927-1949) are now online, browsable page-to-page or searchable using the Steve Morse one-step database.

Steve writes that he now has 20 additional books (from 1950) but needs volunteers for simple data entry. Watch for updates on the genealogical importance of yearbooks.

- Steve adds that he's working on a site redesign and would like some opinions. If you'd like to evaluate it, contact him.

He'll also be producing a free periodic Museum e-newsletter (not a blog) for those who have supported his work through contributions of material (photos, text, etc.) - see the “Credits and Acknowledgments” page. Supporters will be the first to receive news of future exhibits, links to previews, hear other ideas, read relevant words of inspiration, and more.

Those who would like to receive it by email, should write to Steve here, including your first and last name, email address and, for statistical purposes only, your country, state and town.

For other questions or information, write to Steve.

Los Angeles: Yiddish theatre, music, Dec. 7

The JGS of Los Angeles will present a program on the influence of Yiddish theatre and music on American culture by Cantor Hale Porter, at 1.30pm, Sunday, December 7, at the Milken JCC in West Hills.

The modern Yiddish theatre came into being in Romania in 1876. Its goal was to convey middle-class Western European standards of education and enlightenment to “uneducated” Jews. In this sense, the Yiddish stage was designed as an institution for and by Jews, but when it moved to the Lower East Side of New York City it also became a venue for cultural exchange between Jews and non-Jews. The Yiddish theater district -- centered on Manhattan’s Second Avenue -- was home to dozens of Yiddish theater troupes, theatrical establish-ments and vaudeville houses, and the stage was the main cultural institution of the immigrant Jewish community.

JGSLA board member Hale Porter has spent a lifetime in and around Yiddish theater and radio, working as an entertainer in the Catskills and on Second Avenue. He'll offer music, laughs, film clips and more, explaining how Yiddish theater, radio and music have influenced American culture.

Members, free; others, $5. For more details, click here

South Africa: Yiddish Theater book

A new book on the South African Yiddish theater has been published by Veronica Belling in Cape Town.

"Yiddish Theatre in South Africa: a History from the Late Nineteenth Century to 1960" was published by the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 2008. 194p. 1SBN 978-0-7992-2335-4.

The price is $25 (including airmail postage); order at Kaplan-Centre@uct.ac.za
Belling previously published "Bibliography of South African Jewry" (1997) and an English translation of Leibl Feldman's classic work on the Jews of Johannesburg (2007)

Yiddish Theater: The Thomashefsky Family

The Thomashefsky Project has unearthed some 1,000 documents relating to the private and public lives of famed Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, the grandparents of San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas.

In 1998, Tilson Thomas set up a foundation to research the archives of Yiddish theater and collect and curate Thomashefsky artifacts. As a result of seven years of family history research, the project has uncovered photographs, posters, scores, scripts and more. Fragments of musical manuscripts were pieced together and transcribed, while scripts have been preserved and translated. Items were found in the family's own collection, at YIVO and the New York Public Library.

A multimedia show, "The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater," will be at Chicago's Symphony Center on Tuesday, June 3; click here for details. Tilson Thomas will conduct Chicago Symphony Orchestra members in a program ranging from Kaddish to Thomashevsky originals.

In a Chicago Sun Times story, he relates one of his grandmother's stories:

"In the late 1890s, Bessie was arrested by Theodore Roosevelt, who, well before he was elected President of the U.S., was New York City's Police Commissioner. My grandparents' theater had apparently violated the 'blue laws' which required businesses to close on Sunday. But Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath, so Sunday was a golden day for the Yiddish theater box office. My grandmother, who was then in her twenties, but always looked much younger than she actually was, recalled how Roosevelt barged into the place and shouted 'Look out little girl!,' to which she quickly replied, 'Hey, I'M the star'.

Born in 1868 in Tarasche (Tarasche) near Kiev, 12-year-old Boris Thomashefsky arrived in New York in 1881, and organized the first Yiddish theater performance only a year later. The teenager took Yiddish theater on the road in the 1880s, performing in Philadelphia, Washington DC, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Boston and Chicago.

Among his famous roles: Hamlet in "Der Yisheve Bokher," (the yeshiva student); the poster read "translated and improved upon by Boris Thomashefsky;" King Lear, Romeo, Judah Maccabee and the "Jewish Yankee Doodle." The theater also performed Ansky, Chekhov, Faust, and even Wagner's Parsifal.

