A Yiddish revival

After 40 years of running away from overly energetic fans, singer and actor Sassi Keshet has moved backstage to manage the Yiddish Theater.

By YAAKOV BAR-ON
Sassi Keshet Yidish Theater director 370 370 (photo credit: Asaf Kliger)
Sassi Keshet Yidish Theater director 370 370
(photo credit: Asaf Kliger)
Night after night, Yiddishpiel puts on shows in and around Tel Aviv. Sassi Keshet, who was appointed executive and artistic director a year and a half ago, is in the habit of personally greeting and mingling with people who’ve come to see the show.
Anyone who believes that Keshet does this just to promote himself or from a desire to be seen in public, simply does not know the man. Forty years ago, I saw with my own eyes how he fled from fans, most of whom were young women ready to pounce on him. “As a chronically shy person, I have had to work on myself to connect with the public,” Keshet says.
“I would shy away from the tumultuous crowd,” Keshet affirms. “I suffered terribly from harassment in those years. It was really awful. They would grab at me all over my body, tear my clothes at the end of a show, pinch me and even kiss me – including boys!” “It was actually almost scary,” Keshet remembers.
“Meir, my driver, loved the craziness. He would physically block the girls with his body. It just got to be too much. One time, they snuck me out dressed as a police officer. Another time, I had to climb a huge ladder on the stage in order to get to a safe place until things quieted down. Once, I even left in an ambulance.”
Keshet, 65, who never dreamed that one day he would be the manager of any organization, could not have predicted that one day he would be an executive director.
“When the Yiddishpiel founder and former director, Shmulik Atzmon-Wircer, called me nine years ago and asked if I would play The Cantor of Vilna, I took one look at the shape the theater company was in and thought to myself, ‘Who would be crazy enough to take charge when Shmulik resigns?’” Keshet remembers. “Not for one second did I ever think I would be that crazy person.
Later on, when they recruited me, it came from out of the blue and I deliberated for quite some time before making up my mind. It was clear to me that I would have to put my career on hold.”
What tipped the scales for Keshet? “I only agreed to do it after discussing it with my family, who all encouraged me to take on this new challenge.
It also fit in well in my family’s history. I was born at a time when Israelis were trying to shake off their old identities and become the new Israeli, who was courageous and heroic. In short – the ultimate Sabra.
“My generation was embarrassed by people who came from ‘back there’ and wore strange clothes and talked like people from the Diaspora. We all tried to hide our previous identities so that they wouldn’t, heaven forbid, ruin the atmosphere of the brand-new Israel. And it wasn’t only because we were trying to hide the fact that we spoke Yiddish – a police directive forbade us from performing in Yiddish. When I agreed to become the new director, it felt like I was repaying a moral debt owed my entire generation. Maybe it was my way of righting a wrong that was done us. I took this mission upon myself knowing that I would pay a high price for it.”
And is he? “Oh boy, am I! Granted, according to the board I’m allowed to appear here and there in my shows, but I’m not allowed to take part in musicals – which I love more than anything – or movies. Just recently, I had to turn down a 50-episode TV series, part of which was going to be filmed in New York. These days, I arrive at the office at 8:45 a.m. on the dot, and in the evenings I attend the shows.”
But he doesn’t open with short stand-up acts like his predecessor Atzmon-Wircer used to.
“I have to draw the line somewhere. From the beginning, I made it clear that with all due respect to Shmulik, I have my own style. It’s enough for me to converse with the audience before and after the shows. Their warmth melts my natural timidity.”
Most members of the audience, which is mostly made up of retirees, come to shake Keshet’s hand after every show. Sometimes they ask in a small voice, “Nu, when will ‘The Director’ be appearing on the Yiddishpiel stage again?” Keshet smiles at them, and replies that for now he is busy investing all of his energy and attention in running the theater. “Maybe in the future I will get back to the stage.,” he says.
“When I walk down the street, I do my best not to be recognized, and when I enter a movie hall, I walk with my head down,” Keshet told me in a 1971 interview. “I want to be free. Yiddishpiel has a management board that dictates what I’m allowed to do.”
But even within the limitations, Keshet has brought a new spirit to the Yiddish Theater, which has led to the creation of a new show, Kishke Monologues, dedicated to the wonders of Eastern European Jewish cuisine. Yoni Eilat wrote the script and directed the show, most of whose actors are from the younger generation.
“I love giving the young actors a chance to prove themselves,” Keshet says. “Nothing is taken for granted.
It took courage and foresight to let him direct his first show. It’s important to note that I didn’t take on this role in order to revolutionize it. I am interested in preserving the theater and continuing the fantastic work Shmulik Atzmon-Wircer has done.”
KESHET IS working under complicated circumstances. In contrast with many other cultural institutions, his theater has succeeded in becoming debt-free. “We are operating under the watchful eye of the executive committee, which makes sure that we don’t crash and burn. I am fearful of upcoming cuts. Everyone will suffer, and we probably will too. People need to eat, so when they make budget cuts, culture is usually the first sector to go under the budget hatchet.”
