Suddenly, Yiddish Is in the Air By Jerry Schwartz AP National Writer October 29, 1998   NEW YORK (AP) -- Mandy Patinkin tells a story: According to Jewish folklore, every baby has a teacher in the womb -- an angel who imparts all the world's knowledge. But at the moment of birth, the cherub touches the child's lip and takes it all away; we spend the rest of our lives relearning it all. But occasionally, there is a glimmer of what was lost -- a sense of deja vu or a bolt of inspiration that seems to come from nowhere. Maybe this is what happened to Patinkin. Maybe not. But it is as good an explanation as any of how Patinkin ended up on a Broadway stage seven times a week, singing songs in a tongue he does not know. ``Mayn Mirl!,'' he sings. ``Bakent hob ikh zikh mit mayn Mirl, ir nomen, vi gezang vi zise harfn klang ikh shever.'' This is Yiddish, the mamaloshen (mother tongue) of European Jewry, a language that was given up for dead when millions departed for the New World, and millions of others perished in the old one. But amazingly, Yiddish music is enjoying a rebirth. And it involves more than just Patinkin's show, ``Mamaloshen,'' and its album. There is ``Di grine katshke'' (``The Green Duck''), described as ``a menagerie of Yiddish animal songs for children.'' There is ``The Well,'' 20th-century Yiddish poetry put to music by Israeli chanteuse Chava Alberstein and the American band the Klezmatics. And then there are scores of bands out there -- bands with names like Yid Vicious and Tennessee Schmaltz, better-known bands like the Klezmer Conservatory Band and the Andy Statman Orchestra -- that celebrate the music known as klezmer. ``I'm seeing something, all of a sudden, that's happening,'' says Itzik Becher, who represents both Ms. Alberstein and the Klezmatics. Not that it's really ``all of a sudden.'' Yiddish was the lingua franca of European Jews. Mostly German (with contributions from Hebrew and many other languages), written with Hebrew letters, it was the language of the home, the marketplace and of celebrations. Yiddish culture reached its zenith in the 19th century, producing writers like Sholom Aleichem and Mendele Mokher Sforim. Klezmer -- from the Hebrew ``klei zemer,'' instruments of song -- became the music of this golden age. It started with the violin, then the clarinet and the accordion and brass instruments; it lilted and frolicked, and later, it swung. Yiddish popular music flourished in the early part of this century, in the theater and in vaudeville. Even then it was sometimes the stuff of nostalgia, sung by and to immigrants in an often harsh goldene medina, or golden land. ``Belz, my little town, Belz, my little home where I had so many dreams,'' sings Mandy Patinkin -- in Yiddish. Patinkin, the Broadway star who won an Emmy award as Dr. Jeffrey Geiger, the heart surgeon on ``Chicago Hope,'' was raised in a home where Yiddish was a stranger -- ``I never heard any of it in my house, except maybe four or five words.'' That is not unusual at the end of the 20th century: The 1990 census found that only 213,064 Americans spoke Yiddish at home, sometimes or always. Eight years ago, Patinkin's friend, producer Joe Papp, told him that it was his job to sing Yiddish popular music. ``So I promised Joe I would, and before I could take back the promise, Joe went to heaven and refused to let me out of the project,'' Patinkin writes in the liner notes. The result is ``Mamaloshen.'' Most of the songs are sung entirely in Yiddish, without translation; they include standards like ``Belz,'' ``Raisins and Almonds'' and ``Rabbi Elimeylekh.'' But there are also songs written by American Jewish writers in English, translated into Yiddish: Paul Simon's ``American Tune,'' Irving Berlin's ``God Bless America'' and ``White Christmas,'' Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein's ``Maria'' (the Yiddish lyrics at the top of this story). This is emotional, passionate stuff. ``There is a size to it, there's an over-the-topness to it that is just right,'' Patinkin says. ``I've been accused of being over the top all these years, and I finally found the right material.'' To Patinkin, you don't have to be Jewish -- or even understand Yiddish -- to love this music. ``It touches a certain nerve in us that has to do with heritage,'' he says. ``It's any people who were thrown off any ship.'' Most reviews have been