Jewface: “Yiddish” Dialect Songs of Tin Pan Alley

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: Jewface: “Yiddish” Dialect Songs of Tin Pan Alley
Date: March 16, 2026
Guests: Eddie Portnoy (YIVO Senior Researcher & Curator), Jody Rosen (New York Times Magazine, author), with performance by actors including Allen Lewis Rickman and Yelena Shmulenson. Moderated by Alana Newhouse (Tablet Magazine).

Overview

This episode dives into the controversial yet fascinating history of "Jewface"—a genre of Yiddish dialect songs and comedic routines from Tin Pan Alley and vaudeville that satirized Jewish immigrant life. Hosted at the YIVO Institute, the conversation is wide-ranging: charting the emergence and popularity of these songs, their self-deprecating humor, complex resonance across generations, and their role in the Americanization and self-perception of Jewish immigrants. The episode includes live musical performances of original Jewface material not staged for nearly a century, followed by a deep-dive discussion with leading scholars and cultural critics.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Historical Context and Definition of "Jewface"

• Vaudeville and Ethnic Stereotypes (08:20):

  • Eddie Portnoy explains, "A hundred years ago, popular entertainment was based largely on ethnic stereotypes...the stage Jew...was like most ethnic stage performers, not only a bumbling fool, but also a cheapskate, a swindler and a cheat."
  • Initially created by non-Jews to satirize the influx of Jewish immigrants, these routines ("Jewface") were soon adopted—and enjoyed—by Jews themselves, drawing on a tradition of self-satire.

• Self-Deprecating Humor and Satire (08:20-10:00):

  • Jewish performers repurposed the anti-Semitic comedy into a form of self-awareness, linking it to long-standing traditions in Yiddish literature: "Bitter self satire was a cornerstone of 19th century Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment literature..."
  • The routines allowed for a degree of emotional distancing and even pride, as contemporary Jews could view the exaggerated stage "greenhorn" as unlike themselves.

• Controversy within the Jewish Community (09:30):

  • Not all Jews were comfortable with Jewface. The Central Conference of American Rabbis publicly condemned such stage performances in 1909, but found that by then, "the phenomenon had become an almost entirely Jewish affair."

• Distinctiveness and Legacy (13:00):

  • The stage Jew as a comic trope largely disappeared from mainstream culture by the 1920s, but Yiddish-inflected routines continued in American entertainment for decades.

2. Live Performances and Song Analysis

• Excerpts Performed (15:21–34:47):

  • Songs and sketches such as "Cohen Owes Me $97" (Irving Berlin), "Cohen on the Telephone," "Nathan, Nathan, What Are You Waiting For?" and others (some in Yiddish) are performed.
  • These pieces illustrate recurring tropes: language mistakes, romantic and financial anxieties, assimilation struggles, and affectionate mockery of immigrant life.

• Quote (Performers):

  • “It's a funny thing, every time I listen to that song, I think, okay, she's engaged to a guy named Nathan and it's going on for years. They're not getting married. There might be a musical in that.” —Allen Lewis Rickman (25:35)

3. Thematic Discussion: Assimilation, Identity, and Resonance

• Songs as a Mirror of Assimilation (35:37, 39:49):

  • Jody Rosen: “In these songs, whether they're mangling the English language...we find Jews, greenhorn...attempting to do archetypal American things...to become, quote, unquote, real Americans...”
  • Eddie Portnoy elaborates, "The Jewish viewers were able to create a distance between these ridiculous stage Jew characters and their own Jewish reality, which was not nearly as extreme or absurd."

• The Complexity and Enduring Appeal (42:00, 42:45):

  • Alana Newhouse raises how Jewface humor still resonates today, even for assimilated Jews, asking, “Is it because it feels like it’s part of a larger tradition that people feel connected to…or did it flip?”
  • Jody Rosen: “There’s a...straight line from this tradition...to Woody Allen, to Seinfeld, to Larry David. So this is not a tradition that’s dead…A lot of these jokes are just funny. They kill, right?”

• Musical Structure as Metaphor (45:18):

  • Songs "smuggle Yiddishkeit into mainstream popular culture." Often “verses use traditional Jewish musical tropes...Then...songs always move into major keys, into an American chorus. There’s kind of an assimilation...in every one of these songs.” —Jody Rosen

4. Comparison to Other Ethnic Parody (Blackface, Irish, Italian)

• On Ethnic Parody in American Entertainment (44:46, 62:22):
  • Jewface is contextualized against Blackface minstrelsy—more widely ridiculed and violently racist, but both performed by both insiders and outsiders to the ethnicity depicted.
  • “Blackface minstrelsy was the more popular version of this kind of ethnic comedy...but Jews—like Al Jolson, Sophie Tucker, Eddie Cantor—were often the ones performing both Blackface and Jewface acts.” —Jody Rosen

5. Legacy in Modern Comedy

• Influence on Later Generations (63:14, 64:54):
  • Discussion of Marx Brothers, Sid Caesar, Woody Allen, Larry David, Mel Brooks, etc. “You can draw a straight line from this tradition...to Woody Allen, Seinfeld, to Larry David.”
  • On “Jewface” tropes: “The Yiddish accent became this really...central trope in American comedy. You can still find remnants of this...like the mother from The Big Bang Theory speaks with a Yiddish accent.” —Eddie Portnoy (55:04)

6. Nostalgia and Transformation Over Time

• Evolving Sentiments (75:29, 76:25):
  • Eddie Portnoy: “The Jewface material...expresses a look to the future and what's more, a Jewish future...real Yiddish material often has a tendency toward nostalgia, but I think this material is much more in the present.”
  • Jody Rosen: “For the next generation of Jews...now they're able to even look back on the very place...not as fodder for a lampoon, but nostalgically. But that's a little bit later than the period we're talking about here.”

