Ruth Rubin's Obit

[MaxwellSt <MaxwellSt...>]

Ruth Rubin

NEW YORK (AP) - Ruth Rubin, a scholar, collector and performer of Yiddish 
folk songs, died Sunday in Mamaroneck, N.Y. She was 93.

One of the first women to become a prominent folklorist, Rubin was also among 
the first American scholars to document the culture of Eastern European Jews. 
Her collection of about 2,000 recorded songs was a cornerstone of the Yiddish 
revival movement in the 1970s.

Rubin's books included ``A Treasury of Jewish Folksong'' (1950) and ``Voices 
of a People: The Story of Yiddish Folksong'' (1963). Her studio recordings of 
the songs for Folkways in the 1940s are available through the Smithsonian 
Institution.

In the mid-1930s Rubin began concentrating seriously on folklore, going on to 
study with Max Weinreich and, during World War II, translating diaries 
smuggled out of ghettos and Nazi camps.

With the revelation of the extent of the Holocaust, and its sweeping 
destruction of Yiddish culture, Rubin became determined to preserve a piece 
of what remained by making field recordings

Dragging a bulky reel-to-reel tape recorder from house to house in cities in 
Canada and the United States, she captured well- and lesser-known songs that 
flourished in more intimate, domestic settings, like the kitchen or over the 
cradle.

Unlike klezmer music, which was performed primarily by men at public 
occasions, the songs Rubin recorded were sung almost exclusively by women, a 
group largely ignored by the cultural chroniclers of her day.

AP-NY-06-17-00 0550EDT

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