Mendele: Yiddish literature and language ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 3.226 February 10, 1994 1) Yiddish theater diminished (Michael Auslin) 2) Jews, diabetes and Mencken (Shleyme Axelrod) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Feb 9 17:44:50 1994 From: auslin michael r Subject: Yiddish theater diminished (fwd) I thought this might be of interest to Mendelniks. Sorry if someone already passed it along. Any comments, perhaps from those who can tell us about their own experiences in/with/at the Yiddish theater? Michael Auslin ///////////////////////////////////////////////// HOLLYWOOD (UPI) -- The Yiddish theater, among America's most colorful show business traditions, has almost faded away. At one time there were a dozen Yiddish theaters in New York City, small places where Jewish immigrants from Russia, Poland and Germany, many of whom spoke little English, could be entertained. Each theater had its own impressario, producers, directors and musicians. The actors circulated from one venue to the next, sometimes hitting the road to play Chicago, Boston and Philadelphia. In summertime they headed for the ``borscht belt,'' vacation hotels in the Catskills, affectionately called the Jewish Alps. Over the years assimilation and intermarriage have taken their toll. Succeeding generations all spoke English, often better than the natives. The need for Yiddish -- a linguistic hybrid of German and Hebrew -- became unnecessary for Jewish entertainers, writers and musicians who joined mainstream theater, as did Jewish theatergoers. Burlesque, vaudeville, movies, radio and TV accelerated assimilation to a point that Yiddish entertainment is in danger of dying out altogether in the United States. And elsewhere. Fyvush Finkel, one of the stars of CBS's acclaimed drama series ``Picket Fences,'' remembers Yiddish theater very well. He was one of its stars for 50 years or so. Finkel, 71, who plays irascible attorney Douglas Wambaugh in the series, is one of the very few veterans of Yiddish theater to cross over to mainstream. At a Bel-Air hotel, a temporary home while he works in ``Picket Fences,'' the longtime actor enjoyed taking his wife of 46 years, singer-writer Gertrude Lieberman, to lunch. ``When I got into Yiddish theater in 1935 it wasn't as big as it was at the turn of the century,'' Finkel said. ``It really began to wane toward the early '40s as the old people from Europe began to fade away. ``I was a star. We toured cities where there were large Jewish communities. A season used to last 41 weeks. The other 11 weeks we performed in the Catskills. ``I had a comedy act so I could play the hotels. But mainly I played the Second Avenue Theater, the National and all the others except one that specialized in 'art' like Shakespeare. They wouldn't talk to me. I was considered 'shund,' a Yiddish word meaning commercial theater. I also played the two vaudeville houses.'' Finkel is a large man with expressive eyebrows, a deep baritone and an ample waistline. His nose is shaped like a dill pickle, his eyes are alive and mischievous. He looks exactly like the character actor he is. ``The nice thing about Yiddish theater, you were never out of work. If a new musical folded, no big deal. The next week we had another new musical with scenery and everything. ``Our plays were written by Jewish dramatists. We even did soap operas on Yiddish radio station WEVD. There's nothing new under the sun. Sometimes a hit would run 35-40 weeks. I always played comic roles, the guy who never got the girl. ``A favorite drama theme was a little boy in Europe leaving home to find his fortune in America. The family waves goodbye at the railroad station. A real tear-jerker. When he becomes prominent in America he forgets his parents. Then they come over with help from HIAS, Hebrew Immigration Aid Society. ``The parents go to hear a famous opera singer who sings the same song he sang as a child. The parents leave their seats and walk with open arms to the stage to greet their son -- and I tell you there isn't a dry eye in the house. ``There was a lot of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl, or maybe he gets her mother.'' Always looking for a laugh, Finkel broke himself up with that. ``At the beginning most dramas were set in Russia or Germany, later they were contemporary New York stories. ``As the years passed we began sprinkling more English into the dialogue because younger audiences all spoke the language.'' Now only one Yiddish theater survives in New York, but Finkel is optimistic it will endure for many years to come. ``The last remaining one is called Folksbiene,'' he said. ``It's subsidized and still in Yiddish. They don't worry about going out of business. Everybody works for nothing. It's a labor of love. ``Anybody wants to do Yiddish theater, it's still there. It will never die because it is part of the Jewish tradition in this country. ``Even though I am a part of a very fine TV series, I still enjoy working in theater. I went on tour doing 'Fiddler on the Roof,' which I thought was a great honor.'' 2)---------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed Feb 9 19:22:21 1994 From: Seymour Axelrod Subject: Jews, diabetes and Mencken David Sherman asks whether Jews are really statistically more likely to have diabetes than non-Jews; no doubt someone will post the information. But I recall reading what H.L. Mencken is said to have said when someone accused Jews of primitiveness. It was something like, "When our Anglo-Saxon ancestors were still painting themselves blue, living in caves, and eating roots and wild berries, the Jews ALREADY had diabetes." (I know about Mencken's own apparent antisemitism, but that's a separate issue. And now that I look at it, that "ALREADY" has its own yidisher tam.) --Shleyme Axelrod ______________________________________________________ End of Mendele Vol. 3.226 To subscribe, send SUB MENDELE FIRSTNAME LASTNAME to: LISTSERV@YALEVM.YCC.YALE.EDU Mendele has 2 rules: 1. Provide a Subject: line. 2. Sign your article. Send submissions/responses to: mendele@yalevm.ycc.yale.edu Other business: nmiller@starbase.trincoll.edu Anonymous ftp archives available on: ftp.mendele.trincoll.edu in the directory pub/mendele/files