Seattle is no New York. Here, bourekas are more common than blintzes and gefilte fish is reinvented with wild Pacific salmon. The Yiddish culture that unloaded all of its baggage onto Ellis Island and came to define, in large part, the phenomenon of American Judaism, got watered down enough somewhere between the Mississippi and Puget Sound to have had a lesser impact on Northwest Jews.
Nevertheless, as the Yiddish-speaking community (outside of the religious Yiddish-speaking community) dwindles, the need to preserve and perpetuate America’s Yiddishkeit is critical. And with the Seattle premiere of the National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene, the Stroum Jewish Community Center is at the forefront of the cause.
“There has been a lot of interest lately in Yiddish culture from the community,” said Roni Antebi, the JCC’s adult programs manager “There is a need to educate young people especially, because the current generation does not have a background of Yiddish and it’s important to perpetuate the culture. We are hoping a lot of young people will attend.”
The National Yiddish Theater contacted the Seattle Yiddish Group, a gathering of Yiddish speakers and enthusiasts, to bring a performance to the region. The group brought the idea to the JCC, and with the help of a grant from the Abe and Sidney Block Foundation the JCC will present “The Magical World of Yiddish Song” with Yiddish superstars Zalmen Mlotek and Daniella Rabbani on March 27.
The performance is part of the Jewish Touch series, which highlights the connections between Jews and the arts through lectures and performances. The series started with opera but expanded in 2009 to include music, film and theater.
“The Jewish people have always been an important part of the cultural landscape in society and we want to inform our audience of the amazing contributions of Jews to the arts,” said Antebi. “Most of the Jewish Touch programs sell out and have been an amazing success.”
Mlotek, a world-renowned musician who grew up in a Yiddish-speaking musical home and studied under Leonard Bernstein, is the artistic director of The National Yiddish Theater-Folksbiene. According to Mlotek, the performance is “an overview of how Yiddish song sounds itself in every moment of Jewish and American life.”
“The songs are like windows into our whole world,” he said. “You have real moments of family life being expressed — the separation of the family, the coming to America…What it was to experience the Statue of Liberty for the first time…What it meant to go out West. What it meant to embrace a new country.
“The songs really bring these moments in history to life. By their vibrancy, by their honesty, by their pathos,” Mlotek added. “It’s beautiful to tears, and at the same time it’s joyous.”
Mlotek’s sidekick, Folksbiene star Rabbani, is an acclaimed comedienne, singer, and actress.
“Daniella is a dream,” said Mlotek, who noted that Rabbani went from not knowing Yiddish to performing in it. “She’s a wonderful comedian. She looks at life the way it is. The comedy is just a mirror of natural situations that — when you look at them hard — the humor comes. That’s one of her gifts.”
The multimedia performance is labeled “edu-tainment.” Translations of the Yiddish into English and Russian will be projected onto screens, and the two will explain the songs and talk about the tradition of Yiddish song.
“A lot of the songs are from the early Yiddish theater because the theater was that forum,” said Mlotek. “A lot of Jews went to the theater to see their lives depicted.”
What’s more, said Mlotek, “Yiddish had influence on American pop culture as a whole.” One of the performance highlights is when Mlotek and Rabbani expose the infiltration of Yiddish in American culture and its influence on musicians like Cab Calloway and George Gershwin.
Mlotek hopes that the performance will appeal to Seattle’s population beyond the Jewish sector. “What I’m hoping [is] we’re going to bring is a fresh look at what this music is,” he said.
As for Antebi, “It’s exciting and proud to bring a performance of this caliber to the JCC,” she said. “This is an opportunity for people to not only learn about Yiddish culture but also see something they will not have a chance to see, unless they go to New York.”
National Yiddish Theatre brings the old country to Seattle
