by rokhl [➚] · Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
One of the cool things about working for a magazine like Jewish Currents is that for the editors and readers of Currents, radical Jewish history isn’t just history, it’s a part of their lives. The editorial board of Currents is still run as a collective (of which I’m now a member), and the magazine has always been a vehicle for the voices of its readers, rather than a platform for the editorial board. If we covered labor and union issues, it was because a great part of our readership was union members- teachers, civil servants, wall paper hangers as well as union organizers and labor agitators.
Henry Foner fits into many of those aforementioned categories. He’s been a high school teacher, union organizer (Joint Board, Fur, Leather and Machine Workers Union), Jewish Currents editorial board member and writer, as well as a victim of the New York State communist purges of the early 1940s.
Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 11, at 6 pm, Henry Foner will be honored for his decades of service, as well as his achievements as a songwriter and bard of the organized labor world. Taking place at the Workmen’s Circle (45 East 33rd St) we will also be celebrating a new exhibit on the Labor Arts website called “Play it Again, Sam”: The Lost Chords of the Labor and Progressive Movements.
Henry Foner and his colleagues young and old will be performing songs like “Shoot the Strudel to me Yudel”, “Capitalist Boss” and “Song of the Pennies and Selling Union.”
Here’s a wonderful bio of Henry from Tamiment Library, after the jump
More »
by rokhl [➚] · Friday, May 30th, 2008
Jewish Currents magazine*, the 62 year old, (formerly Communist), now secular, progressive magazine, has recently started putting its archives up on the web. You can check it out here and find out what Israel and the Black Panthers have to do with each other. It’s a fascinating, ‘more things change, more things stay the same’ look at progressive Jewish history. Enjoy!
*As many of you know, I’m now a paid employee of Jewish Currents. I’d still think this was cool, even if they weren’t paying me to say that!
by rokhl [➚] · Sunday, February 3rd, 2008
I apologize for not posting this sooner. But I’m sure you guys are looking for something to do tonight. So check out some quality Yiddish theater.
ôøà Èèéî/Details
The New Yiddish Rep is bringing Yiddish theater back to the Lower East Side.
TONIGHT/äÖÇðè áà ðà ëè
Sunday Feb. 3rd at 7 PM
Yosl Rakover Speaks to  G-d
The last testament of a chasid before his death fighting in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Â The holocaust classic by Zvi Kolitz. Adapted for the stage and performed by David Mandelbaum, directed by Amy Coleman. In Yiddish with English super-titles.
New Yiddish Rep at The Community Synagogue
325 E. 6th Street  New York, NY 10003
917 670–1631    newyiddishrep.org
UpcomingÂ
Monday Feb. 4th  at 7 PM
The Essence, a dim sum of Yiddish Theater
An overview of Yiddish Theater from Abraham Goldfaden to the present day. Created by Allen Rickman, performed by Allen Rickman, Yelena Shmulenson, and Steve Sterner. Narration in English, songs and scenes in Yiddish with English super-titles.
Wednesday February 6
 Kol Nidre (Film) Made in Hollywood in 1939. 85 minute melodrama. English subtitles. Starts at 7 PM.
by rokhl [➚] · Sunday, January 6th, 2008
I’ve decided to post my interview with Aleksandr Kaganovitch in its entirety, exactly as it appears in Jewish Continuity Funders Weekly. I don’t care if JCF Weekly gets pissed- they still haven’t paid me!
Interview with Aleksandr V. Kaganovitch
You may have heard of Aleksandr V. Kaganovitch, Russian oil magnate, patron of the Moscow Jewish community, and all around model oligarch for the 21st century. Mr. Kaganovitch recently donated 20 million Euro to the opening of a Jewish community center in Moscow. The Aleksandr V. and Anastasia I. Kaganovitch Center for Jewish Learning, Community and Identity Fortification opened its doors last week. I spoke to Mr. Kaganovitch last week by phone from his villa outside Gstaad. We talked about Jewish life in Moscow and the importance of putting Jewish values into action.
