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2014
AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE MUSEUM
IN THE YIDDISH FORWARD
An
article about the Museum founder and director, Steven Lasky, and
his work, has been published and currently is available for viewing
on the Forverts (Yiddish Forward) online edition!
Besides the
Museum of Family History's Facebook page, a new Facebook page
has been created for its
Museum of
the Yiddish Theatre (which is part of the
Museum of Family History.) So if you have an interest in the history
of the Yiddish theatre, please sign up!!
THE MUSEUM OF THE YIDDISH
THEATRE
The Museum of Family History now has a new division,
i.e. the Museum of the Yiddish Theatre, so for those of you
with an interest in Yiddish theatre, its history and its players,
please visit the Museum online at
www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/moyt/main.htm. Most all the
museum's content can be found on its own site map page. The Museum
also has a very interesting Facebook page (name: Museum of the
Yiddish Theatre), so I urge you to join it as a "friend."
CURRENT EXHIBITION UPDATES:
ADDITION TO
MUSEUM'S NEWSPAPER ARCHIVE COLLECTION:
THE YIDDISH WORLD:
THE TRANSLATION PROJECT --The Museum newest exhibition is about the remarkable Zalmen Zylbercweig and his seven-volume Lexicon
of the Yiddish Theatre. Here you will be able to read about
the history of his "Lexicon", as well about him as a person. You
will be able to form an image of Zylbercweig, who was a remarkable
man.
You will also be able to access dozens of radio clips
(changed every month or two) from his Los Angeles radio
Yiddish-language radio program of the fifties and sixties (mostly in
Yiddish, though some English) for the Museum's new On the Air! feature.
Also of import, intriguing and thoughtful, is the Museum's multimedia
exhibition entitled Lives in the Yiddish Theatre: Tributes to
a Bygone Era. Here you will more easily be able to imagine
walking through a museum and strolling from room to room, within the
exhibition, viewing framed and matted photos on virtual museum
walls, read the descriptive plaques, and hear audio tributes from
family members of those who have contributed eagerly to their family
tribute.
--The Museum now has
two databases for its Yiddish World section. Databases have been
constructed for two major works that contain a combined 4,800 or so
biographies of those once involved in some way in the Yiddish
theatre, i.e. Zylbercweig's Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre,
and Zalmen Reyzen's four-volume work Lexicon of Yiddish
Literature, Press and Philology, which contains bios of
nearly 2,000 writers.
The Museum is currently translating the Zylbercweig
opus, but has no plans to translate the Reyzen work. To date,
more than 2,200 biographies (from one sentence to many pages in length)
have been translated and are accessible for all to see -- a
wonderful way of learning about Jewish history, families, culture,
etc. A must see!
Latest translations: Mendl Elkin, Pepi
Urich, Leah Krause-Miller and S. H. Cohen.
The Museum wishes to make the aforementioned databases available
on its site for anyone at anytime to access freely, but it hasn't
anyone to construct it, and, in the absence of any funding they will
not be created. However, if anyone has a request, e.g. a name, to
look up, please contact the museum with your specific request.
Each of the two databases also contain the town and
area in which the person was born, as well as the page numbers on
which the individual biography can be found. The
Museum is looking for volunteers to help it complete this
translation project, which has to date been done by volunteers.
Please contact the Museum if you are willing to participate on this
basis.
A NEW LEXICON VOLUME:
The Museum of Family History, with permission, has created a new
volume of the "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre", which is its eighth
(the seventh remains unpublished in galley form). It will probably
only be available online, and it includes never-seen-before
biographies of Yiddish theatre personnel, as well as amended
biographies, i.e. those that have been added to (since many of the
biographies were created in the early 1930s). Such new biographies
are that or Yiddish actresses Charlotte Goldstein, Esta Salzman and
Fraydele Oysher. Also, for the first time, you will
find special sections in this new volume about international Yiddish
troupes, such as that of the Romanian Jewish State Theatre in
Bucharest, Romania, and the Yiddishpiel Theatre in Tel Aviv, Israel.
The Museum hopes to add biographies on more such troupes in the
future, once they have been submitted to the Museum.
ON THE AIR! YIDDISH RADIO PROGRAM:
You can now listen to the Museum's next "'On the Air!' rebroadcast"
of the "Yiddish Radio Hour", as created and led by the
husband-and-wife-team of Zalmen and Celia Zylbercweig, first
broadcast on October 12, 1969 from their home studio in Los Angeles,
California. Zalmen was the editor and engineer behind the
multi-volume "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre", which I am currently
translating (seventy percent done) into English from the original
Yiddish.
The aforementioned half-hour radio program
is in Yiddish, of course, and contains news, commentary and song. It
will be especially interesting to those of you who can understand
Yiddish by ear, though someone who has a better ability to do this
that me has created a summary of the program in English, which I
have supplied on the same webpage on which the link to this
broadcast appears. One can hear the program at
http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/yw/radio/zz/ota-02.htm .
Here you can hear at least one song in Yiddish, i.e. from the play
"Di kishufmakherin (The Witch)", which was to be performed in
Beverly Hills that year.
Also for a time, my first " 'On the Air!
rebroadcast", featuring the Los Angeles City Council's presentation
of an award to Zylbercweig for his work on his "Lexicon of the
Yiddish Theatre" (English and Yiddish). This can be found (for a
short time) at
http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/yw/radio/zz/ota-01.htm .
I plan on changing "rebroadcasts" every
months or two, until I run out of recordings. There is more music,
commentary, events, etc., that will be featured in future
"rebroadcasts". I am hoping to find more volunteers who are willing
to "preview" future program recordings and summarize them, as this
last volunteer has done. Also, if anyone can improve on the program
summary, as featured on the aforementioned web page, please
contact me
directly.
You can also visit my Zylbercweig exhibition
at
http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/yw/zylbercweig/zz-main.htm
.
You can read individual translated "Lexicon"
biographies at
http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/yt/lex-biography.htm .
You can also hear other past radio programs
that are non-Yiddish in nature, e.g. a program emceed by Al Jolson.
To do so, click on the above link "On the Air! Yiddish Radio
Program".
THE YIZKOR BOOK PROJECT:
--The latest installment of the
Museum's Zambrow, Poland Yizkor Book translation is now
available for your perusal. This segment is especially interesting
because of the many aphorisms, or expressions in Yiddish that were
heard in Zambrow before the Second World War. Not only are these
sayings translated to English, but they are often explained.
All that is translated from this Yizkor Book can
only be found here at the Museum. The Yizkor Book is undergoing its
final edits, and once it is completed, an announcement will be made.
You will be able to read the entire book and see the entirety of the
photographs that are contained therein all on one webpage. The link to the newest translated segment from the
Yizkor Book can be found by clicking
here.
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