Mother Tongue Chicago Tribune April 13, 1998 by H. Reich The migration began roughly a century ago, when hundreds of thousands of Eastern European Jews began pouring into the United States, fleeing the pogroms (or massacres) of the 19th Century and the Holocaust that followed. Though desperately poor, they brought with them a vibrant Yiddish musical culture that would change the way Americans sing. If you doubt it, consider American music without the songs of Jacob Gershovitz (George Gershwin), Izzy Baline (Irving Berlin) and Samuel Cohen (Sammy Cahn), as the Yiddish-speaking children of the Jewish immigrants originally were known. Though the songs of these Americanized Jews came to define Tin Pan Alley, the tunes of the Old Country have all but receded from memory. Nevertheless, at least one gifted singer thinks there's plenty of life left in songs of the old Jewish shtetls, or villages, which is why Broadway star Mandy Patinkin has recorded "Mamaloshen" ("Mother Tongue"). In this historic release, Patinkin -- grandson of Jewish immigrants who arrived here at the turn of the century -- reopens a musical trove that has had greater impact on American culture than many listeners may realize. "It wasn't until I started working on this music that I realized that these (Yiddish songs) were the teachers of the composers who came later," says Patinkin, speaking in the music room of his Manhattan apartment. "And then I started to realize that these were not only the teachers, but that the composers blatantly stole from these Yiddish songs." Whether such Tin Pan Alley pioneers as Gershwin, Berlin, Jerome Kern and others lifted ideas from the Yiddish composers who came before them is open to discussion. Yet there's no doubt that the first generation of American popular songwriters, most of whom were Jewish, lived and breathed Yiddish culture. As the children of newly arrived immigrants, they typically spoke Yiddish as their first language and heard European folk songs and cantorial chants on the old Victrola. Though these songwriters also embraced elements of African-American jazz and ragtime, the Jewish lilt of their melodies is palpable in tunes such as Gershwin's "The Man I Love" (with its short, lamenting phrases) and Cahn's "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" (his first big hit, in 1937, itself a free translation of a Yiddish song). Patinkin considers the Yiddish predecessors to these songs even more powerful, and he makes a strong case for them. But the eloquence of "Mamaloshen," on the Nonesuch label, comes not only from the plaintive quality of songs such as "Belz" (in which the protagonist poignantly remembers the village he left behind) and the Old World exuberance of "Rabbi Elimeylekh" (with its vivid evocation of fiddles and drums at play), but also from Patinkin's remarkably detailed re-creations of this material. For starters, his use of the Yiddish language is so authentic and his musical approach to this repertoire so persuasive that he seems almost to bring a long-lost musical culture back to life. A secret language The feat is all the more impressive considering that until Patinkin began his quest to learn the songs in "Mamaloshen," less than a decade ago, he didn't speak a word of Yiddish. "I don't think I had the language very much in my ear, other than I heard some of the guys in shul (synagogue) talking in Yiddish, when I was a kid," says Patinkin, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, when the area was still a focal point of Jewish life in the city. "My dad spoke Yiddish whenever he spoke to my grandma, and it was used as a secret language in the house when grownups wanted to say something they didn't want me to understand." So Patinkin turned to two noted experts in Yiddish culture, Moishe Rosenfeld and Henry Sapoznik, who taught him the texts of the "Mamaloshen" songs syllable by syllable. They created spoken-word tapes that Patinkin could use to learn pronunciation and memorize lyrics, then coached him on singing the Yiddish phrases with the proper linguistic accents, rhythms and cadences. "The first time I heard Mandy sing a Yiddish song was a tune called `Youssel, Youssel,' which he did beautifully except that I couldn't understand a word that he sang," remembers Rosenfeld, who acted in the Yiddish theater for 20 years and anchors a daily Yiddish radio newscast in New York. "So it was a real project of ours to get this recording to where even the Yiddishists would listen and appreciate what Mandy sang." No doubt it takes a certain amount of chutzpah to tackle what Patinkin calls "an Everest of a language" without knowing more than a few words of it. "Mandy went out on a tightrope