RK: Mr. Kaganovitch, congratulations and mazl tov on the opening of the Kaganovitch center.
AK: Thank you very much.
RK: The Kaganovitch Center, in addition to housing a yoga studio, Olympic size swimming pool, weight room and krav maga center, also houses a new Yeshiva. The Yeshiva is staffed by twenty dynamic young Lubavitch rabbis from Brooklyn. Its purpose is to revitalize the jewish community of Moscow by making available the richness of Torah Judaism to a community that has lost all connection to Torah Judaism.
What a wonderful, exciting time for the community. I understand you have sent your son, Nicholas, to the Center’s Yeshiva, is that correct?
AK: Yes, that is correct. I sent him there last week to cut the ribbon. It was a very moving ceremony. The ribbon was twenty meters wide and made from Chinese silk, hand woven over many months by a small kibbutz in Israel. It cost 35,000 rubles.
RK: Wow. That’s an expensive ribbon.
AK: Jewish continuity doesn’t come cheap.
More »
by rokhl [➚] · Sunday, December 9th, 2007
Anyone else read that article in the Times recently by Natalie Angier? You know, the one where a neurophysicist teaches everyone at a symposium the steps to the Jewish hora and, OMG! Angier realizes how much fun it is to dance when, say… you know the steps. I know, I know, you don’t have to a brain surgeon (or neurophysicist) to know that participation in one’s own culture is actually enjoyable when you know the steps. Nonetheless, I’m applying for a grant to prove just that. But don’t hold your breath for my findings to be published in the Journal of Totally Fucking Obvious Things Jews Pretend Not To Know.
Anyway, that reminds me- there’s an amazing Yiddish dance party tonight, starting at 6:30, where, in conjunction with the big Yiddish dance symposium happening this afternoon, there will be something like 5 (million) Yiddish dance teachers leading and teaching Yiddish dances, along with a hot klezmer band.
It’s going to be held at the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant in the East Village 140 Second Ave. (between 8th and 9th Streets) Admission: $10.
(After the jump, find out why I’m changing my name to Old Dirty Jewess)Â
More »
by rokhl [➚] · Thursday, November 29th, 2007
(translated from the Yiddish by Sol Liptzin)
A Jew of my acquaintance sat down near me in a Warsaw park and asked me why I was so sad.
“Graetz is dead,” I answered.
“God’s will!” said my acquaintance. “One of our townsfolk, I suppose?”
This question, which 90 percent of the Jews would have asked in his place, is a measure of the abyss into which we have fallen…
When I informed my neighbor that Graetz was an historian who wrote the history of the Jewish people, he commented:
“Oh, history!” His voice had the same ring as if he were told that somebody had just eaten a dozen hard-boiled eggs at one time.
Just as I was about to get angry, he continued very naively:
“And what’s the use of history?”
by rokhl [➚] · Wednesday, November 28th, 2007
I’ve had Communists on the brain the last couple of weeks. On November 7, I gave my lecture, Mechanics of the Blacklist, 1946-1954, as part of the Jewish Currents Morris U. Schappes lecture series. Jewish Currents is the magazine for which I am a regular contributor. It started publishing in 1946 as Jewish Life. Back then, Jewish Life was published by the Morgn Freiheit, the Yiddish language Communist newspaper. Morris Schappes was the editor of Jewish Life and its second incarnation, Jewish Currents. Today, Jewish Currents is published by the Workmen’s Circle, an interesting development seeing as the politics of the two organizations have been at odds for a very long time. (Workmen’s Circle or Arbeter Ring has been passionately anti-Communist since they pushed the Communists out of the organization in the 1920s.)
Given that I’ve been writing for Currents for almost three years, I’ve become very interested in the trajectory of Yiddish Communists in this country. Two summers ago I gave a talk on the history of Currents in the context of other Jewish and radical magazines. I learned some pretty interesting things about Jewish radicals, and human nature. But that’s for another post. (Or you can hire me to give my talk about Jewish Currents.)
