October 30th, 2020. Shabbat is almost here
And our star today is Yossele Rosenblatt, cantor born in Ukraine in 1882 and settled in the USA from 1912, where he achieved great success and even participated in the film that would begin the definitive decline of silent films.
Hello! How are you? I hope well! I have many things to share today. This edition follows the thread of the one about the Great Synagogue at Tłomackie Street (the one of 4th of September, find it here). Over there I mentioned that the singer in the animation video was Yossele Rosenblatt and that I would feature him in a future. That future is today. Learn about him and his fascinating life, here below.
And yesterday I learn about the radio show Polin, done by the renowed Polish translator settled in Madrid Elżbieta Bortkiewicz Morawska (in the picture) for Radio Sefarad, a project by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain. It is in Spanish. I think it can be interesting even for the not Spanish speakers because you can check the topics and translate automatically the introductions in text for each of the chapters. She dedicated one of her editions to the Great Synagogue at Tłomackie Street too!
The song we’ll listen today is “A Yiddishe Mame”. Elżbieta is not Yiddishe, but she is a mother as well as an enthusiast of Jewish culture. So I think she will feel specially moved by this recording. I hope you too.
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Yossele Rosenblatt, a story of success and commitment to one’s beliefs and values
How much money would $100,000 from 1927 be now? That is the amount of money that Rosenblatt was offered by Warner Brothers to co-star with Al Jolson in ‘The Jazz Singer’.
They wanted him to have a relevant role as and to sing in the film Kol Nidrei. It is the prayer that is sang on the eve of Yom Kippur. He felt that it was much too sacred to be used as entertainment and refused the offer.
Nevertheless, he participated in the film, with the payment for a star, even when he only appeared to sing one song. And it was in a not religious frame. The protagonist is in the dilemma of continuing his father’s steps as a chazzan or pursuing stardom in jazz. He attends Rosenblatt’s concert in Chicago. He sings a Yiddish song, not religious, Yahrtzeit Licht, acredited to himself in Jyrics.com. Rosenblatt represents the roots.
Curious about that scene of the film?
Watch it here. If you like it, check also this other recording of the same piece.
In the film, the protagonist, who is the son of a cantor, pursues a career as a jazz singer. Rosenblatt encarnates the roots, the traditions. The attendance to that concert produces many emotions in the protagonist. Could he be making a big mistake by abandoning his roots and following the path of modernity? Rosenblatt might had said yes to that question.
Was Rosenblatt’s Kol Nidrei worth of it?
For sure it was. He was very popular at the time and Warner Brothers were wise business people. And fortunately we can now hear him singing that prayer, here. Decide yourself!
In Jews, Cinema and Public Life in Interwar Britain, Gil Toffell explains that “Yet whatever actual Jewish audiences made of the representation of the conflict of assimilation that formed the core of the film, the complexity of the drama was not foregrounded in the discourse or events promoting the title to British Jews. In the advertisements for the screening of the film at the Piccadilly Theatre the performance by Rosenblatt was advanced as a key attraction for Jewish audiences. 
No mention was made to the challenge to tradition by modernity, rather the promotion was positioned to appeal to identifiably conservative Jewish cultural tastes.” How was that…? Money makes the world go round? Even if not for Rosenblatt!
The multiple layers of The Jazz Singer
The more I read about this film, the more meaningful it seems to be. Irv Saposnik made an amazing work in Jolson, The Jazz Singer, and the Jewish Mother: or How my Yiddishe Momme Became my Mammy, that I have to recommend with all my heart. Why? Because it uses the film to explain broader issues related to the creation of cultural identities. This analysis is useful for Jews and for anybody.
Saposnik explains the role of music, including the piece sang by Rosenblatt, in the film, with their symbolic use related to the roots and the modernity. He explains very nicely about the song we are listening to today. Below you’ll find more about this.
Briefly about his biography
As the star he was, it is easy to find the biography of Yossele Rosenblatt. For a long one, check this or this. For a shorter one, this. But this part will let us enjoy some wonderful pictures and to travel from our chair!
He was born in 1882 in Biela Tserkov. At that time, it seems there was a shtetl there. Nowadays is a little city, less than 90 kms to the South from Kiev. The presence of Jews is still noticeable. There is the great synagogue, used nowadays as a school, and there seem to be more buildings that have had use as synagogues. They are findable in google maps.
The great synagogue in Biela Tserkov looked like this. This picture is dated from some moment between 1895 and 1910. It is in wikipedia and is of public domain. See below its current look:
And this is nowadays, from the street view of google maps. It took me some time to accept that it is the same building. It is. You can learn more about the building, at The Bezalel Narkiss Index of Jewish Art.
Very brieftly: Yossele came for a long line of chazzanim. His father was a cantor in Kiev and Yossele became part of his choir. He worked as a cantor in Munkacs (part of Hungary until 1920, currently Ukraine), Pressburg (currently, Bratislava) and Hamburg, from where he tried to escape to the USA without completing his contract of 5 years. He was caught. He would arrive to the USA only in 1912. He was hired inmediately as a cantor in New York and started to record for several record companies. This increased his popularity much. He was offered to be a opera singer but he rejected in order not to abandon the Jewish way of life. He composed many pieces too.
He died in 1933 in Palestine. He was there recording for a film. There, he and his wife had decided to settled definitively over there. One Shabbat, after was recording by the Dead Sea, he had a heart-attack and died at his 51 years old. His funeral was attended by more than 5.000 people (other sources say 20.000). He was buried at the Mount of Olives and his remains continue there.
