Music and the mamaloshen

The first International Yiddish Festival is the latest addition to the thriving Yiddish scene.

By BARRY DAVIS
Bente Kahan (photo credit: Courtesy)
Bente Kahan
(photo credit: Courtesy)
While Yiddish may be considered something of a cloistered domain, both in terms of the culture and as a living spoken language, there is a relatively thriving Yiddish scene in this country. Only last month, the 17th annual Yiddish Festival took place at the Dead Sea, and the Yiddishpiel theater company has been doing good business for nigh on 30 years.
But there has never been an international Yiddish festival here based almost exclusively on music. That will be set to rights from April 4 to 6, when the Suzanne Dellal Center in Tel Aviv hosts the first International Yiddish Festival.
The lineup includes acclaimed performers from Poland, Norway and Sweden, as well as some of our own leading artists in the field, and there will be a dance show and some extramural activity over the three days.
Bente Kahan has been doing her utmost to keep the Yiddish music and folklore flag flying high across the globe for over three decades, also preserving and disseminating Jewish history and culture in her adopted country. The 56-year-old, Warsaw-based, Norway-born singer, guitarist and storyteller will bring her cozily named Home show to our shores on April 5, when she performs alongside Polish accordionist Dariusz Swinoga. The 9 p.m. concert will be preceded by a 5 p.m. presentation about the restoration of the White Stork Synagogue in Wroclaw, Poland, which was completed in 2010.
The latter project was spearheaded by a foundation created by Kahan, and houses the Center for Jewish Education and Culture. “It also operates as a synagogue on the High Holy Days and whenever necessary, but the center does an important job in telling people about the long history of the Jews there,” she explains.
I caught up with Kahan on the day her uncle celebrated his 90th birthday. Alongside Kahan’s mother and grandparents, he survived World War II in Sweden; her father’s side hails from Sighet, Romania, the birthplace of Elie Wiesel, where her father’s family lived for 300 years. For Kahan, her forthcoming visit here will be something of a homecoming for her.
“I started out in an Israeli theater,” she says. “I worked at Habimah and performed in Tmol Shilshom [based on the book of the same name by S.Y. Agnon], and I also worked in experimental theater with Kvutzat Hateatron, and performed in a piece by Amos Oz and one by Hanoch Levin.” That was in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“I left Israel in 1982,” Kahan continues. “I was studying theater at Tel Aviv University with people like Nola Chilton, but I didn’t feel I was getting enough practical experience in it, so I went to New York and finished musical theater acting school there.”
Although she was happy enough in the Big Apple, Kahan was lured back to the Jewish state when actor-director Oded Kotler asked her to resume her experimental theatrical work. “I had a green card in the US, and I left everything and went back to Israel,” she recalls. “People thought I was a crazy, but I was a Zionist and always thought Israel would be my home.”
But Yiddish had permeated Kahan’s consciousness from a very early age, and was an ever-present element in her personal and professional development. “I remember Hanoch Levin asking me why I was doing Yiddish stuff – there was a Norwegian Jewish director who started doing Jewish cabaret in Norway and I got involved with that – even though he was a Polish Jew himself,” she recounts. “But I had grown up with Yiddish. It was the language my parents used when they didn’t want me to understand what they were saying, and my father sang Yiddish.
Kahan’s first performance in Yiddish was in 1983, and she has since branched out into other languages as vehicles for imparting the richness and importance of Yiddish culture. “I have done stuff in Norwegian, English, Polish, German and others; I have learned different languages through my work,” she notes, adding that while she is keen on spreading the word about Yiddish, if your audience does not understand what the performers are saying, you are not going to do too well with conveying the storyline.
For Kahan, Yiddish is something closer to home than just a language and culture that bonded Jews across Europe. “The program I am bringing to the festival in Tel Aviv is actually about my own family, traveling through Europe since the 13th century,” she explains. “Most of the songs are in Yiddish. This is about my own Yiddish soul, but the story goes through lots of countries. The Jews, of course, went through different cultures.” Home, about the Kahan family, is basically the story of European Jewry.
Home began life in 2000, when the city of Bergen in Norway was one of the European Capitals of Culture for the year. “I thought that my family’s story was really a European story,” she notes. Luckily, Kahan was able to get her hands on a valuable source of research information, in the form of her family tree dating back to the 13th century. The document had been preserved in Switzerland and, at some stage, Kahan’s father got wind of it.
Through the family tree, Kahan was able to trace the migratory transitions of her antecedents, and Home duly incorporates material in Ladino, Yiddish, Lithuanian, Norwegian and other languages. “It is amazing how Jews from different countries could communicate, through Yiddish and Ladino,” says Kahan. “That is a very important part of our culture.”
Kahan says that the authorities around Europe are helping to sustain Yiddish culture and history, and in fact, the White Stork Synagogue restoration project was largely funded through European Economic Association grants from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. There is also widespread street-level interest. “Poles are becoming aware of Jewish culture being an integral part of Polish history and culture, and I think young people are interested in that,” asserts Kahan. “That is very encouraging.”
Elsewhere in the International Yiddish Festival lineup there is an intriguing cross-generational slot featuring mother-and-daughter singers Lanna Sokolov and Faustina Abed, who will perform their “Yiddish Songs from the Shtetl, from Home to New York” show, as a tribute to their father and grandfather, Matvei “Motel” Fivnevitch, who was an actor and singer in the Kiev Yiddish Theater.
Other festival highlights include vocalist Ora Singer’s recital of works by iconic Yiddish poet-playwright Itzik Manger, including Hebrew versions set to music by Sasha Argov; and the entertaining “Loving in Yiddish” proffering from Dori Angel and Miri Ragendorfer, which incorporates perennial Yiddish musical favorites interspersed with comedic skits.
The younger generation of Yiddish purveyors is covered at the festival, with a show by cantor Svetlana Kundish; and a spot featuring singer and storyteller Mendi Kahan, who founded and runs the YUNG YiDiSH center in Tel Aviv.
The three-day program also features a performance of American-born choreographer Barak Marshall’s Wonderland, while Yaad Biran will take some of the festival patrons on a Yiddish-themed walkabout, with a guided tour in Yiddish-seasoned Hebrew of the Neveh Tzedek neighborhood.
For more information: (03) 510-5656 and www.suzannedellal.org.il