But I wasn’t interested in the topic of blacklisting until I saw The Front last year. As a movie it’s kind of a failure, but as a topic, it’s fascinating. Woody Allen plays a nebbishy bartender (I know, get out!) who gets drawn into a scheme to act as a ‘front’ for blacklisted writers in the 1959s. Back in those days of ‘McCarthyism’ and Communist persecution, a writer who had been identified as a Communist, or a sympathizer, or a dupe, or a fellow traveler, would find him or herself unemployable at all of the major networks and studios. In ‘The Front’, these blacklisted writers use Woody to sell their scripts and Woody, for putting his name on the work, gets a cut. Hijinks ensue.
The coolest part of the movie is that much of the talent involved with it (it was made in 1976) was in fact blacklisted during that time. Zero Mostel gives a particularly riveting performance as a comic who can’t get work, and in the end, is driven to desperate measures.
It was one of Zero’s scene which caught my attention. Desperate to work again, Hecky Green (Mostel) tries to defend himself against allegations that he is a Communist. He meets with an FBI agent and pleads for help. Pathetically, he explains, on his knees, that the only reason he went to that May Day parade (which is what got him on the blacklist) was his desire to nail one of the chicks who was marching.
Ultimately unable to clear his name, and unable to work, Hecky jumps out a window. His tragic death is based on the death of Philip Loeb, the real life actor (the Goldbergs) who was also persecuted for supposed Communism and, with nowhere to go, ended his life by jumping out a window.
I had heard about the blacklist before, but I never thought to wonder how exactly it was promulgated, or enforced. As portrayed in The Front, it appeared to be something nebulous, a government taking without opportunity for a hearing and without appeal. I started to wonder about the due process implications and the government’s ability to destroy lives based not on concrete charges but on rumor and whisper.
Our government has a long history of persecution of Communists, starting with the Palmer Raids of 1919. I mention these only because it was a large scale, systematic assault on Communists which ended up with thousands of arrests, and served as a proving ground for a young J. Edgar Hoover.
More »
by rokhl [➚] · Tuesday, November 20th, 2007
I coined the term Japtivism last year when I spent 20 minutes on the phone with a Victoria’s Secret (ugh, I know!) customer service representative last year convincing them that I DID NOT WANT any more catalogs. I did not want them once a month, I did not want them once a week. I did not want them in my house, I did not want them in the can, I did not want them Sam I am.  Hint to anyone else trying to convince Victoria’s Secret that no means no- have a catalog on hand to give them the sorting number from the mailing label.After my triumph over the Victorian Empire, I was emboldened to continue shopping/consuming smarter. I paid for a subscription to Green Dimes, a service that gets you off mailing lists and reduces waste. I even got them for family members’ birthdays. It’s been a good investment, as I’ve seen a tremendous drop in junk mail, more than just putting myself on the no junk mail list. And today, after some deliberation, I ordered something I’ve only dreamed of owning– my very own seltzer maker. The Penguin makes me seltzer whenever I want. Stores it in reusable glass containers. (No plastic to worry about leaching and other nonsense.) And it’s shabbes friendly. As a person who consumes seltzer almost every day, and throws away selzter bottles quite frequently, I only wonder why I waited so long. Some lingering Santa fantasy, probably. Oh well, he’s not coming. And I’m celebrating with egg creams as soon as my seltzer machine arrives. Huzzah!
by rokhl [➚] · Friday, November 9th, 2007
If you look at the Forward’s recently published Forward 50, you’ll see April Rosenblum’s name listed right below grizzled Cold Warrior Norman Podhoretz, in the Ideas and Activism section. Strange bedfellows, indeed. Gey veys! (Go figure)
April is being recognized for her groundbreaking work, the recently published 32 page pamphlet The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere: Making Resistance to Anti-Semitism Part of All of Our Movements. If you’ve spent more than five minutes doing social justice work, you probably know that anti-Semitism is a real and pervasive problem. April’s pamphlet includes historical analysis, as well as thought provoking discussions about the nature of anti-Semitism today.