rapturous, but not everyone agrees. Wolf Krakowski, whose Yiddish-language album ``Transmigrations'' is a peculiar mix of country, blues and East European sensibility, derides Yiddish singers who ``couldn't order a sandwich in Yiddish when they walk off the stage.'' And Henry Sapoznik, who helped write the Yiddish translations for Patinkin, belittles ``Mamaloshen'' as an exercise in false nostalgia. ``Nostalgia is a funny and elusive thing because it is hard to be nostalgic for something that you didn't experience,'' he says. ``Most people trade on the sepia-toned world of Yiddish. We don't.'' By ``we'' he means the small group of musicians who, two decades ago, launched what is called the klezmer revival. Sapoznik is a member of Kapelye, a pioneering Yiddish band that started in 1979; he also is a kind of eminence klez, running 16 KlezKamps over the years to spread the joys of Yiddish music to new generations. When he started, klezmer was an endangered musical species. An assimilated American Jewry had turned its back on it, and the old men who played it were dying off. In Israel, Yiddish was pushed aside in favor of Hebrew, and Americans followed suit, Sapoznik says. But a renewed interest in ethnic identity -- many credit Alex Haley's book ``Roots,'' about his own African heritage -- and the rising popularity of world music opened the way for a Yiddish comeback. The challenge was to find a ``truth in Yiddish culture'' that was not based on nostalgia, says Loren Sklamberg, vocalist for the Klezmatics. ``I don't think you can make something live if all you're doing is remaking the past.'' To introduce children (and adults) to Yiddish, Sklamberg joined singer Paula Teitelbaum in producing ``Di grine katshke'' -- a charming collection of Yiddish songs about bees, rabbits, bears, goslings and more. Sklamberg's other project, ``The Well,'' is a departure for the Klezmatics, a band that promises ``radical Jewish roots music for the 21st century'' (the Klezmatics include several gay members, and the group has spoken favorably of drugs and leftist causes). For ``The Well,'' Chava Alberstein has put to music poems by Abraham Reiser, Itsik Manger, Binem Heller and others. The tunes are diverse (everything from Latin rhythms to boisterous klez), Ms. Alberstein's voice is remarkable, the Klezmatics play with power and restraint, and the result is extraordinary: An album that is sweet and evocative, profound and sorrowful. Ms. Alberstein was born in Poland, and she finds herself returning again and again to Yiddish, like a first love. She does not think that the small number of people who understand Yiddish is any reason not to make Yiddish music. ``I understand the good Argentinian or Greek songs without understanding every word,'' she says. ``Basically,'' says Sklamberg, ``if you do something from a culture -- if it is done well and if it's done with understanding and care -- people are going to listen no matter what language it is.'' But why sing in Yiddish? ``It was at first a spoken language, so it is very warm,'' Ms. Alberstein says. ``It has a lot of words that just by the sound of it, can touch you, can make you laugh. Hebrew is not a sentimental language.'' And there is, for her, the imperative to keep alive the language of 6 million Holocaust victims. Her favorite song on ``The Well'' is Heller's ``Mayn Shvester Khaye,'' the story of the poet's sister, Khaye, ``with her eyes of green ... burnt by a German in Treblinka.'' ``It is for her that I write my poems in Yiddish,'' he writes, ``In these terrible days of our times ...'' The message, she says, is, ``Not to give up. To go on. But to do things not in an academic or nostalgic way -- to do, to go on.'' Patinkin says he is sometimes overwhelmed by thoughts of the Holocaust. ``And I tell myself, `Fight to keep them alive. Don't you dare succumb to depression. You get out there and dance, and celebrate.'' So he intends to keep performing ``Mamaloshen'' after its limited run. ``We're taking it all over the world, until I die,'' he says. ``I must do this, because I'm now standing in that line of people who are called upon to pass this on, and if I give up my place in line I may never have another opportunity.'' ``Mamaloshen'' is available on Nonesuch records. ``Di grine katshke'' is on Living Traditions, and ``The Well'' is on Xenophile. © Copyright 1998 The Associated Press