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On discomfort with the term “Jewface”:
  “A lot of people sort of bridle at that term. I don't blame you. I did as well...And then the more I thought about it...that's exactly what YIVO has to do. YIVO has to present things that startle you, that provoke you, that cause you to think twice.” —Intro (04:10)
• Describing the assimilation process:
  “It helps him. It works in the process of his assimilation. It’s something that’s useful to him or her. On the other hand ...these songs smuggle Yiddishkeit into mainstream popular culture.” —Jody Rosen (45:18)
• On lasting cultural impact:
  “You can draw a straight line from this tradition straight through to...Woody Allen to Seinfeld to Larry David. So this is not a tradition that’s dead.” —Jody Rosen (42:45)
• On the musical crossover:
  “The verses are Jewish. Musically, the choruses are American. So I think...for a Jew who wanted to distance himself...there was that going on. And there was also the thrill that we all get...when you turn on the TV and there’s a Jewish joke.” —Jody Rosen (47:20)
• On nostalgia:
  “The Jew based material...expresses a look to the future and what’s more, a Jewish future...the real Yiddish material often has a tendency toward nostalgia, but I think this material is much more in the present.” —Eddie Portnoy (75:29)
• On Blackface and its relation to Jewface:
  “Blackface minstrelsy was the very much more popular version of this kind of ethnic comedy.” —Jody Rosen (62:30) “Jews were so dominant...there were Jewish Irish comedians too. But...there’s a very interesting book...called Blackface, White Noise...about the dynamics of blackface performance by Jewish immigrants.” —Jody Rosen (68:00)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:01–08:20: Opening, YIVO context, historicizing Jewface, introduction to Eddie Portnoy.
• 08:20–13:00: Portnoy’s scholarly overview: stage Jew, origins, complexities, audience dynamics.
• 15:21–34:47: Live musical performances of classic routines and songs.
• 34:47–35:37: Start of panel discussion — Alana Newhouse, Jody Rosen, Eddie Portnoy.
• 35:37–39:49: Rosen on song messaging: themes and transmission.
• 39:49–45:18: Audience emotional dynamics, assimilation, resonance today.
• 45:18–47:20: Musical structure, cultural embedding of Yiddishkeit.
• 62:22–66:03: Blackface discussion and audience Q&A on cultural legacy.
• 75:16–78:22: Panelists reflect on nostalgia and how humor's meaning has shifted over time.

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Conclusion

This episode is a vibrant, intellectually rich exploration of how "Jewface" songs were not simply offensive relics, but played a complex role in Jewish-American culture—helping assimilate, lampoon, and preserve immigrant experiences. The panel and performers unpack both the problematic aspects and the enduring, even cherished, resonance these routines have had across generations, in music, comedy, and cultural identity.

Recommended for: Anyone interested in Jewish history, American popular culture, the roots of modern comedy, or the ongoing dialogue between ethnic identity and assimilation.