with no net, and there were a couple of times that he was out on a tightrope with no tightrope," says Zapoznik, the other Yiddish linguist who coached him. But, he adds, "I would say Mandy's singing on the record has the veracity of someone who really speaks Yiddish, though sometimes he forgets himself, especially if he gets excited." But why would a fellow in the prime of life who has won a Tony (for playing Che in "Evita" in 1980) and an Emmy (for his portrayal of Dr. Jeffrey Geiger on "Chicago Hope" in 1995) even bother with a language and a music that some people consider dead or dying? Has the man lost his sanity? "About eight years ago, Joe Papp (founder of the Public Theater in New York) asked me to learn a Yiddish song, `Youssel, Youssel,' for a benefit for the Yivo Institute," Patinkin writes in the extensive liner notes for "Mamaloshen," which include the complete Yiddish and English language texts for all the songs. "I played Joe the tune, and he looked at me and said, `You have to do this music; this is your job.' So I promised Joe I would, and before I could take back the promise Joe went to heaven (Papp died in 1991) and refused to let me out of the project." So Patinkin began what would become a journey of self-discovery. By immersing himself in wedding songs, children's melodies, theater tunes, prayers, odes and laments, Patinkin encountered sounds that inspired him as no Broadway tune ever had done. More important, the music altered his view of his art and his life. Hooked by a song "I've always had these other goals in life, but they had to do with being successful, or whether I was going to make it," says Patinkin, who lives with his wife and two sons. "I remember, my first goal was: Could I make a living (in the arts) by age 25, and if I couldn't, I'd get out of the business. Or could I get this or that. "And in the end, I look at them all as petty goals that had nothing to do with the meaning of my life or any kind of a lesson that I'm interested in passing on to my children. These Yiddish songs became something more important. Like love, they came in from the back door, I wasn't looking for it, it was not on my agenda. "But I began singing the song `Youssel, Youssel,' and I found it had a hook like a fishing hook that grabbed your kishkes (innards) and threw you all over the room like a big pike being pulled out of the ocean. "And I couldn't get over it," he says. "I don't know why these songs make my heart sing, it's a mystery to me, I don't understand it, and I don't need to understand it." Great art, of course, often defies rational and analytical explanation, so perhaps no one really can say why Patinkin sings the repertoire on "Mamaloshen" as hauntingly as he does. But listen to its songs of joy and desperation, its moods of giddiness and tragedy, and you are hearing nothing less than the sound of Eastern European Jewish life -- before, during and after the Holocaust. Though Patinkin has sung a few of these songs in concert, it won't be until later this month that he'll perform his first all-Yiddish concert, during a weeklong run in New York. If the performance plays as convincingly as the recording, one can expect a national tour. Should that happen, it will mark the first time since the heyday of Theodore Bikel and Jan Peerce that the sounds of Eastern European Yiddish culture again will ring in concert halls across America. "Maybe it will turn kids and teenagers onto Yiddish culture," says Rosenfeld, the Yiddish expert. "Look at the whole klezmer revival, which is symbolic of how people are looking for some way of expressing themselves `Jewishly' in addition to religion or outside of religion. "And here is Mandy, an American Jew, saying, `I can take this music and make it my own, and it is my own, and it's my children's, and it's a legacy that I want to pass on.' I think that's an incredible contribution to a culture that in this century, at least, has had many, many destructive attacks on it." Whatever comes of "Mamaloshen," however, there's no doubt it has changed at least one person's life forever. "If I were to die right at this moment," says Patinkin, who looks strong and healthy enough to pick up the spinet piano he's sitting near, "I'd feel all right, because I felt relieved the minute I finished making this record. I felt this was life and death. I thought, `I just don't want to get hit by a truck before this is finished.' "I can get hit by a truck now. My kids are good, I feel I've made a good imprint on them, and of course I want to be here as long as I can, but, workwise, I don't have a single goal, I'm so satisfied that this is done."

 

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