April was, as she describes it, ‘raised radical’ in Philadelphia, where she lives today. She is also an ardent Yiddishist and brings what I consider to be a Diaspora Nationalist perspective to her political analysis.
So, mazl tov April!! I look forward to seeing what else you have in store for us!
by rokhl [➚] · Friday, October 26th, 2007
It looks like David Brooks, founder and CEO of DHB Industries, (and current contender for world’s worst person) has done a lot of bad stuff. The federal government just charged him with, among other things, securities fraud and tax evasion. According to the indictment, Brooks sold $185 million of dollars of stock in his company (that’s the insider trading part) upon learning that 6,000 bullet proof vests he was selling didn’t work. As in, they couldn’t stop bullets. Yeah. the company produced were about to be recalled for being faulty.
This is some pretty loathesome behavior, allegedly. But what does the Post lead with? War Profiteer Hates American Troops and Wants Them Full of Holes? Nah. War Profiteer Bilks Investors AND Hates Troops? Nahhhh. Too obvious. Nope, the Post’s  headline on this story: the $10 million dollars he looted from his company to pay for his daughter’s bat mitzvah. Two years ago. Granted, this is shocking and repulsive. But the focus on the bat mitzvah ends up shaping the way that other outlets spread the story. See today’s post on Jezebel, where the comments end up focusing on JAPs and the excesses of the modern Bat Mitzvah. And, frankly, I can’t help feeling like there’s a whiff of subtle anti-semitic incitement in choosing to lead with the sensational, Jewish exploitation aspect of the story. Call me crazy, but I felt a little scared reading this. Whatever the impact, this is yet another reason to hate the Post, I suppose.
by rokhl [➚] · Monday, September 3rd, 2007
(I apologize for writing the same thing about Dan as I wrote in April, but the fact remains that you must check him out!)
Tonight at the Rose, in Brooklyn, a rare US appearance by soon to be superstar Dan Kahn and his band The Painted Bird. If you’re not familiar with the novel which inspired Kahn’s project, I’ll tell you it’s the only book my parents ever forbade me from reading. They didn’t keep me from reading Anne Frank’s diary in fourth grade, or even taking out the book about Mengele in 7th. But Kozinski was beyond the pale. Gey veys. Go figure.
The Painted Bird (the novel) is an incredibly dark portrayal of life during World War II in Poland. It questions our very ability rise above our animal natures. It’s material is the grotesque and the grotesque as a reflection of life.
The Painted Bird, (the band), is an outgrowth of Dan Kahn’s travels as an American, and a Jew, in Central and Eastern Europe. (He’s been living in Berlin the last two years). It asks what it means to have an inheritance of victimhood but not be a victim oneself. And what does it mean to be the grandchild of perpetrators when one is not guilty of anything but being born into a troubled national legacy?
From his recent album Dos tsebrokhene loshn (the broken tongue) Kahn’s song Son of Plenty takes up the question:
Speak not of your righteousness/for though you might be true/ the tree of evil might just have its seed inside of you/ waiting for the proper time to bloom
We the chosen children of this martyrdom must learn/ that martyrs turn to murderers when tables have been turned/ and history repeats its bloody tune
This theme of the pathology of martyrdom and revenge shows up in a new song Kahn has been performing all over Europe and now here. It’s called Nakam and it’s about the aborted plan, devised by one of the leaders of the Vilna Partisans, Abba Kovner, to take revenge on the Germans, after the war, by poisoning the German water supply and extracting an equal number of German victims to match those who were sent to their death in the camps.
It’s a strange, uncomfortable and incredibly compelling story that challenges our ideas about healing, history and victimhood. As Dan told me, while his relatives here in the States have encouraged him not to perform it here, it’s his most popular song in Germany and Poland.
