NEW YORK SINGS YIDDISH! Featuring Yiddish Concert & Theatre Stars to Take Place This Week

Join in this Wednesday, June 14 in Central Park, when National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene and Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage present New York Sings Yiddish!,  featuring an illustrious lineup of Yiddish theater and concert superstars celebrating the rich cultural legacy of Yiddish music.

 

The one-night only evening event will now feature a signature moment: world-renowned talk show host, author and professor Dr. Ruth Westheimer will appear on stage and the audience will sing “Happy Birthday!” - in Yiddish, Hebrew and English  - to the nonagenarian as she marks her 95th birthday.

 

The concert is in partnership with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene/Museum of Jewish Heritage -  A Living Memorial to the Holocaust and supported by the Workers Circle and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine, and will feature an illustrious lineup of Yiddish theater and concert superstars.

 

Also appearing at the celebration is stage and screen star Dudu Fisher, widely known for his portrayal of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables on Broadway. Fisher has performed with many of Israel’s leading artists. “Baltic Truth,” Fisher’s Holocaust documentary, was released this April, and he currently stars in the Netflix series Rough Diamonds. Fisher has released over 25 albums, with songs in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish. In 2020, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Authority for Yiddish Culture. He also will be performing at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on June 18 at 3:00 PM. (More details can be found at https://mjhnyc.org/events/dudu-fisher-in-concert-for-israels-75th/.)

 

The lineup additionally includes The Klezmatics, Joanne Borts, Joshua (SoCalled) Dolgin, Cantor Magda Fishman, Sara Mina Gordon, Elmore James, Daniel Kahn, Lea Kalisch, Frank London, Daniella Rabbani, Eleanor Reissa, Avi Fox-Rosen, and Lorin Sklamberg.

 

Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, will serve as Master of Ceremonies at the celebratory event. Led by NYTF Musical Director Zalmen Mlotek and featuring Musical Arrangements by Mlotek and Frank London, the concert is produced by Moishe Rosenfeld, Golden Land Concerts & Connections.

 

Throughout the night, Yiddish lyrics will be projected on a giant screen, and available on attendees’ phones via QR codes, as singers lead the audience in an unprecedented community chorus, joyously celebrating our precious cultural legacy.

 

“On this special evening, New York will celebrate its Yiddish heritage and soul with some of our most brilliant musical stars – and under the stars. We invite all New Yorkers to come together in Central Park for a wonderful concert filled with Klezmer artistry and Yiddish theater gems for a memorable night,” Zalmen Mlotek said.

 

Anyone attending the event should enter at East 72nd Street and Fifth Avenue; Doors open at 6pm and the concert begins at 7pm. Seating and standing is first-come, first-served until capacity is reached. For information about the event, visit nytf.org/summerstage.

 

The event will encourage the audience to participate in an unprecedented sing-along, celebrating the launch of Yiddish Songs.org,home of The Yosl and Chana Mlotek Yiddish Song Collection at the Workers Circle. This collection is comprised of songs compiled in five anthologies by beloved Yiddish culture anthologists and community leaders Yosl Mlotek and Chana Mlotek and contains songs that highlight important themes, cultural activities, daily life, celebrated musicians, undiscovered musicians, and much more. 

 

“Hearing Yiddish songs brings our past to life and serves to inspire our lives today. Through our Yiddish songs, we hear the voices from our heritage speak of family relationships,  love, resistance and revolution, and even war,  and the voices of parents and grandparents singing lullabies,” said Ann Toback, CEO of the Workers Circle. “Yiddish songs are part of family celebrations, struggle, and success, and as the late Theodore Bikel once said, ‘the Yiddish song emerges, not as a flower which wilts in the winds of autumn, but as a perennial, which blooms no matter where, no matter when’.”

 

About National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene

Now entering its 109th season, the Drama Desk Award-winning National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF) is the longest consecutively producing theatre in the US and the world's oldest continuously operating Yiddish theatre company. NYTF is in residence at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Zalmen Mlotekand Executive Director Dominick Balletta, NYTF is dedicated to creating a living legacy through the arts, connecting generations and bridging communities. NYTF aims to bring history to life by reviving and restoring lost and forgotten work, commissioning new work, and adapting pre-existing work for the 21st Century. Serving a diverse audience comprised of performing arts patrons, cultural enthusiasts, Yiddish-language aficionados and the general public, the company presents plays, musicals, concerts, lectures, interactive educational workshops and community-building activities in English and Yiddish, with English and Russian supertitles accompanying performances. NYTF provides access to a century-old cultural legacy and inspires the imaginations of the next generation to contribute to this valuable body of work. Learn more at https://nytf.org/

 

About City Parks Foundation 

At City Parks Foundation, we are dedicated to invigorating and transforming parks into dynamic, vibrant centers of urban life through sports, arts, community building and education programs for all New Yorkers. Our programs -- located in more than 300 parks,recreation centers and public schools across New York City -- reach over 275,000 people each year. Our ethos is simple: thriving parks mean thriving communities.

 

About SummerStage

Capital One City Parks Foundation SummerStage is one of New York’s most beloved, broadly accessible, free outdoor performing arts festivals. SummerStage annually presents nearly 80 free and benefit performances in Central Park and neighborhood parks throughout the five boroughs to 217,000 fans. With performances in genres that represent the cultural fabric of New York City ranging from jazz, hip-hop, Latin, global, indie and contemporary dance, SummerStage fills a vital niche in New York City’s summer arts festival landscape. Since its inception nearly 40 years ago, more than six million people from New York City and around the world have enjoyed SummerStage. Learn more at www.summerstage.org.

 

About the Workers Circle

Founded 122 years ago, the Workers Circle (formerly known as the Workmen’s Circle) is a social justice organization that powers progressive Jewish identity through Jewish cultural engagement, Yiddish language learning, multigenerational education, and social justice activism. For over a century we have provided this 360-degree approach to Jewish identity-building. Through contemporary cultural programs, strategic social justice campaigns, vibrant Yiddish language classes, interactive educational experiences and more, we connect Jewish adults, kids and families of all affiliations with their cultural heritage, working to build a better and more beautiful world for all. Learn more at www.circle.org.

 

About the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust

The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust is committed to the crucial mission of educating diverse visitors and community members about Jewish life and heritage before, during, and after the Holocaust. The third-largest Holocaust museum in the world, the Museum of Jewish Heritage anchors the southernmost tip of Manhattan, completing the cultural and educational landscape it shares with the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

 

The Museum of Jewish Heritage maintains a collection of almost 40,000 artifacts, photographs, documentary films, and survivor testimonies and contains classrooms, a 375-seat theater (Edmond J. Safra Hall), special exhibition galleries, a resource center for educators, and a memorial art installation, Garden of Stones, designed by internationally acclaimed sculptor Andy Goldsworthy. 

 

The Museum’s current offerings include The Holocaust: What Hate Can Do, a major new exhibition offering a timely and expansive presentation of Holocaust history, now on view in the main galleries. Also on view is Survivors: Faces of Life After the Holocaust, featuring photographer Martin Schoeller’s portraits of Holocaust survivors. Opening this fall is the Museum’s first exhibition for visitors aged 9 and up, Courage to Act: Rescue in Denmark, which will bring the lessons of the Holocaust to life through the remarkable story of Danish collective resistance during World War II.

 

Each year, the Museum presents over 80 public programs, connecting our community in person and virtually through lectures, book talks, concerts, and more. For more info visit: mjhnyc.org/events. Museum receives general operating support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and New York State Council on the Arts.

 

For more information, visit: mjhnyc.org 

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