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---> Sneak Preview: Click here to see a BBC interview with Zalmen Mlotek describing the Yiddish influence on American Jazz. A great forshpayz (appetizer) of what's in store on January 18th.

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Join Zalmen Mlotek, the Artistic Director of the National Yiddish-Theater Folksbiene, in a multi-media historical edu-tainment about the Yiddish theater with interactive audience participation.  Presentation follows full bagel breakfast (see below).

Hailed as the "runaway hit" of the Berkeley Jewish Music Festival, this elegant piece by Zalmen Mlotek celebrates the Jewish musical accent in American theater. Spanning all genre of Yiddish theater, from the wine cellars of Romania, to Yiddish versions of operetta arias; from humorous vaudeville ballads to backstage renditions of Fiddler on the Roof; from the originals of klezmer music to a special Yiddish-English tribute to Gilbert and Sullivan.

HEAR Yiddish melodies transformed into Irving Berlin, Cab Calloway and George Gershwin jazz numbers.

LEARN how songs like "Vatch Your Step" (1911), "Fifty Fifty" (1912), and "Lebn Zol Kolumbus" (Long Live Columbus) helped immigrants adjust to Di Goldene Medine (The Golden Land).

HEAR how the vaudeville houses on the Lower East Side became the Golden Age of 2nd Avenue, where Yiddish theaters and shows entertained thousands of people all eager to have a connection with the lives they left behind in the old country.

All songs are translated or have supertitles shown on a screen along with photos and historic documents.



You may RSVP by emailing us (events@yiddishkayt.org) your name and number of people in your party (up to 4).  RSVP not necessary to attend.

Produced by Yiddishkayt, the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center (VCJCC), and the California Institute for Yiddish Culture & Language (CIYCL).

Two hundred guests enjoyed the joyous music of Isaac Sadigursky, David Kasap, Michael Alpert and Vic Koler in Plummer Park in West Hollywood.  Thanks to everyone who came and enjoyed the fantastic music, the delicious blintzes and pastries, and the spontaneous dancing in the aisles and on stage!

Watch a slideshow of pictures from the evening by clicking here or on the picture above.

--> Also check out this fantastic review of the concert on giant music blog, Spinner.

 

 

With Extreme Klezmer Makeover (featuring Joellen Lapidus) and Uncle Ruthie Buell.  Refreshments served.

 

Join Marvin Zukerman, Professor of English at L.A. Valley College, for a leacture on "Yehoash the Poet, Writer and Translator."  Lecture followed by Q & A and refreshments.

In the Jewish ghettos of Poland and Lithuania during World War II, a world of dislocation, terror and death, cabaret music thrived.  Jewish audiences gatheres in makeshift clubs and theaters to hear newly-created Yiddish songs, rooted in Jewish folk and liturgical music as well as European operetta, American ragtime and Argentine tango.  Jewish performers tuned these cosmopolitan songs in a local key: satirical and elegiac, political and personal, angry and heartsick.  Together they created something rare, scarcely conceivable: art at the edge of the abyss.

Adrienne Cooper, one of the world's most acclaimed singers of Yiddish vocal music, and Zalmen Mlotek, a leading figure in Yiddish musical theater, present Ghetto Tango.

The editor of this outstanding vebzaytl (Yiddish for web page) suggested that since it's January and all, the Vortsman might explore words relating to (1) the aftermaths of imbibing, or (2) the upcoming, long-awaited, much-discussed CHANGE (di enderung).

Political animal that he is, though no teetotaler, the Vortsman has chosen the latter option (di breyre).

So, to prove, underline, highlight and make perfectly clear that Yiddish is not -- by the wildest stretch of a Yiddish-denier's fevered imagination -- an obsolete, outdated, shtetl-tied, kitchen-based language, let us examine the word that fills our minds, hearts and tv newscasts: inauguration.



How does one say it (af yidish) in Yiddish? di aynshverung -- literally, the swearing-in. Aha!, say the aha-sayers: that's Germanic! Gotcha!

The aha-sayers, in their desperate attempt to disparage Yiddish at any cost or opportunity, conveniently overlook the fact that the English word "inauguration" is purely Latin: inaugurare.

And that's the point. Who, in this enlightened 21st century, when the English language rules the airwaves, internet, and continents as the Empire never dreamed of, would dare to describe English as "a mixture of German, Latin and Anglo-Saxon?" Yet, in this same era of scientific and linguistic enlightenment, most newspaper writers (and most rabbis, to be honest about it) do not hesitate to "explain" that Yiddish is "a mixture of German, Hebrew and Slavic."

BOTH English and Yiddish are "loan languages." That is, neither one hesitates to borrow (or steal) words from other tongues. Example: In translating letters from 19th century Poland, I've found Yiddish-writers using piktshe for photograph, having learned it from letters sent from the U.S.

This light-fingered attitude is genetic in both languages. They're cousins, after all. BOTH descended from Middle High German about a millenium ago. So take linguistic "superiority" and shove it vu di zun zet zikh nisht on...

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Have a question for the vortsman? Send him an email and ask the meaning of a favorite, or confusing, word or phrase.