The music is part cabaret, part wine cellar, in yiddish, german and english, and leans heavily both on Tom Waits and Brecht. With the most important new Jewish clarinetist under 30, Michael Winograd, the band takes Jewish music to a whole new level. And while the subject matter is heavy, they’ve also got some of the funniest material I’ve heard in a long time, especially the new English verses for the classic Yiddish love song, Borscht, written by Dan and Moscow blues guitar legend Vanya Zhuk.
So don’t miss this rare show- Tonight, the Rose, at 8 pm.
by rokhl [➚] · Friday, July 20th, 2007
Did anyone else here about this back in February? NYU’s College Republicans decided to hold a little consciousness raising event about illegal immigration- by inviting the NYU community to take part in a mock hunt of illegal immigrants in the middle of Washington Square Park. Fun!The event was such a big success that a number of other schools decided to hold a similar event, including the University of Pennsylvania. The College Republicans at the University of Iowa scheduled their own for this June, but the subsequent outrage actually forced them to cancel.
This is where my friend, (former) New Yorker, immigration attorney and awesome rabble rouser, Ferzana Hashmi stepped in. After moving from New York to Iowa (gevald!) over a year ago, Ferzana opened her own small law firm specializing in immigration. As the child of immigrants (from Pakistan and Tanzania) and as a person of color, and a Muslim in Iowa, Ferzana has made it her business to stick up for immigrants’ rights and to bring a little balance to an often over-heated discussion. Iowa isn’t just a front-line of immigration debate (and reaction) it’s also a testing ground for political candidates and their positions– as we’re reminded as the Iowa caucus starts to get closer.
Ferzana and her law firm designed a day long game, taking place this Saturday, as a response to the Young Republicans ‘Find an Illegal Immigrant’ event. Her game is called ‘Find a Legal Way to Immigrate’ and players will be using a life sized board with the goal of immigrating– the winner being the one who finds a way to do it in under 10 years!
If there any Jewschoolers in Des Moines, come out to show your support for humane immigration reform, and take part in the bbq and Immigration Game this Saturday from 2-8 pm at Pete Crivaro Park in Des Moines.
 And kol ha’kavod Ferzana!
by rokhl [➚] · Wednesday, July 18th, 2007
From Workmen’s Circle HQ comes word of the upcoming Yiddish Fest at Lincoln Center:
This Sunday, July 22, at 6pm the world renowned Klezmer Conservatory Band from Boston will perform a FREE concert of Yiddish music at Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park, 62nd Street between Broadway and Amsterdam. The concert, which will pay special tribute to CLAIRE BARRY of the legendary Barry Sisters, will feature guest performances by Yiddish theater stars Joanne Borts, Eleanor Reissa, Lorin Sklamberg, and the Klezmer clarinet virtuoso Margot Leverett.
The YIDDISHFEST 2007 series carries on a 40 year tradition of The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring to bring the sounds of Yiddish music to the neighborhoods of New York with free events that feature the world’s leading performers of these cultural riches.
The Klezmer Conservatory Band, founded by its musical director Hankus Netsky, was among the cutting edge ensembles of the 1970′s who helped spawn a worldwide revival of Klezmer and Yiddish music that has inspired many young artists to embrace this culture. Their thrilling blend of Klezmer and Swing arrangements will have you dancing in the aisles.
The well-known Yiddishist and community leader Corey Breier will act as emcee.
Admission is free. There are VIP seats available for a contribution of $100. Please contact Dana Schneider at The Workmen’s Circle with any questions.
by rokhl [➚] · Friday, June 15th, 2007
Over the last couple of summers at Klezkanada, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting some of the young folks who are reinventing Jewish/Yiddish culture in the FSU, including the virtuosic Jewish/Gypsy folk explosion Dobranotch as well as the more rock and roll oriented Nayekhovichi, featuring Moscow based blues guitar legend, Vanya Zhuk. If you haven’t heard his new verses of Borscht (in yiddish, russian and english), then you’ve never tasted such a dish. Or heard such a song.