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the New Books Network. Good evening everyone. This is a very, very special evening. I think you're going to enjoy this presentation. And if you haven't enjoyed the exhibit that is in the Constantino Gallery to the right of the lobby and down the hall as you go out of this theater, you will certainly enjoy doing that after the presentation here. It's a very special evening. Everything that Eddie Portnoy does here is very special. I'm delighted to see his family here. And Eddie, who is curating one wonderful exhibit after another for us, is the really force behind this exhibition in the Konstantiner Jew Face, which a lot of people sort of bridle at that term. I don't blame you. I did as well when Eddie first presented it to me. And then the more I thought about it, the more I thought, yes, that's exactly what Yivo has to do. Yivo has to present things that startle you, that provoke you, that cause you to think twice about what's going on in the world. And indeed, that's exactly what our archives do. They do it in terms of 18th century Jewish Talmudic law. They do it with respect to the rights and the privileges of women in pre revolutionary France. They do it with respect to the liquor trade. They do it with respect to. To Jewish non Jewish interaction in Poland and the Pale of Settlement. Exploring our archives is a window onto a world that will at every turn cause you to think twice about who you are as a Jew. How you got to these shores, what it means to have been the and to be the product of your parents and your grandparents and your great grandparents experience in a world that you can only vaguely recollect, vaguely have a sense of. And when you do come to have a sense of that world, you will find it teeming with the most astonishing facts about who we are as a people. And Jewface is just one of those. How it got to be called Jew face, how it developed into vaudeville, and the enormous enthusiasm that it elicited among the Jewish masses here in New York City is a great story. All I can say is that my grandfather's favorite tune, which he transmitted somehow or other to myself, goes like this. Yeche bin ein alt in bock von old Kentucky. To leave you me ain't got no luck. And my father always assured me that my grandfather, who was something of a homegrown wizard, had invented this. I now realize that it came straight out of one of those incredible Jew face vaudeville acts. And it shows how these things are implanted in us and we do not know what these things are. And that's the brilliance I think, of this exhibit. We have on the table, outside on the development table, a number of brochures. I wish to draw your attention to them. In particular, those of you who have not yet learned of the extraordinary YIVO undertaking called the Yivo Vilna Collections Digitization Project, which involves the preserving, the processing and the digitizing of all of YIVO's pre war holdings, both those that remain in Vilnius, Lithuania and those that are today in New York City, to digitize all of these materials and create a single unified database. Those of you who do not already know about this project and care about who we are as a people and how we transmit our knowledge of ourselves to another generation, I beg you to pick up that brochure and see what it is that the YIVO Institute is doing. Yitzhaka Rad said, this project is essential for the future of the Jewish Jewish people because it will restore our past to ourselves. And part of what it will restore are things like this extraordinary exhibit that you see in the Konstantino Gallery. YIVO is doing more than that as well. We have full slate of programs that are presided over by Helena Gindy. Where is Helena? Helena Gindi, who is our program director and I wish to thank her for working with Eddie to put on tonight's program. Before I introduce Eddie, however, I want to call your attention to one of those programs in particular. On December 2nd, Wednesday, and unfortunately I will be in London and not able to be present for it. Judith Bergson presents Cantorial Music from the YIVO Archives. YIVO invited Judith into its archives to work with its cantorial collection because our archives are vast. It includes music, it includes visual art, it includes photographs, it includes film, it includes manuscripts, it includes medical records, it includes the Ganzige Schichte. And we invited Judith to come and perform music from our archives along with a premiere of her original work inspired by the collections. Judith is indeed an extraordinary museum. Any one of you who is a musician will have heard of the Kronos Quartet of which she is a principal part. She will perform with her ensemble which includes Grammy winning musician Frank London and Clique Sherry, who performs a very rare style of Irish fiddling. And if you think that's out of place here, I suggest you go and look at the Jewface exhibit. For more information, see the insides of our programs or visit yivo.org second if you like what you see here tonight, I invite you to become a member. I invite you to become a supporter. Moral support is welcome. Financial support is also welcome. We rely on you. We rely on the goodwill of people. We rely on our staff to put on exceptional events like this. And now it's my pleasure to introduce Eddie. I have a whole paragraph here, but he said to throw that out. It was just too verbose and simply go with Eddie Portnoy is a specialist in Jewish Popular culture with graduate degrees from Columbia and jts. He serves as EVO Senior Researcher and Exhibit Curator or something like that. Thank you very much.

[B]

Thank you Jonathan, and also thank you Helena and Jessica and everyone at YIVO who helped organize this. So what, what is this Jew face about? A hundred years ago, popular popular entertainment was based largely on ethnic stereotypes, the best known of them being blackfaced minstrels. What is less well known that virtually every ethnic group, Irish, Italian Jews, Indians and Chinese, among others, was bitterly mocked on the stages of vaudeville. Exploiting crude stereotypes for alleged comic effect, these performances were accepted at the time as a standard form of entertainment. If it's not already obvious, this material is considered extremely offensive by today's standards. The stage Jew, as the Jewish variant was then known as was like most ethnic stage performers, not only a bumbling fool, but also a cheapskate, a swindler and a cheat. With his big fake nose, his fake beard, black hat and thick Yiddish accent, he was essentially the Jewish variant of the blackface minstrel created initially by gentile performers to mock the large numbers of Jewish immigrants that began arriving in large numbers during the 1880s. By the early 20th century, Jews themselves began to perform these bits, and in a surprise twist, Jewish audiences liked it. But self deprecating humor was already a stock in trade among Jews. Bitter self satire was a cornerstone of 19th century Haskalah or Jewish Enlightenment literature. With Yiddish writers like Yitzhak Yoel Netsky and Mendela Mohar Svorim taking Jewish life to task in brutally comic ways. So for Jewish performers to have reappropriated what was a type of anti Semitic comedy perhaps shouldn't be so surprising. Many a Jewish joke has run exactly the same course as a historical phenomenon. One of the compelling matters is how Jewish immigrants and their progeny both enjoyed Jufe's performances and used them as a way to distance themselves from the way they perceived earlier incarnations of their immigrant selves. Yes, they may have been immigrants, they may have spoken with Yiddish accents, but they were never as ridiculous as the characters they saw on stage. As a result of this distance between the stage Jew and Jewish reality, many of the immigrant generation were able to enjoy these comic portrayals. But of course, not everyone saw it that way. Some Jews found these performances absolutely appalling. In 1909, the Central Conference of American Rabbis passed a resolution at their annual conference decrying the existence of the stage Jew and setting out plans to protest it. After a few years of failed interventions with theater owners and managers, the organization discovered that the phenomenon had become an almost entirely Jewish affair. The theater owners, the managers, the agents, the songwriters and the performers were all Jewish. Even the audiences were mostly Jewish. And the stage dialogue sometimes had so much Yiddish that only Jews could possibly understand it. In the end, there really wasn't much they could do. Now, not only did this type of comic performer exist in vaudeville, but there's a variant that also existed in Yiddish theater. There were numerous Yiddish routines that made fun of greenhorns or recently arrived immigrants and their foibles and fumbles with the English language. One of the better known characters, a man named Getzel, featured a recently arrived immigrant engaging different aspects of American culture. In one of these bits, and their are dozens and dozens of them. Getzel describes how much he loves cantorial music. And after hearing about a great cantor in the Bronx, in the Bronx named Yankel, he sets out to see him after getting out of the subway. Genzel is duly impressed when he finds out that Cantor Yankel is so famous that he has his own gigantic shul named after him called Yankel Stadium. So not only. Not only did the Jews mock their predicaments in English, they did so in Yiddish as well. Now, as the window on what one can and cannot mock in popular culture continues to close, we understand that most of these century old comedy routines are long past their sell dates, but they nonetheless serve as a valuable marker of aspects of culture that have disappeared and how society's reception of such comic material has changed. Though the stage Jew began to disappear in the 1920s, Yiddish inflected routines remained a mainstay of American comedy through the end of the 20th century and represent a remaining vestige of vaudevillian ethnic performance now. And all of you are extremely lucky. You're about to have the experience of hearing material that hasn't been performed in about 100 years. It may be a hundred years before they perform it again, but it'll be a really unique experience. Now I want to give my most profound thanks to Jody Rosen, who loaned part of his collection for the exhibit and for participating here tonight. I'd like to thank Alex Brandwein for doing a marvelous job in designing the exhibit. And I will now introduce the performers. YELENA schmulensen, the I have to say that our performers this evening are are all very, very accomplished and they have very long bios, and I've really shortened them to an extreme degree. I'm a bit embarrassed about it, but Yelen Schmulensen's credits include the Coen Brothers films A Serious man and, among many others, the TV shows Boardwalk Empire and Orange Is the New Black. Alan Lewis Rickman is an actor, director and writer who can also be seen in A Serious man and Boardwalk Empire and who, among many, many other things, has directed the Pirates of Penzance in Yiddish. Steve Stirner has written music for and accompanied over 300 silent films at venues such as Film Forum, MoMA, Lincoln Center, BAM and the Thalia Theater. Veteran New York City pianist, he's also performed off Broadway and on television. I thank them all profusely. Now, please do not leave the theater after the performance. We will have a brief discussion afterward with Jody Rosen, whose materials most of these materials belong to. Jody is the New York Times Sunday Magazine critic at large and the author of White Story of an American Song. The discussion will be moderated by Alana Newhouse, the editor in chief of Tablet magazine, and following that, there will be a reception outside the auditorium. Now, without further ado, here is Jew face.

