Preservation of Yiddish Culture

Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage

Сохранение культуры идиша

אָפּהיטן אונדזער ייִדישע קולטור־ירושה

לשמור על תרבות היידיש

Beregovsky Index Published in Moscow

Beregovsky Index Published in Moscow

Beregovsky Index Published in Moscow

The Moscow publishing house Muzyka has published Evgeniya Khazdan’s book Moisey Beregovsky: Biobibliographic Index. The author and compiler, who lives in Saint Petersburg, is a musicologist, music critic and a Candidate of Sciences specializing in art criticism. The publishing house would like to thank Academic Grigory Roytberg for his help in publishing this book.

Moisey Beregovsky was an outstanding musicologist and researcher of Jewish folklore, whose collection of Yiddish songs, klezmer melodies, Hasidic nigunim and musical theatrical performances comprise a gigantic layer of Yiddish culture. Khazdan accomplished a great task by compiling the first biobibliographic index of his works.
As the author writes in the preface, the book “includes Beregovsky’s published works, as well as his manuscripts, information on archive materials, currently known articles about him and his work, and publications addressing the materials from his collection.”

The Index is bilingual (English-Russian). The electronic version of this book is available on our website. Muzyka is the oldest Russian music publishing house, where the first volume of Beregovsky’s famous five-volume collection was published in 1934. This book is also available electronically on our website.

On August 6, a screening of the documentary Song Searcher: The Times and Toils of Moyshe Beregovsky took place at the New York Museum of Jewish Heritage. The documentary was created by the Russian director Elena Yakovich. During the discussion after the screening, Julia Zilberquit, the executive director of the Heritage Projects Foundation, told the audience about the new Beregovsky Index.

Evgeniya Khazdan and Muzyka’s director Dr. Mark Zilberquit

“Yiddish Concerto” Premiered in Italy

“Yiddish Concerto” Premiered in Italy

“Yiddish Concerto” Premiered in Italy

Michael Guttman

In July 2023, the International Music Festival took place in Pietrasanta, Italy. The highlight of this event was the Italian premiere of Laurent Couson’s Yiddish Concerto for violin and string orchestra — a new contribution to today’s Yiddish culture.

The Yiddish Concerto was created in 2022 by the contemporary French composer Laurent Couson for Maestro Michael Guttman, the initiator and permanent artistic director of the festival. It was brilliantly performed in Pietrasanta by Guttman and the Brussels Chamber Orchestra.

The authoritative Amadeus Magazine wrote: “It has been 17 years since Pietrasanta… has held such a lively high quality festival… thanks to Maestro Michael Guttman, a violinist of Belgian origin, a volcanic personality with a contagious enthusiasm who invites top-ranking musicians”.

The composer, Laurent Couson, notes that his Yiddish Concerto, played by a solo violin and a strings ensemble, was composed during a trip across the historical Jewish Poland, between Warsaw and Krakow. The first movement of the composition is called Shtetl, followed by Hatikvah and Lechaim. “From melancholia to joy, this short concerto explores the soul of Yiddish culture”.

Screening of Beregovsky Film in New York

Screening of Beregovsky Film in New York

Screening of Beregovsky Film in New York

On August 6, 2023, the New York Museum of Jewish Heritage hosted a screening and presentation of the film Song Searcher: The Times and Toils of Moyshe Beregovsky, dedicated to Moisey Beregovsky, an outstanding musicologist and researcher of Jewish folklore. The film was created by the Russian director Elena Yakovich and first shown in 2021 in Moscow under the title Moisey Beregovsky’s Motives.

Among the participants of the film were the Toronto professor Anna Shternshis and the singer Psoy Korolenko, the creators of Yiddish Glory, a musical project nominated for the 2019 Grammy Awards. The project is based on WWII texts from Beregovsky’s collection.

Lyudmila Sholokhova and Yevgeniya Khazdan, leading experts on the legacy of this great musicologist, talk in the film about Beregovsky’s biography and the discovery of 1,200 phonograph cylinders with sound recordings, which Sholokhova managed to find during the 1990s in the collections of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine.

The history of this remarkable discovery is a real detective story. Thanks to this great treasure, the voices of Sholem Aleichem and Mikhoels came back to life along with the whole world of people who spoke Yiddish and who tragically died in the Holocaust… The film features digitized songs from the ghettos and camps recorded by Beregovsky among survivors in the first years following WWII.

The film creators kindly shared with our website photos from the documentary and its filming, which took place over the course of three years, mainly in Ukraine. The vast geography of the documentary also includes the former territory of Ozerlag, the Gulag camp where Beregovsky was sent in 1950. Some scenes were also filmed in the US, Canada, Italy and Israel.

After the screening, a detailed conversation was held with the film’s participants. Julia Zilberquit, the executive director of the Heritage Projects Foundation, informed the audience about the new biobibliographic index of Moisey Beregovsky, compiled by Evgeniya Khazdan and published by the Muzyka publishing house in Moscow. The electronic version of this book is available on our website.

New Recordings by Psoy Korolenko

New Recordings by Psoy Korolenko

New Recordings by Psoy Korolenko

The renowned musician Psoy Korolenko and the New York Yiddishist organization Workers Circle (Arbeter-Ring) shared exclusively with us two videos, published now for the first time on the video channel of our website. In one of the videos, Korolenko performs the song “O, ir kleyne likhtelekh” (“Oh, you little candles”), written by the composer Herman-Zvi Ehrlich to the lyrics of Morris Rosenfeld. In the second clip the musucian recites Leib Naidus’ Yiddish translation of Alexander Pushkin’s poem “Winter Evening”.

Rosenfeld (1862-1923) and Naidus (1890-1918) were major Yiddish poets. Psoy Korolenko is a well-known contemporary performer of Jewish songs and promoter of the Yiddish language. In 2019, together with the Canadian researcher Anna Shternshis, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for the project Yiddish Glory based on Yiddish songs composed during WWII.

New Book on Jewish Theater in Late USSR

New Book on Jewish Theater in Late USSR

New Book on Jewish Theater in Late USSR

The Tel Aviv publishing house Beit Nelli published Alexander Chernov’s monumental documentary volume “My Jewish Theatre”. The book, written in Russian, with 450 pages of text and about 350 illustrations, is devoted almost entirely to the history of the Moscow Jewish Drama Ensemble (since 1988 – Moscow Jewish Theater Shalom). The ensemble was created in 1962 by a group of former GOSET (Moscow State Jewish Theatre) actors headed by Binyomin (Veniamin) Schwarzer.

Alexander Chernov, who now lives in Israel, belongs to the last generation of Moscow Jewish actors who played in Yiddish. In the past three decades, Russian has become virtually the only language of the Shalom Theater. Excerpts from his book were previously published in Yiddish in the magazine Yidishland. Based on the materials of his book, Alexander Chernov also made the documentary film “Moscow Jewish Drama Ensemble”, which is publicly available on YouTube. This film was shown with Yiddish subtitles on Birobidzhan TV.

Site News: Sidi Tal’s Records

Site News: Sidi Tal’s Records

Site News: Sidi Tal’s Records

Our site’s editorial staff is glad to inform our visitors about our new production: the systematic reconstruction of Sidi Tal’s music records accompanied by portraits of the actress, posters of her concerts and other unique archival photos.

Sidi Tal (born Sorele Birkental; 1912-1983) was a prominent Yiddish actress and singer who played a highly important role in the development of Yiddish theater and the preservation of Yiddish culture in the USSR.