But besides the hot musicians and amazing new Yiddish song, there are other superstars of the Yiddish avant-garde of the FSU. Today I heard from Motl Gordon. In addition to studying mathematics, Motl teaches Yiddish sunday school at the JCC in St. Petersburg.
Â
This means he has little 7, 8 and 9 year olds performing (for example) Â yiddish purim shpiels that were collected in Ukraine by Moyshe Beregovski, some 90 years ago. A lot of the Beregovski material, some of the most important ethnographic work ever done on Yiddish, is still unavailable to us here in the US, especially if you don’t speak Russian. Point being, these little kidniks are doing stuff we can’t even dream about. The cuteness is almost too much to bear, even thousands of miles away.
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And it’s not just cute, though, Yiddish sunday school symbolizes a real, substantial, enviable commitment to the revitalization of Russian Jewish culture, a commitment that will have a profound impact on the future of spoken Yiddish in the FSU. Motl’s been doing this for three years and it’s been very successful, especially considering how Yiddish, and Jewish culture, barely survived the last sixty years or so. In fact, though the context is obviously wildly different, Yiddish faces similarly daunting challenges in the FSU as it does here in the US (discontinuity, lack of resources etc).
 Nonetheless, based on the success of the St. Petersburg sunday school, there will now be a similar school opening in Moscow, the nes (miracle) to which I refer in the title of this post. Here’s a brief word about it from Motl (in yiddish and english):
In september vet in Moskve onheybm tsu arbetn a naye zuntik-shul far yidishe mishpokhes “Di Yidishe shtikelekh”. Kinder un eltern veln zikh lernen yidishe shprakh, yidishe lider un traditsie mit profesionele lerers. S’iz di ershte azelkhe shul in Moskve un di tsveyte in Rusland (di ershte iz geven gegrindet in Peterburg dray yorn tsurik). Der program-direktor funem nayem zuntik-shul iz Motl Gordon, folklorist un lerer fun der yidisher shprakh.
“In September 2007, a new Yiddish Sunday school, Yiddishe Shtikelekh, will open in Moscow for Jewish families. Parents and children will learn Yiddish, Yiddish songs and traditions with professional teachers. This is the first school of its type in Moscow and the second in the FSU (the first was opened in St Petersburg three years ago). The program director of the new Sunday school is Motl Gordon, folklorist and teacher of Yiddish language. “
This will be first school in Moscow teaching Yiddish to Jewish children (and adults) in over 50 years. So mazel tov, Motl and I’m about to run home and make a l’khayim in your honor.
by rokhl [➚] · Thursday, June 14th, 2007
Wow, Kurt Waldheim- that name takes me back to sixth grade. I hoped assumed he was burning in a hell he theoretically believed in dead already. Check out this story about his life. Best parts: the writer of the obit refers to Waldheim’s lying about his service in the Nazi officer corps as his ”economy with the truth.” Also, during his tenure as Austrian president he was unwelcome in most parts of the world and he took virtually no official state trips to other countries- except to the Vatican (twice) and unspecified “Arab countries.”
by rokhl [➚] · Sunday, May 6th, 2007
Sunday, May 6th – 5-7 pm
Real Conversations About the ‘A’ Word:
Building Stronger Social Justice Movements While Resisting Antisemitism
Workmen’s Circle Building, 1762 Beacon Street, Brookline
5:00 – 7:00pm
With April Rosenblum
For the past decade or so, discussion of antisemitism has been largely co-opted by the Right and used as a tool for fear mongering.  Many of us on the Left have been turned off from these conversations – yet haven’t found spaces within our progressive circles to address antisemitism when real concerns do arise. April Rosenblum, a 27 year old activist with long-time commitment to building movements for social justice, makes the case that addressing antisemitism is crucial – both for Jews, and for everyone who wants to create powerful movements for social justice.  Join us for this opportunity to talk about antisemitism and how to address it within the Left, while strengthening, not distracting from, our progressive movement building.