[C]

Old man rose and thou lay sick in bed. Soon the doctor came around and said,

[D]

no use crying, the man is dying, he can't live very long. Send my son here to my side

[C]

they heard the old man say, I've

[D]

got something to tell him before I pass away.

[C]

Soon his son was sitting by his

[D]

bed what's the matter, Papa dear? He said the old man said, my son before my day, I want you should know Cohen owes me $97 and it's up to you to see that Cohen pays. I sold a lot of goods to Rosenstein and Sons on and I owe you for 90 days Levi brothers don't get any credit they owe me for a hundred yards of lace if you promise me, my son you'll collect from everyone I can die with a smile upon my face.

[C]

Old man Rosenthal is better now he just simply wouldn't die somehow he is healthy and very wealthy since he got out of bed Such a change you never saw he's got such rosy cheeks he picks up in just one week that should take weeks and weeks. Everyone that knew that he was sick Couldn't tell how he got well so quick they went and asked him to explain how he pulled through rose and thaw Replied

[D]

Cohen owed me $97. And my son, he went and made for Cohen Bay A bill was owed to me by Rosenstein and Sons, and they settled on that very day. Now what would my son do with all that money? If I should leave it all and say goodbye it's all right to pass away but when people start to pay that's no time for a businessman to die. That song was written by Irving Berlin, a man much later known as America's songwriter. This. This first sketch that we're going to do. This is one of the most popular comedy records of the 1910s and 1920s. The first version of this sold so many that there were four different cover versions of it done afterwards, all through the 1910s and 1920s. It's called Cohen on the Telephone.

[A]

Hello?

[D]

Are you there?

[E]

Hello?

[D]

Are you there?

[E]

Hello?

[D]

Are you there? Yes, Hello, Miss. What. What number do I want? What numbers have you got? Oh, oh, oh. Oh, I'm sorry, my mistook. Please Give me Central 2, 4, 8, please. Yes, Central 2 4, 8. Listen, miss, before you come back, do I have to keep saying over and over, hello? And are you there? Well, don't take too long, please. Hello, Are you there?

[A]

Hello?

[D]

Are you there?

[C]

Hello, Are you there?

[D]

Hello? Are you the bank? Yeah. Listen, I want to see the manager. I said I want to see the manager. What's that? This is a telephone, not a telescope. I see. You think you're very clever, ain't it? Listen, do me a favor. Hang a small piece of crepe on the end of your nose. Your brain is dead. And listen, if I hear any more from you appointments, I'm going to speak to the manager. I said I'm going to speak to the manager. Oh, this is the manager. Oh, much obliged. Excuse me, please. I beg your pardon. Hello, Are you there? Listen, I'm your tenant cone, and I'm ringing you to tell you that last night. David. What? I said I'm your tenant cone, and I'm telling you that I'm your tenant cone. I'm Kong. I'm not gone. I'm staying there. Yes, I'm Lieutenant cone, and I want to tell you last night. What? I'm Lieutenant cone, not Lieutenant Cone. No, last night the wind came and blew down the shutter from my house, and I want the wind. Yes, the wind came and blew down the shutter from outside by the shutter shut down.

