RE: Der yidisher tam

[Marvin3809 <Marvin3809...>]

I recentlywas able to borrow a 1600 page book, "The Jewish Communal Register
of New York City, 1917-1918" that covers almost every aspect of Jewish life of
that time in New York.  An article by David Pinski on the Jewish theater is
too long to quote in full (5 1/2 pages), but I'll try to summarize it
accurately.  Pinski praises Goldfaden's work in Russia, but notes that the
Yioddish theater there didn't last long because the government shut it down.
Goldfaden's plays became the mainstay of the Yiddish theater in New York, "But
the new environment soon began to make inroads upon the old life and the old
habits, and this period of transition wrought havoc in the morale of the
Yiddish theater.  Both outlook and content became demorilized."  Tastes
changed.

Pinski continued, "The art of acting has made no progress simply because the
actors are afraid to venture farther.  They are afraid to move forward, and do
not realize that they are really moving backward."

An appendix to this article lists 8 Yiddish theaters in Manhattan and
Brooklyn, along with the producers, writers, and actors (sometimes all the
same people) in them.  Some of the greats of later times on 2nd Avenue are
mentioned, such as the Adlers (the family was represented in 4 of the
theaters).  Their introduction of a new mode of acting came later, and it
changed both the 2nd Avenue theater and the Broadway stage.

Tastes change, but Jewish theater survives on Broadway.  "The Last Night of
Ballyhoo", now playing on Broadway, is by the author of "Driving Miss Daisy".
It is more Jewish than the earlier play, and I wonder how much non-Jews who
see it understand.  New York City now has several gourmet restaurants to serve
Jews who observe Kashruth but won't eat the heavy traditional dishes.  (It is
hard to find those dishes in Israell, where restaurants that serve Middle
Eastern food far outnumber those that serve East European food.)

(Incidentally, another article describes the sad conditions under which
Cantors tried to make a living at that time.  The shuls made their lives
miserable by squeezing them financially.)

> From: svzandt (at) igc(dot)apc(dot)org (Solidarity Foundation)
> Sender:       owner-jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
> Reply-to:     jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
> To:   jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org (World music from a Jewish slant.)
> If there's one Yiddish phrase everyone on this list should unederstand,
> it's this: der yidisher tam (the Jewish taste). It means a really old-
> fashioned Jewish aesthetic, and it applies first of all to food -- but
> also to music or literature. So people say, "Es hot a yidishn tam"
> (it has a Jewish "taste"), or "Es hot nish' ka' yidishn tam" (it doesn't
> have a Jewish taste). In connection with this, and with what I wrote in
> the previous message on "how does tradition live?" -- I wanted to
> quote a passage from Sol Liptzin's _Eliakum Zunser_ (New York, 1950), 
> p.191:
> 
> "Abraham Goldfaden [the father of Yiddish theater - I-L], who experimented
> with many musical forms in his operettas, complained that all his efforts
> to graft classical melodies of European composers upon the Yiddish words of
> his musical dramas ended in failure. Somehow his audiences remained
> indifferent to these alien compositions. No matter how beautiful these
>  melodies
> might seem to musical connoisseurs and no matter how singable, they did
> lack certain familiar Jewish qualities. These qualities were not easy to
> define, but his audiences sensed the strangeness, the incongruity, and
> reacted coolly. Thereupon Goldfaden decided to try the kind of folk tunes
> with which Zunser, Zbarzher, and their followers [i.e. badkhonim -I-L]
> had aroused audiences to a high pitch of enthusiasm. Immediately he met
> with a warmer response. This taught him a lesson that Zunser had learned
> before him -- that, whether a melody be simple or sublime, it had, above
> all, to be perfectly in harmony with its words and the ideas they expressed,
> if it were to exercise a magnetic influence upon the emotions of a people.
> Yiddish words and characteristic Jewish moods could not normally be
> happily wedded to German or French operatic airs. They rather craved
> embodiment in chants and tunes stemming from the synagogue and from Jewish
> historic experiences. A Jewish Nigun (melody) had a charm and a sadness 
> of its own. {or a happiness - I-L]
> 
> A gitn shabbes,
> Itzik-Leyb
> 
> 
> 
>