This event will also be the public release of April’s newly-completed resource for activists, “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere”
Suggested donation: $3-$10
Co-Sponsored by the Workmen’s Circle, Organized Voice: the alumni
community of the Jewish Organizing Initiative, Kavod House and more.
by rokhl [➚] · Wednesday, April 25th, 2007
Did you miss Dan Kahn at Barbes? Did you miss Sarah Gordon and Michael Winograd at the pre-pesakh KaveHoyz singing powr ballads of the old country? Did you miss the last 25 years of the brilliance of Ms. Adrienne Cooper? Then here’s your chance to catch up.
 Tonight at The Stone (2nd street and avenue C) at 10pm,  see the best, brightest and some of the youngest (and middle-age-iest) stars of the Yiddish music scene!$10
10 pm
Adrienne Cooper, Friends and Relations
Adrienne Cooper (voice) Michael Winograd (clarinet, piano) Dan Blacksberg (trombone), Dan Kahn (vocals and squeezers)
Vocalist Adrienne Cooper is joined by clarinetist Michael Winograd, trombonist Dan Blacksberg, Yiddish Princess Sarah Gordon, Punk-Folk-Cabaret legend Dan Kahn and others for an intergenerational Yiddish intervention.
by rokhl [➚] · Friday, April 20th, 2007
Tonight at Barbes in Park Slope, a rare US appearance by the soon to be superstar Dan Kahn and his band The Painted Bird. If you’re not familiar with the novel which inspired Kahn’s project, I’ll tell you it’s the only book my parents ever forbade me from reading. They didn’t keep me from reading Anne Frank’s diary in fourth grade, or even taking out the book about Mengele in 7th. But Kozinski was beyond the pale. Gey veys. Go figure.
The Painted Bird (the novel) is an incredibly dark portrayal of life during World War II in Poland. It questions our very ability rise above our animal natures. It’s material is the grotesque and the grotesque as a reflection of life.
The Painted Bird, (the band), is an outgrowth of Dan Kahn’s travels as an American, and a Jew, in Central and Eastern Europe. (He’s been living in Berlin the last two years). It asks what it means to have an inheritance of victimhood but not be a victim oneself. And what does it mean to be the grandchild of perpetrators when one is not guilty of anything but being born into a troubled national legacy?
From his recent album Dos tsebrokhene loshn (the broken tongue) Kahn’s song Son of Plenty takes up the question:
Speak not of your righteousness/for though you might be true/ the tree of evil might just have its seed inside of you/ waiting for the proper time to bloom
We the chosen children of this martyrdom must learn/ that martyrs turn to murderers when tables have been turned/ and history repeats its bloody tune
This theme of the pathology of martyrdom and revenge shows up in a new song Kahn has been performing all over Europe and now here. It’s called Nakam and it’s about the aborted plan, devised by one of the leaders of the Vilna Partisans, Abba Kovner, to take revenge on the Germans, after the war, by poisoning the German water supply and extracting an equal number of German victims to match those who were sent to their death in the camps.
It’s a strange, uncomfortable and incredibly compelling story that challenges our ideas about healing, history and victimhood. As Dan told me, while his relatives here in the States have encouraged him not to perform it here, it’s his most popular song in Germany and Poland.
The music is part cabaret, part wine cellar, in yiddish, german and english, and leans heavily both on Tom Waits and Brecht. With the most important new Jewish clarinetist under 30, Michael Winograd, the band takes Jewish music to a whole new level. And while the subject matter is heavy, they’ve also got some of the funniest material I’ve heard in a long time, especially the new English verses for the classic Yiddish love song, Borscht, written by Dan and Moscow blues guitar legend Vanya Zhuk.
So don’t miss this rare show- Tonight, Barbes, at 8 pm.
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