[E]

Shut.

[D]

I didn't say shut up. I listened. I'm Lieutenant Colin, and last night the wind came and blew down the shutter from outside my house, and I Want you should send a carpenter to Mandebrok. A carpenter? A carpenter. A workman. Yes, yes. One of those fellows hits the hammer with the nails. Yes, yes. I want you should send the carpenter to mend the damaged shudder. I did damage them. I'm not swearing. Listen, I'm Lieutenant cone and I want you to send a carpenter to mend the damage to men. Two men. Not two men. One man. Yes. Listen, I'm Lieutenant cone and I. No, no. I'm Lieutenant cone and I want you should send the carpenter to mend the damaged shot.

[C]

Never mind.

[D]

I'll do it myself.

[C]

Nathan and Rosalie, they both kept company. They both kept company for six long years. And every time she'd ask him, when will you marry me? He said, I don't make enough salary. Each time Nathan tried to kiss her, Rosie cried. Nathan, Nathan, Nathan, tell me for what you are waiting, Nathan. You said we'll marry in June, my dear. You told me what month, but you didn't say what year. My whole family, they keep asking me no when. And I don't. I don't know what to tell him. Nathan, Nathan, Nathan. I'm sick and tired of aight. Nathan. Every minute seems like ages. I should live to see the day that you make heavy wages. Nathan, Nathan, what are you waiting for? Yes, Nathan. You say you love me. It listens good even if you don't mean it. You say, if I had the money, I'd buy for you this and I'd buy for you that. If you had the money. Every night you come by the house. And every night you sit down by the table. And every night right away, the mama brings you a half glass tea, meat, lemon, ain't it? Papa also shows you a good time. He tells you a history of his past life. He plays pinochle, meet you. In fact, he treats you like a regular human being. Every night we go together. Before o' clock in the morning, you squeeze my hand. You sit me on your lap and you kiss me. That don't cost you nothing, ain't it? Papa said if we get married this year, sure he'll give me a check for the $10,000 or $300 in cash. First you said we'll get married in June. Then you postponed it until next December. Then you said positively next May. And now you're saying definitely next December. Oi, Nathan. Nathan, Nathan. I'm so disgusted with. How can I face my people? They all want to know if you're a cripple. Nathan, Nathan, what are you waiting for?

[D]

It's A funny thing. Every time I listen to that song, I think, okay, she's engaged to a guy named Nathan and it's going on for years. They're not getting married. There might be a musical in that. This night you never heard.

[F]

To you.

[D]

This next sketch that we're going to do is going to be something a little different. This one is going to be in Yiddish. Now, as Eddie alluded to before, there was an awful lot of Yiddish ethnic humor in the Yiddish language that's very, very similar to the stuff that's in the English language. This particular sketch was also quite popular, was recorded a number of times. And in this one you get the benefit of not just one ethnic stereotype, but two ethnic stereotypes, because this sketch is about a Jewish girl married to an Italian guy, and it's entirely in Yiddish. Now, the sketches about the difficulties they have in their relationship, arguments about what they're going to name their baby, et cetera. It's loaded with wordplay involving the way he mangles blessings, this and that. Now, usually when we do something in Yiddish, we use super titles to translate it, but with all the wordplay, this would be absolutely impossible to translate. We'd be reading the supertitles till about 4 in the morning. So if you don't happen to speak Yiddish, unfortunately for the next about two and a half minutes, you're off. Gehakta tsouris. Thank you very much.

[C]

Good boy. Numinous while Ikvala Sanoman game Nuhme maman un ervilasanumen Game. Now baby's all right. A sloth and the ashkut, please.

[D]

Ah, sure. For sure. Give a hand A glaze of the iron.

[C]

Nadia Glazel vine Mahesh.

[D]

I don't know. The chinese jew.

[C]

Chinese jew, same thing.

[D]

It's all right. Mariana Capitolana Macaroni Magdalena.

[C]

Get me dear.

[D]

Hey, you want to get the gift? You break my heart. Look at my heart. The she's making a bangs a bang like a fire so cracker the 4th

[C]

of July I don't care. Mein tat is given dry Moldy President in S.H.I.E.L.D. mein mom is given digrest tikar in

[D]

Buddha's what's the matter with the mine the mishpuch My papa's giving a bigger politician street cleaner and my cousin is organ with the monkey that's my mishpuka. Hey, let me know. Like Gilga Mirga. That's a funny name. Let's make it a half is a half. So 50 is a 50.

[C]

All right, all right.

[D]

Believe it or not, that's based On a sketch by Noel Coward. And for our final song, we'll do our final song. There's certain girlie called Ghetto Queen.

[C]

Dresses fancy on Delancey Street. She rules supreme.

[D]

How she vamps the fellows honest it's a treat. She looks like Theda Bara all except her feet. Vamping Rose, there she goes with her fancy clothes. Goodness me, can it be? My, what class she shows.

[C]

Then she flits to the Ritz where

[D]

she sits and sits and she acts like a room and bath.

[C]

She'll have tea and lemon.

[D]

She wears a gem from the 5 and 10. With her flash and her she gets all the men.

[C]

She don't care for a heart, she just tears it apart.

[D]

That's why they call her Vamping Rose. Vamping Rose, there she goes in her fancy clothes.

[C]

Goodness me, can it be?

[D]

My, what class she shows.