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Listen to Rossenblat’s rendition of the much popular Yiddish song A Yiddishe Mame
I will quote some paragraphs of the outstanding work by Irv Saposnik mentioned above (read it complete, here), as I wouldn’t ever transmit this deepness about the piece. The other piece mentioned, A Brivele der Mamen, “a little letter for mom”, is this. Find the lyrics of “My Yiddishe Mamma” under the video.
“A Brivele der Mamen” (1907) is only one of many Yiddish songs in which the Jewish mother was used as a reminder of the separation that emigration enforced. Its three stanzas, sung to a plaintive tune, foreshadow what was later to become commingled with nostalgia for the old home. The sadness of separation, the son’s lack of responsibility, the mother’s complaint that in eight years he hadn’t written her one letter, much of which later became comic shtick, was in 1907 no matter for laughter. The experience was too fresh, the pain too acute. Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but the head forgets too soon. […]
“My Yiddishe Mamma” is as expressive of twenties’ sentiment as “A Brivele der Mamen” had been of turn-of-the-century attitudes. Written by Jack Yellen and Lew Pollack in 1925, it became particularly identified with Sophie Tucker, especially after she recorded it in both English and Yiddish versions on two sides of a single record. Two languages for a mixed generation. Side by side, Yiddish and English establish a balance between old and new, between parents and children, between past and future. Parents and children are in transit, and the Yiddishe Momme, while no longer abandoned, is put in her place.
Or perhaps, more accurately places, for the Yiddish and English versions offer different mothers for different audiences. The English Yiddishe Momme is placed in “a humble East Side tenement,” and the singer reaches across “the trails of Time” to recollect the “three flights up in the rear … where my childhood days were spent.” Separation has set in; the singer has grown up, and grown away. The past is remembered with affection, but it remains irretrievable. The Jewish mother, like the old shtetl, lies buried in time.
“My Yiddishe Momme” in Yiddish seems to be a different song. Past and present are intermingled. While the Jewish mother has grown old along with her surroundings, she is still an active presence, still capable of nurturing the world around her. She belongs in her world, and in ours.”
Click the picture to listen to the recording:
| Ikh vil bay aykh a kashe fregen, zogt mir ver es ken Mit velkhe tayere farmegen bentcht got alemen? Men koyft dos nisht fir kayne gelt, dos git men nor umzist Oon dokh az men ferlirt dos, oy vi treren men fargist A Tzvayten git men kaynem nit, es helft nisht kayn gevayn Oy, ver es hot farloyrn, der vays shoyn vos ikh mayn. A Yiddishe Mame, Es gibt nisht besser oif der velt Oy vey vi bitter ven zi felt Vi shayn in likhtig iz in hoiz ven di mame iz do Vi troyerig finster vert ven Got nemt ir oif Olam Haboh In vasser in fayer volt zi gelofn far ihr kind nisht halten ihr tayer, dos iz gevis di gresten zind Oy, vi gliklekh un raykh iz der mentsh vos hot Aza shayne matuneh geshenkt foon G-t, Nor ayn altichke Yiddishe Mame, Oy, Mame Mayn! |
I’d like to ask a question—tell me if you know. God blesses everyone with what cherished possession? It’s free! You can’t buy it! And when you lose it, you’ll shed many a tear! You’ll never get a second one—no matter how hard you cry! If you’ve already lost it, you already know what I mean! A Yiddish Mamma There’s nothing better in this world! A Yiddish Mamma Oh! The bitterness when she’s gone! How nice, how, bright it is at home, when Mother is there! How sad, how dark it is, when God takes her away! She would run through water and through fire for her child! Not to hold and cherish her is a sin!! How lucky, how rich is he To have such a beautiful gift given him by God! Like a dear old Yiddish Mamma O Mamma mine! |
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Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música
To know more about our artists, click here.
We made a contest of stories. The one that won is a portrait of Andrés José, a Colombian immigrant in Valencia, who ends up working as a delivery man on a bicycle to support his family (parents and two younger sisters). The first day he works on that, his little sister is very happy because he comes back home very early: his bicycle has been stolen. Juan Antonio Torres made it in shape of a romance with the zambomba. 
Of the repertoire for an event of two hours it was prefixed only the 4 first pieces and the very last one. Between that, that band sang about the topics that the public was asking, using the traditional styles (jota, several variants of fandango, seguidilla, son). For this, we prepared more than 100 new couplets organiced in the main topics of our nowadays and of the field of world of ILO. And the band decided the specific style to apply to those lyrics in that very moment.
Contact me. And if you find this interesting, share it with your friends. You can read the previous issues 
András Bethlendi – Méra World Music Festival is an international world music festival with an acknowledged focus on local music. Therefore, on one hand, we are looking for local artists who can play the traditional music from Transylvania or Romania, on the other hand, we are looking for artists from abroad who can play authentic folk music or music inspired from their local musical traditions.
MM – What are the most complicated or difficult issues to deal with in your festival?
MM – In one sentence, summarize the reason/s to go to your festival.
Cheikh, or Sheikh, Zouzou, whose real name was Joseph Moise Benganoun, was born in Oran in 1862. Or somewhere else in the province of Ain Témouchent in 1890? There is controversy. According to the first data, he would have lived 110 years, until he died in 1972! According to the second, he died in Nice on March 18th of 1975, at his 85 years old. Which one do you believe? 