The Yiddishpiel office is located in an old residential building next to the old Tel Aviv Municipality. The rehearsal hall is in an adjacent building with broken steps that is practically falling apart. The theater does not offer subscriptions and often performs in the ZOA building.
“I fear that so long as the current mayor is in charge, we might soon be homeless,” Keshet says.
“As much as I am grateful for my friendship with Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, he’s no Cheech. [Former Tel Aviv mayor Shlomo “Cheech” Lahat founded the Yiddishpiel with Atzmon-Wircer.] Huldai believes that the state – not the city of Tel Aviv – should support the theater. And there is a certain amount of truth to what he’s saying. I think it is reasonable to expect the state to turn the Yiddishpiel into the national Yiddish language theater, so that we can have a theater just like others do.
On the other hand, that doesn’t absolve the Tel Aviv Municipality of its responsibilities, since most of our audience lives in Tel Aviv.”
Keshet is making an effort to invigorate Yiddishspiel’s repertoire in order to attract new theatergoers. Kishke Monologues, for example, is a Hebrew musical with songs in Yiddish. For the first time, the theater is dealing with a play written by Hanoch Levin, who “wrote in Hebrew, but thought in Yiddish.” The comedy Salomon Grip, one of Levin’s early works, is also being shown as a gesture to the theater’s non-traditional audience. “It’s important that I retain a good relationship with our screenwriters,” Keshet says. “We are also planning on showing Sholem Aleichem’s Wandering Stars.”
Rehearsals for Chabad Songs, starring Kobi Arieli, are currently winding down. For the first time ever, Dani Shteg and Amnon Fisher will appear alongside Arieli.
Keshet is sparing no effort in bringing on stars who’ve never appeared at Yiddishpiel before, some for “historical” reasons. In this way, Mike Burstyn returned to his natural place when he starred in Hershel of Ostropol. In his wake, Lea Koenig starred in the Warsaw Tourist Guide at Yiddishpiel. And Hillel Mittelpunkt followed Hanoch Levin.
And that’s not all. Twenty years after Orna Porat surprised everyone when she was cast as Yiddishspiel’s Mirale Efrat, she will once again perform in Yaakov Gordin and Yona Elian-Keshet’s modern version of the play. As the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who grew up in a Yiddish environment, Elian-Keshet’s involvement should be no surprise.
THE KESHETS will be celebrating their 40th anniversary this year. Their relationship in the early years was well known in Israeli theatrical mythology. In 1972, when Keshet was performing in London, the late George Ovadia decided to take advantage of this and brought a team to London to begin filming the movie Nurit. It was then that Keshet had his first glimpse of the woman who would be performing opposite him. At the time, he was in a serious relationship with a college student in Tel Aviv named Ronit, but he was very impressed with the film.
When Keshet returned home, the first scene they filmed was a romantic one. Keshet and his wife-to-be got to know each other for the very first time in bed, in front of the entire film crew. But neither of them was in any hurry to leave the bed when the director called, “Cut!” Since that day, they have lived happily ever after, Keshet adds with a smile.
Several months after that first romantic scene, they stood together under the huppa as loads of artists looked on in the Pan American hotel in Bat Yam, which was nice enough to pick up the bill. “It was a remarkable event. It was the first time that the marriage of two famous actors was being reported on the news,” Keshet says.
The Keshets are considered an especially stable couple.
Of all the marriages between movie stars, theirs is the only one that has remained intact. Yigal Bashan is still married to Mika, but she is not an actress. “Rabbi Frenkel, who officiated our wedding, would ask about us, ‘Is that bohemian couple still together?’” Keshet reminisces.
How is that they have managed to stick it out despite the turbulence of the theater world? It’s enough to hear one of their short but sweet phone calls while Keshet is on his way to the theater from their home in Ramat Aviv, to understand how they have lovingly preserved their relationship.
“Every day people ask us what our secret is,” Keshet says. “And our answer is that we don’t take each other for granted. Our friendship is more important than everything else. Yona is my best friend and I hope that I am hers. That’s the way to survive all the ups and downs that come our way. A couple is like a bonfire; you need to constantly add more pieces of wood to keep it burning.”
In addition to issues surrounding their love, there were always economic constraints that the couple had to deal with. In the 1970s, they owned two boutique stores in Tel Aviv. “We always knew how to integrate our career with business, so we weren’t fully dependent on art,” Keshet says, adding that he also ran a parking garage and had other businesses overseas. “Acting was not the most important part of my life. If I had to choose between acting and family, I would give up the theater in a second. The ‘art of life’ is much more important than acting and singing.”
Elay Goralitzky, one of Keshet’s partners, is famous not only for his roles as King Solomon and the eternal cobbler, but also for his successful business acumen. In 1979, Keshet, Goralitzky and Shlomo Artzi founded the Israel Union of Performing Arts, in an effort to protect wages for artists. Artzi left soon thereafter and Goralitzky took over the leadership of the organization. Until he decided to lead Yiddishpiel, Keshet “had never wanted to lead any organization.”