[C]

Then she flits to the Ritz where

[D]

she sits and sits and she acts like a room and bear she's got indignation. She wears a gem from the five. And with her flash and her dash she gets all the men.

[C]

When they call on the phone she makes out she ain't home.

[D]

That's why they call her Vamping Rose. What a voice for singing. From her mouth it flows.

[C]

Mary Garden. I beg your pardon. She can sing like Rose.

[D]

When it comes to operations she knows every part.

[C]

Do you know Caruso?

[D]

She knows it by heart. Vamping Rose, there she goes with her fancy clothes and her shoes. Number two's how they pinch her toes.

[C]

She's got style and a smile you can see a mile for.

[D]

It shows off her bright gold teeth.

[C]

She's an uptown people.

[D]

Jewelry she'll wear that's beyond compare. Looks alright late at night when the lights are there.

[C]

She's got rouge on her cheeks.

[D]

It's been on there for weeks. That's why they call her Vamping Rose. Vamping Rose, there she goes in her fancy clothes. Goodness me, can it be? My, what class she shows. Then she flits to the Ritz where she sits and sits and she acts like a room and bath, how she hates. She wears a gem from the 5 and 10. With her flash and her dash she gets on the men.

[C]

She don't care for a heart, she just tears it apart. That's why they call her Vamping Roast.

[D]

She's the Queen Esther.

[C]

That's why they call her Vamping Rose.

[D]

You're a mott and hester. That's why they call her Vamping Rose.

[G]

Hi everyone.

[A]

Hi.

[G]

I'm. I'm Alana. I'm the one that's Alana on stage. This is Jody Rosen and Eddie Portnoy. Thank you. Well, you all seem to have really enjoyed yourselves, so it's my job to actually put. But I wonder if you knew what you were listening to, because the songs that are part of this whole time period are actually quite complicated. And what I thought we would do is I really would like for Jodi to just give us a tiny bit of a sense of what the actual messaging of the songs were and what you think they. What were they transmitting. And then I. And then I'll ask you a little bit about what you think the audience was hearing in them.

[E]

Okay, well, maybe I'll. You know what, Maybe I'll give a little backstory about how I came to this genre, because this is. This is, I think, gets at the question you're asking in kind of a backdoor way. So very long ago, when I was a young man, sort of younger, I was doing graduate work and I was very interested in American popular culture of this period of the kind of late 19th century, early 20th century period. And I actually was in the British Library in London, England, and looking at old sheet music, and I came across a song which I think was from 1940, 14, called I Want to Be an Oi Oi Oyviator. This was a song from the period. There were a lot of novelty songs about aviation, about airplanes and dirigibles and such. Because this was a novelty at the time. A lot of the popular songs in this period were about new technology, dance crazes, very topical music about issues in the news, stuff like that. But anyway, this really took me aback. This was clearly a Jewish themed song about aviation. And the storyline of the song was that a Jew tried and failed spectacularly to fly an airplane. That kind of in miniature is what the themes of many of these songs are. Because what we see in these songs, whether they're mangling the English language or they're sort of trying and failing to navigate romantic travails or trying to do often in the songs they trying to. We find Jews, greenhorn, as Eddie said, Jewish immigrants attempting to do kind of archetypal American things, whether it's fly an airplane, playing a baseball game, be a cowboy, be an Indian. So to get back to your question, Alana, what these songs are songs which, as Eddie said, kind of gently and not so gently mock the efforts of immigrant Jews to assimilate and to. And to become, quote, unquote, real Americans at a time, of course, when. When that was very Much the drama that was taking place in the country, especially in immigrant enclaves like on the Lower east side here in New York. And you know, interestingly, much of the popular culture of the period was being produced by immigrants themselves or second generation, you know, children of immigrants. And it revolved around these themes. And what really drew me to this particular genre, got me really interested in it is of course that Jews are, are known. It's, it's well known that, that Jews were dominant figures in Tin Pan Alley, in vaudeville and popular entertainment. That Jew, that the, the psalm business in particular, in both its kind of business and creative spheres was dominated by Jews, by Jewish kind of popular psalm moguls, the owners of, of sheet music concerns, of publishing houses, and of course the great. So many of the great songwriters like Irving Berlin were Jews who were themselves immigrants like Berlin or children of immigrants like for instance, the Gershwins. But here was a genre which would. We not only had kind of Jews making American music, but Jews making American music whose theme was in various ways Jewish life.

[G]

So, but it was, it's Jewish. It's a little bit more complicated than just the themes of Jewish life. Right? It's pretty, these, this music's pretty intense and a lot of it. If I can just sort of ask Eddie question. Much of this, as even the snippets that we were able to see tonight shows, a lot of these songs used Yiddish, Yiddish inflection, Yiddish language to transmit messaging to the audience, most of whom were Yiddish speakers. If I could just ask you, if you, what do you think the audience was hearing? And more importantly, these songs are incredibly popular. And there is one school of thought that would ask why. I mean, in some senses the songs ridicule the very people who they were designed to entertain. So what particular emotional dynamic was going on for that audience, do you think?