In addition to Shakespeare, the Yiddish theater covered Ibsen (who, says Tilson Thomas, was censored in English, but not in Yiddish), American themes such as "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and operettas. It also looked at controversial and topical issues such as birth control, women's rights, assimilation and class struggle.

For more information, read this story.

Want to know more about the Yiddish theater? click All About Jewish Theatre, and an additional link to the Library of Congress pdf file, Lawrence Marwick Collection of Copyrighted Yiddish Plays.

Update: Museum of Family History contents

Steve Lasky's Museum of Family History keeps growing with very useful resources . He's added and updated much information, according to his January 2008 report:

--Castle Garden: The First Entry Point of America. Before Ellis Island served as our immigrant ancestors' gateway into the US, most entered at a location at the tip of Manhattan named Castle Garden.

--More pre-war family photos from Europe, including Joniskis, Lithuania (some 30 families/surnames are represented).

--Holocaust Memorials of Canada - Victoria, British Columbia;

--Stories from our Ancestral Homes - Nemesany, Slovakia and its surrounds;

--The Habima in New York. The innovative Habima acting troupe left Russia in 1926 to tour European and US cities. This section covers their origins and time in New York, including costumed cast photographs, scenes from acts, reviews of five plays performed, and a letter of support by Russian playwright Maxim Gorky. The troupe left New York for then-Palestine and makes its permanent home in Tel Aviv, Israel.

--The Modjacot Marionette Theatre. New York City (c1920s), once billed as "the only Jewish puppet theatre in America."

All of this can be found here.

Steve's never one to rest, so stay tuned for future plans to include stars of the Yiddish stage (actors, playwrights, theatre history), the Catskills' Grine Felder enclave and the Yiddish Art Theatre.

Families of the Yiddish Theatre

If you're researching Yiddish theatre families - including the Adlers, Thomashefskys, Bertha Kalish, Maurice Schwartz, Abraham Goldfaden, Molly Picon, Jacob Gordin, Paul Muni and more - here's a book you might enjoy.

The New York Times, in its "Reading New York" column, reports on Stefan Kanfer's book, Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy and Mishugas of the Yiddish Theater in America (Alfred A. Knopf, $26.95).

Their outsize personalities, coupled with excerpts of the skits and scripts they performed and adapted, provide some of the most memorable passages in his book.

Readers gratefully tag along as Jacob Gordin escorts Henry James on a tour of the Lower East Side, and listen in as Paul Muni theatrically transforms himself during his interrogation by an immigration judge from a crippled, heavily accented greenhorn into a proud and polished young man who speaks English eloquently. “Your honor, it’s remarkable,” Muni announces. “Now that you’ve made me a citizen, I can speak perfectly!”

At the ICJG: Music to our ears

Monday night at the conference was very special. For the first time in my experience at the event, we had a great concert. Professor Joel E. Rubin and Pete Rushefsky, a klezmer duo on clarinet and tzymbal, performed rare pieces of klezmer and Hasidic music gathered in Russia.

From prayerful tunes to freilach or happy dances, the sea of concert-goers were tapping their collective toes. Many pieces were gathered by a research trip in the early 1900s in shtetls and cities at the time our ancestors were still there. Among klezmer musicians, many pieces were known by the cities in which they originated, and we heard "Vinnitsa," "Breslov" and more.

A few years ago, at the Feher Music Center at Tel Aviv's Museum of the Diaspora, I was delighted to discover that the Ukraine Archives has recorded a set of CDs with this music, including the names of the pieces, the performers and the places they were recorded by an enthnographic expedition.

When we thought it couldn't get better, there was a quick scenery change, and the piano took centerstage, with Zalman Mlotek, Folksbiene Yiddish theater executive director. An internationally acclaimed authority on Yiddish folk and theater music, a conductor and pianist, Mlotek provided a panoramic view of this genre.

From Yiddish theatre and films, from comedies to dramas, Yiddish music that became pop music, to lullabies and songs of immigration, Yiddish summer camp songs and more, we sang along and clapped. I sat next to Jewish genealogy's guru, Steve Morse, whose Yiddish was surprisingly good. Who knew?

Even those who didn't know a word of mamaloshen caught on. A standing ovation brought an encore and a mass of people went up to thank Mlotek personally for his performance.

Before he performed, Peter Nash of Australia and Valery Bazarov, head of the HIAS Location and Family History Service, presented Mlotek with records pertaining to his father and uncle's journeys to safety with Sugihara visas to Shanghai and then to America. The records were found in Jerusalem, and the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York (conference hosts) contributed to the microfilming and preservation of these records.