THE ENTIRE Keshet family is connected to the stage.
Their son, Ariel, is a musician, who after studying in Paris, came back to Israel and is now his father’s musical producer. Ariel produced Open the Gate for Us, an album of prayers and poems. He is now off to Los Angeles with his wife, rock singer Gal De Paz, to assist her with her upcoming English-language album. The Keshets’ daughter, May, is studying at the Nissan Nativ Acting Studio.
“It’s hard for them to live in their parents’ shadows,” Keshet says. “The kids did everything possible not to be known as the ‘children of.’ When May was applying to the IDF Nahal troupe, she went so far as to use the last name I was born with – Kosovski. Both of them are artists in their own right. And they know the pros and cons of the industry.”
Apropos of the name Kosovski, in 1971, while covering a story about Keshet, who was an up-and-coming music star, I found myself at Kibbutz Glil Yam, near Herzliya, where I interviewed his parents. On the grass next to their modest apartment, Chaya and Michael Kosovski opened our session by telling me that “Polish Nobleman” – the nickname that director Nomi Polani had given him when he was in the Nahal troupe, since he was such a gentleman – was a misnomer, since they were really from Belarus.
The Kosovski couple sang in the kibbutz choir and would listen to cantorial music on their old gramophone.
They were very proud of their son and were not surprised at all that on days when his songs were playing on the radio in the cowshed, the cows’ milk output would skyrocket. Later on, after he had completed his army service, Keshet asked the kibbutz for permission to go to the city to develop his career. He was given the go ahead – but only after working in the cowshed for two years. “Sassi was a real star on the kibbutz,” Michael says.
Keshet knew that no one can become a star overnight.
“I was not a child prodigy,” he says. “I would perform at the kibbutz on holidays and do Charlie Chaplin impressions while working in the orchards. I was not a star when I was in the IDF troupe, nor when I was in the Dizengoff troupe after that. And my first album, which comprised four songs, did not sell well.”
FROM THE moment producer Shlomo Tzach took him under his wing, the tides changed for Sasson Kosovski – who became Sassi Keshet. Others who underwent similar experiences got carried away in the whirlwind and crashed. Keshet, on the other hand, survived the period when he was worshiped like an idol, and went on to have a successful career and then surprised everyone – even himself – when he took on the management of Yiddishpiel.
Keshet was welcomed as a manager “with style” who says that he’s not the type “to bang on tables until he gets his way.” He steers clear of “the violent culture that has taken over our country, in which everyone thinks he’s the center of the universe.” Keshet also shies away from gossip columns, and prefers not to watch reality shows. It’s important for him to keep in shape, which he does mostly through walking.
When I asked him if as the manager of a Jewish- Yiddish theater, whether he has anything to krechtz (complain) about, he says, “Not about myself. I have criticism about the way things happen in Israel and how Holocaust survivors, the elderly and the disadvantaged are treated unjustly. But at the end of the day, we have a wonderful country made up of people who I am proud to say are a part of my nation.”
And if the “people” request that Keshet return to the stage, will he indulge them? “They will just have to wait patiently. I have not finished my work yet. There are a number of musicals that I would love to participate in, but for now I am giving my all to Yiddishpiel.”
So what do we have to look forward to? Natan Datner, who left a successful career on stage to manage the Beersheba Theater, set a precedent. In his six years with the theater, Datner managed to make a name for it, and then went back to his acting career with great vigor, when he played the iconic Tevye the Milkman in Fiddler on the Roof.
“Being an artistic director was a fascinating challenge for me,” Datner says. “But it was quite difficult to balance the economic constraints with the artistic needs, which Sassi is contending with now. Unfortunately, the economic side usually wins out.”
Does he have any pearls of wisdom to offer Keshet? “Trust your instincts, but remain open to criticism.”
The last word was reserved for Atzmon-Wircer, Keshet’s predecessor. “When I turned 80, I told Ron Huldai that Yiddishpiel needs a home,” Atzmon-Wircer says. “He told me that Yiddishpiel is Shmulik Atzmon- Wircer and when I’m gone, nothing will remain. ‘It’s not worth it to invest in a building that would be used for only 10 or 15 years.’ When he said this, a red light went off in my head. I knew that in order for Yiddishpiel to remain alive, we would need to find a new manager to replace me – someone younger who would take hold of the torch and run away with it at full speed. So we chose Sassi, who so far has proven us right.”
“It’s not always easy to pass the torch from one leader to another,” Atzmon-Wircer concludes. “In this case, the transition has been smooth for the actors as well as for our audience. I am optimistic that our choice will prove to have been a good one.
“I will do everything in my power to make Sassi believe that he is a better Yiddishpiel manager than I ever was.”
Translated by Hannah Hochner.