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Dear Friend of Yiddishkayt,
This month marks the hundred-year anniversary of the famous Chernowitz Conference of 1908. The great Yiddishists of the day gathered at the conference to discuss an array of Yiddish topics and to proclaim that "Yiddish is a national language of the Jewish people." This landmark statement helped pave the way for Yiddish to continue blossoming as a language of literature, poetry, intellectualism and academia. (One might even connect the dots back to our humble organization.)
In October, we are fortunate to be nearby the Twelfth Annual Conference of the IAYC (International Association of Yiddish Clubs). Join Yiddishkayt at the conference -- celebrating the 100-year anniversary of Chernowitz -- in La Jolla from October 24 to 27 for an inspiring line-up of educators, musicians, academics and historians. More info below.
Compare the invitation to the IAYC Conference with the original invitation to the Chernowitz Conference. Scroll down for the original invitation.
Also, we list upcoming events, including Far Yugnt/For Youth, the annual commemoration of Soviet Yiddish writers by the Workmen's Circle, and the upcoming concert by the LA Jewish Symphony, The Sephardic-Latino Connection.
And finally, with a heavy heart we acknowledge the passing of Yiddish (and American) theater star, Bruce Adler. Yiddishkayt asked our long-time friend and supporter, the entertainer Mike Burstyn, to share his thoughts and memories of his childhood friend with us. See below.
mit vareme vuntshn,
The Yiddishkayt Staff
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UPCOMING EVENTS
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8/10 Arbeter Ring/Workmen's Circle presents
Far Yugnt/For Youth: the Yiddish Songbook of S. Polonski
Sunday, August 10
2:00 pm
The Workmen's Circle
1525 S Robertson Blvd
Free admission, reservations not required.
Yiddishkayt is proud to participate in the annual commemoration of Soviet Yiddish Writers. Fifty-six years ago, on August 12, 1952, the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin executed fourteen prominent Yiddish writers and Jewish communal officials in an attempt to wipe out Jewish culture.
This year, we recognize Soviet Jewish composer S. Polonski, who contributed several well-known songs to the Yiddish repertoire. The Mit Gezang Yiddish Chorus of the Workmen's Circle will delve deeper into Polonski's musical legacy, performing the entirety of his songbook written for Yiddish-speaking schoolchildren in the Soviet Union, published in 1931. This unique program will be in Yiddish and English.
8/24 Los Angeles Jewish Symphony premieres
The Sephardic-Latino Connection
 Sunday, August 247:30 pmFord Amphitheater2580 Cahuenga Blvd, HollywoodTickets are $36 & $25; $12 for full-time students and children under 12.Purchase tickets from the Ford online or call the box office at (323) 461-3673.
The Los Angeles Jewish Symphony premieres The Sephardic-Latino Connection,
celebrating the similarity of impassioned cries of the cantors and
those of the flamenco artists whose roots originate from Spain, as part
of the Ford Summer 2008 Series. Conducted by the symphony's
founder/artistic director, Dr. Noreen Green, accompanied by flamenco
guitarist Adam del Monte and harpist Marcia Dickstein. Also with
Argentinean Cantor Marcelo Gindlin and special guests, The Mariachi
Divas. For more information, visit the LA Jewish Symphony website. |
BRUCE ADLER: IN MEMORIAM
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A REMEMBRANCE BY MIKE BURSTYN
On July 25th, the Yiddish world lost one of its brightest and most talented stars with the untimely and tragic passing of my childhood friend, Bruce Adler.
 Bruce and I were born six months apart to legendary stars of 2nd Avenue's famous Yiddish theatre. His parents, Julius Adler and Henrietta Jacobson and my parents, Pesach'ke Burstein and Lillian Lux, were performing together during the 1944/45 season at the Hopkinson Theatre in Brooklyn. Henrietta and my mother were both pregnant, and would cover their tummies during the final wedding scene with large ostrich-feather fans. Bruce was born on November 27, 1944 and my twin sister and I on July 1, 1945. We remained lifelong friends.
Bruce inherited his song-and-dance man talents from his parents and from his illustrious family: his grandparents, Joseph and Bessie Jacobson and uncles Hymie and Irving Jacobson, (the original Sancho Panza in "Man of La Mancha.") He joined his parents onstage as early as age 4, went on to a successful childhood career, appearing with the likes of Molly Picon (see pictured below with a young Bruce Adler performing on 2nd Ave. in 1959), and even celebrated his Bar Mitzvah, as I did, onstage at New York's National Theatre.  He then crossed over to Broadway, garnering great success and two Tony Award nominations for best featured actor in a musical in "Those Were the Days" and as Bela Zangler in "Crazy for You." He starred in countless regional productions as well as in his one-man concerts, aptly titled "Song and Dance Man," and lent his vocal talents to the Disney animated films "Aladdin" and "Beauty and the Beast."
Despite having shared a lifelong friendship, we had never had the chance to perform together. In 1998 we were planning to finally do so in an evening entitled "Together at Last." As luck would have it, I was cast as Jolson in the National Tour of the eponymous musical and we agreed to postpone working together until a future opportunity presented itself. My greatest regret is that that opportunity is now gone forever.