[B]

Well, one of the things I alluded to in my preface was that Jews had a long history of self deprecating humor. From the period of the Haskalah in the, in the 19th century when modern Yiddish literature was created, Yiddish writers really took traditional Jewish communities to task in brutally satirical ways. You know, this is sort of the origin of, of this type of humor. When you wind up in America, Yiddish became, I mean first of all, when, when, you know, between 1880 and 1924, about 2 million Jews, mostly Yiddish speaking Jews came to America. That created an enormous critical mass of Yiddish speakers. In New York City you had four to five daily Yiddish newspapers, you know, Yiddish theater. You had enormous, enormous Yiddish culture here and non Jewish New Yorkers heard Yiddish on a daily basis. And in fact, I've seen articles in the Yiddish press that talk about that, interview gentiles who live in Jewish neighborhoods who speak Yiddish, because that's the. That's the lingua franca, that's the vernacular of the neighborhood. And all of this gets exposed in this type of entertainment. And because all of these immigrants are fumbling with the English language, it becomes a foil for comedy. It's, you know, anyone who has learned a foreign language has invariably made mistakes in that foreign language, and very often they're funny. Now, when they saw the stage Jew, when they saw this performed on stage, the characters were often buffoons. And like I said, it created. The Jewish viewers were able to create a distance between these ridiculous stage Jew characters and their own Jewish reality, which was not nearly as extreme or absurd. So. And in that sense, it helped to Americanize them and help them to feel comfortable in their language, in their accents.

[F]

Right.

[G]

Except the stuff, I get that, and I think that that does resonate with me. But the problem is that the stuff is still funny, and it's still funny now to an American Jewish community that's entirely assimilated. So then my question to both of you, frankly, is what's the resonance still of it? Is it because it feels like it's part of a larger tradition that people feel connected to, or is it. Did it flip? Is it playing off something else where now it makes us feel connected to tradition, not so much to assimilation? I mean, what. Because you have an audience here, there may be immigrants or non English speakers in the audience, but a lot of the people, in fact, some of the people I know here who are laughing, who I saw are Americans. So what is it about these songs that is still so resonant?

[E]

Well, you know, Jews like Jewish jokes, okay? And in fact, not just. It's not only Jews who like Jewish jokes. Gentiles like Jewish jokes. We know this because so much for American popular culture for the last century plus is comprised of Jewish jokes, right? So there's a. You can draw a straight line from this tradition straight through to. Well, certainly you can draw it to Hitler on the roof if I Was a Rich Man. What is that? That's a Jew faced song of a sort, right? And you can certainly draw the character of the kind of, you know, Jewish schlemiel straight through from vaudeville to Woody Allen to Seinfeld to Larry David. So this is not a tradition that's dead. I think one of the reasons, you know, and, and I mean, the other thing I'd step back and say is that, you know, a lot of these jokes are just funny. They kill, right? So if, like, if a joke is a joke, if it's a good joke, it's. It manages to resonate a century on. But to go back to what Eddie was saying, I think one way to look at the complexity of these songs and the way they were working. Yes, as Eddie said, the context of this is American popular culture at the time, where everybody's being made fun of very coarsely and very roughly. There's kind of like a hazing that's happening in American popular theater in particular, which was really the centerpiece of pop culture at this time. And the center and the. And also the big venue for popular song. And, you know, so you've got songs about Irishmen that are. That are in dire. Like songs, as Eddie said, about, quote, waps that are in, you know, Italian theme songs. And right on down the line, you name an ethnicity, they're made fun of. There's a big tradition of rub songs, okay. About people, bumpkins, that is people from the country coming to the big city and Pratt falling in various ways. And of course, the most popular and ubiquitous form of this were the blackface, quote, unquote, coon songs at the time. Which is really a very complicated question and also is really at the root of all of American popular music then.

[G]

And since why is blackface. Why does blackface feel to me so much more complicated than Two Faces? Is it because I'm Jewish?

[E]

Yeah. But also because so much of American pop music is basically African American music, and there's been such a history of exploitation by white profiteers off of black music at the expense of black performers. So that's, I think.

[G]

And so for the Jewish people who are writing for Jewish songwriters, they were part of an industry that in some senses was controlled by Jews up and down. So you're saying that it feels different this.

[E]

Well, this was more of an in joke. An in joke, an in group form of entertainment, which made it slightly less complicated. But one of the things that I think is interesting about these songs, as Eddie said, it's a way for the audience. There is a distancing effect. Okay. It's sort of. For an audience member can sit there. It's maybe a young Jewish immigrant who's well on his way to assimilating. Maybe his parents actually only speak Yiddish still, or their English is very bad. But he can say, I'm not that Jew up on the stage that's being made Fun of I'm an American, I'm a modern new guy. So in that sense, it helps him. It works in the process of his assimilation. It's something that's useful to him or her. On the other hand, I think there's something even more complicated which is going on here, which is that these songs smuggle Yiddishkeit into mainstream popular culture. Right. So a lot of the songs, if you notice these songs, the verses use traditional Jewish musical tropes, okay? Minor chords, minor key melodies, even specific musical phrases that come straight out of Jewish liturgical music or Yiddish folk song. Jewish audiences recognize those and may have had an illicit thrill in being at a theater on the Bowery or on 14th street and hearing a Jewish song being played for an audience that wasn't just Jews, there were Jews and others. And then on the other hand, the psalms do an interesting thing musically, which is they always move into major keys, into an American song in the verse, in the choruses. So there's kind of an assimilation, a miniature assimilation that takes place even within every one of these songs because they're quite standardized. The verses are Jewish. Musically, the choruses are American. So I think that Jews could. On the one hand, for a Jew who wanted to distance himself from the buffoonish Jew faced performer, there was that going on. And there was also the thrill that we all get, right. If you're a Jewish person and you turn on the TV and there's a Jewish joke on a nightly sitcom, you know, you get a. You get a special little frisson, right? Because you're hearing something.

