Resurrecting Yiddish Radio
BELASCO, DANIEL
Resurrecting Yiddish Radio DANIEL BELASCO A mirror of an immigrant community's passions, hopes, and anxieties, mamaloshen once permeated the airwaves. Now it's coming back WHEN...
...Where else would you hear announcers thank the B. Manischewitz Company, the "world's largest matzah bakers," before presenting Yiddish Melodies in Swing...
...One segment, for example, revives the obsessive, eccentric, Nahum Stutchkoff (voiced by Eli Wallach and narrated by Stutchkoff's son, Misha...
...His book Klezmer...
...One episode is devoted entirely to C. Israel Lutsky's madcap, overwrought Der Yiddishe Filosof (The Jewish Philosopher), which ran for three decades beginning in the 1930s...
...PEOPLE INVOLVED IN Yiddish radio are these hidden geniuses who've never been celebrated before, and we're out to resurrect their names and what they've done," says Isay, 36, a MacArthur "genius" award winner, whose independent production company, Sound Portraits, is producing the series...
...No one took notice," says Sapoznik who added that Irving Howe never even mentioned radio in his encyclopedic The World of Our Fathers, the well-known tome about Jewish immigrant life in America...
...The 10-episode documentary features songs, skits, and old commercials for everything from matzah to Carnation Milk...
...Little did he know how historic his find would be...
...Radio was ubiquitous at that time, but we have no idea how many people listened...
...Ethnic programming appealed to new immigrants and Yiddish speakers, though their kids usually preferred The Lone Ranger and Flash Gordon...
...We're in the unique position to study a culture," he says...
...It's paid off...
...Jews wanted vibrant, visceral themes they could relate to," he says...
...Sapoznik hopes the documentary will resurrect an era of Yiddish radio long gone, repackaged for a new generation of English speakers...
...In that show, believed to be the first radio advice feature, Lutsky ranted and raved at listeners' letters, and he never failed to pitch his sponsors...
...As Isay puts it, listening to the Yiddish programming is "like eavesdropping on another world...
...It's that "scrappy, not-high-tech...
...That is why Sapoznik is working to "re-educate the Jewish community in the Yiddish arts...
...One look at tides such as The Molly Picon Maxwell House Program and Sapoznik realized he had stumbled upon a trove of extremely rare, and fragile, live transcriptions (discs used for archival purposes before the era of tape) of old-time Yiddish radio shows—the soap operas, talk shows, and music revues that captivated Jewish audiences nationwide from the 1920s through the 1960s...
...And, as with the material itself, the episodes are all eclectic...
...In the quest for assimilation, Jews were eager to try the products he pitched, and advertisers flocked to the Yiddish radio medium...
...More than 30 stations in New York City alone, and many more in cities like Boston, Chicago, and even Sioux City, Iowa, broadcast Yiddish fare...
...A mirror of an immigrant community's passions, hopes, and anxieties, Yiddish radio was once a mainstay in urban Jewish households, especially in the 1930s—the heyday for radio in America...
...There may not be another chance to analyze it because the materials are disintegrating...
...and [with] a lot of soul" feel that the NPR series aims to preserve, according to Isay...
...In the documentary, Carl Reiner will play the frantic host...
...Sapoznik says the resurrection comes at a pivotal time...
...As the former music librarian at the YTVO Institute for Jewish Research, and cofounder and director of Living Traditions, a Yiddish folk arts organization headquartered in New York's chic meatpacking district, Sapoznik is a professional revivalist and folk historian...
...Now it's coming back WHEN ETHNOMUSICOLOgist Henry Sapoznik heard that a beloved New York radio talk show personality was moving out of his famously over-stuffed office, he rushed over—determined to save history before it landed in the dumpster...
...And with the upcoming "Yiddish Radio Project"—a radio documentary produced by Sapoznik and David Isay that will air on National Public Radio's All Things Considered beginning March 19—much of that material will finally be coming to light...
...They included everything from low-budget talk shows to allstar entertainment shows with musical comedy stars, cantors, tragedians, live orchestras, and studio audiences...
...With these tapes you have a record of a culture in renaissance unlike any other record that exists...
...Since then, Sapoznik, 48, has rummaged through attics and combed flea markets in search of similar forgotten Yiddish radio shows...
...And with only a smattering of Jewish radio programs around the country in existence— some are English talk shows, while others play a mish-mosh of klezmer, liturgical, and Sephardic music— Yiddish radio is already a remnant...
...And for all of that, he paid about $40, which was what he had in his pocket at the rime...
...Sound Portraits also plans to release "The Yiddish Radio Project" on two CDs, with a separate soundtrack of Jewish music, in June 2002...
...Resurrecting Yiddish Radio DANIEL BELASCO A mirror of an immigrant community's passions, hopes, and anxieties, mamaloshen once permeated the airwaves...
...No record remains of his famous show, Tzores hei Leiten ("Trouble Increases"), which ran for 20 years on WEVD in New York, so the segment features material from his drama, Bei Tate Memes Tish ("Around the Family Table")— stories about immigrants adapting to life in New York City, including the reuniting of Holocaust survivors...
...Hidden below stacks of publicity photos, broken 78s, and a pile of old movie fanzines, were more than 200 16-inch aluminum and glass records...
...That was 16 years ago...
...To this end, Sound Portraits has preserved and restored Sapoznik's collection, and is in negotiation to find a public research institution to house the discs...
...Jewish Music from Old World to Our World (Schirmer) included a few anecdotes about the glory days of Yiddish radio, but he says a complete history remains to be written...
...He has amassed the largest (and only) collection of Yiddish radio in the world—more than 500 hours of material...
...Sapoznik says Yiddish radio helped bridge the old country and the new...
...Because few of today's listeners are fluent in the mamaloshen (literally, mother's tongue), the original Yiddish runs for a few seconds and then is followed by English translations performed by veteran actors such as Eli Wallach and Anne Meara...
Vol. 27 • February 2002 • No. 1