A testament to Bruce's greatness, not only as a performer but as a man, was that despite having been diagnosed with cancer five years ago, he continued to perform, giving everything he had to his audiences and his colleagues without the slightest hint that he was battling for his life. I only found out about his illness when he called me a few weeks before his death. He said he wanted to tell me personally. He was still optimistic about a potential treatment in Holland. I now realize he was probably saying goodbye. He was a gentleman to the very end.
Bruce's love of and commitment to the Yiddish repertoire that he grew up with never faltered, and can be enjoyed on his numerous CDs. He leaves his wife Amy London, who directed many of his shows, two stepchildren, and a baby son, named Jacob Adler, to carry on his royal legacy.
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CZERNOWITZ: 100 YEARS LATER
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The Twelfth International Association of Yiddish Clubs Conference (IAYC)
In La Jolla, California, October 24-27, 2008
Yiddishkayt LA is excited to participate in the twelfth conference of the IAYC, celebrating the Centennial of Chernowitz. We are especially excited that the IAYC is convening so close to us, and urge our members to take advantage of its proximity by attending. (If you'd like to attend but don't have transportation or want to carpool, give us a call and we will do our best to help arrange this.) Check out the amazing program of musicians, historians, teachers and artists. Visit the website of the conference for more information about registration and accommodations. The IAYC conference is the closest large-scale celebration of the Centennial of the Chernowitz Conference. Below is the invitation to the conference by the organizers: Little could the conveners of the Czernowitz Conference in 1908 have anticipated the obliteration of most of the Yiddish speakers of Europe, the founding of Israel with its concomitant reestablishment of the Jewish Homeland (and its diminishing Yiddish), or the powerful tool of the Internet in producing a "Virtual Shtetl."Our 12th IAYC conference will examine the last 100 years of Yiddish, and look into the future. We most likely can no more predict the next hundred years than the Czernowitz conveners could foretell the actual series of events that characterized the Yiddish world of the 20th century--but it will be very exciting. |
THE STORY OF CHERNOWITZ
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We continue to explore the story of the famous Chernowitz Conference of 1908, where the great Yiddishists of the day proclaimed that "Yiddish is a national language of the Jewish people."
One hundred years ago (from April, to be exact) the invitation to the Yiddish language conference at Chernowitz went out. Read it below:
Honored Sir!
In the past several decades the Yiddish language has made great progress. Its literature has achieved a level of which no one had imagined it capable. Yiddish newspapers are distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies daily and weekly. Yiddish poets write songs which are sung by the people, stories which are read by the people, plays which the people eagerly flock to see. Every day the language itself becomes more refined and richer.
But it continues to lack one thing which older tongues possess. The latter are not permitted to roam about freely and wildly in the linguistic world to attract all sorts of diseases defects and perhaps even death. They are guarded as a precious child is guarded. No one, however, pays heed to the Yiddish language. Thousands of Yiddish words are replaced by German, Russian and English words which are completely unnecessary. The live rules of the language which are born and develop with it in the mouths of the people go unrecorded and it appears not to possess such rules. Each person writes it in another way with his own spelling because no standard authoritative Yiddish orthography has thus far been established.
True, the disgrace attached to Yiddish in the past has diminished. People are less and less ashamed of the contemporary language of our people. It is gradually coming to be reckoned with and respected. It is coming to be understood that in Yiddish the Jewish spirit is reflected and its value for the survival of our nation is beginning to be comprehended. But survival of our nation is beginning to be comprehended. But it is still an object of ridicule and contempt. People are still ashamed of it. And is this not because of the faults noted above?
If this be true, a stop must be put to these things. A fence needs be established, some sort of protection for our precious mother-tongue so that it not wander about aimlessly as until now, so that it not become chaotic, tattered and divided. All who are involved with the language, writers, poets, linguists, and those who simply love it - must confer and find the appropriate means and methods of establishing an authority to which all will have to and want to defer.
Honored Sir! If you share the views herein expressed, you are invited to attend the Conference which we are calling on behalf of the Yiddish language.
The Conference will be held... in Chernowitz (Bukovina, Austria) and will deal with the following items:
(1) Yiddish orthography, (2) Yiddish grammar, (3) foreign and new words, (4) a Yiddish dictionary, (5) Jewish youth and the Yiddish language, (6) the Yiddish press and the Yiddish language, (7) the Yiddish stage and Yiddish actors, (8) the economic situation of Yiddish actors, (10) the recognition of the Yiddish language.
If you wish to attend the Conference, please send your name and address to the main office of the Conference immediately, so that we may send you the additional announcements which we will distribute. If you have any practical suggestions for the Conference and especially for the Yiddish language, we ask you to please write to us as soon as possible and thank you in advance.
Nisan 5668-April, 1908
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Source:
Emanuel S. Goldsmith, Modern Yiddish Culture (New York: Fordham UP, 2000).
-- Warner Bass, Yiddishkayt Spring Intern
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Yiddishkayt Los Angeles
www.yiddishkaytla.org
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