[C]

Yeah.

[G]

I remember when there was a Sex in the City episode where Sarah Jessica Parker's character goes to a vintage store and she buys a T shirt that says Camp Hubo Nim. And I was like, there's no way anyone gets that joke except for me, basically. But it was a really good joke for me. Yeah. Eddie, is there something for somebody who is so steeped in the language and who also. And who can really feel and hear a lot of the jokes that a lot of your contemporaries maybe can't hear them. Is there something. Something somber in it for you? Like this sense that. That what would ha. What happens to these songs now? I mean, there isn't a huge audience of people who can get the texture of a million different jokes. Some of them are intense and sort of very overt jokes, and some of them are very subtle. And so is that I forget about the musical messaging. Just the language messaging is that.

[B]

I mean, you know, American Jewry no longer speaks Yiddish. As it's vernacular. So, you know, a lot of this is lost, but it's like anything, and it's like any aspect of history and culture. You know, you. You know, people. There's actually a terrific book that came out a few years ago called American Cornball, and it's an encyclopedia of things that are no longer funny in American culture. It's really quite fascinating. And it's a huge, like a, I don't know, 6, 700 page compendium of material that was once integral to popular culture but is no longer and is no longer funny. So you have, you know, I mean, if you read Yiddish literature and you are not familiar with its sources and the lives of. Of Jews, of the periods in which it was written, you'll.

[A]

You'll.

[B]

You know, you can never really understand all of it. I mean, it, you know, it's impossible. I mean, any. Anything that, you know, is of a certain age, an enormous amount of material gets lost linguistically, culturally. It's. It's inevitable. It's. It happens in every culture.

[G]

I don't want to, you know, you guys don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but I am kind of interested in. It would sort of be remiss if I didn't mention, especially as Jodi talked about this being part of a time when it was kind of everybody was being ridiculed and that it was almost. There was a sense of one upmanship. It feels to me, as you describe it, almost like the exact inverse of the moment that we're in right now culturally, where nobody can be ridiculed. And in fact, it's incredibly scary to ridicule your own group or any other group. And it feels to me, and I don't know whether I'm right, but it feels like. I wonder if it. For people who create art, if it's constraining or if it's actually inspiring. I don't know. But do you feel it the same way when you think back on that time? Do you see it as a time when that one upmanship, where that constant sense of everybody can be offended, actually created something exciting or it was just kind of not necessarily relevant to the creation of the stuff?

[B]

Yeah, don't answer.

[E]

Don't answer. No, I mean, I mean, look, there was a lot of. We shouldn't minimize the pain that was behind. That's behind this material. Right. It was a difficult time to be an immigrant, to be a minority in this country. The country was, you know, it was. The culture was very much I mean, the larger context, the context of the melting pot was this very. What was perceived broadly across the culture as an urgent need to turn these immigrants into Amer, into Americans and to remove the ethnic taint. This was, you know, felt by the majority, very strongly by the majority culture and on the part of the immigrants themselves. Now I, you know, a lot of kind of festive, fun popular culture came out of this and stuff, especially now that we can look back with and maybe and be distanced from the pain of it. But it was difficult. Draconian anti immigration legislation was passed, of course, in the 1920s. So what we're looking at is a snapshot of a very particular period before this very explicitly ethnic pantomime pastiche stuff went underground for various reasons, both because people began to realize that this was very offensive and would not fly, and also because it, and this speaks to what Eddie was talking about, about the way this pop culture worked in the process of assimilation. It kind of went underground because it was no longer useful to the audiences themselves. The Jews themselves were too busy trying to be American Jewish suburbanites to really want to flaunt their ethnicity or the, you know, to, to remember the. It's only when we get to Fiddler on the Roof, right, When we're like three generations removed, when there's suddenly this sentimentalization of the immigrant experience and even of the shtetl, right? So we can go back and have these songs which romanticize shtetlife, right? At this time, there was nobody romanticizing shtetlife. It was something to be ashamed of and run away from. I mean, and the ways, if you look at the course of Jewish popular culture, it kind of went underground and emerged in very, in very specific venues. It leached out of the mainstream culture. So at the time, at the time, these Jew faced songs were popular roughly between 1890 and the end of the First World War, or maybe up till the early 1920s, it was in popular theater on Broadway. You could see this stuff. After that, all the pop songs were 32 bars on the theme I love you. These songs disappeared, right? Everyone was just writing Someone to watch over me. Or suddenly Irving Berlin wasn't writing Cohen owes me $97. He was writing Blue Skies, right? And. But in places like the cruise ship circuit and the Catskills, you have acts like Mickey Cats, right, Who was doing Yiddish yinglish pastiche very much in this tradition. But that was for Jewish audiences in walled off Jewish enclaves where like, you didn't have to worry about the goyim. It was your own thing. I don't know, I'm just rambling, right? Somebody interrupt me.

[B]

No, no, you know what? I think you're right. I think that, you know, this, this type of performance resurfaces in places like the Catskills and mostly through American comedy. Through the Jewish dominance in American comedy, you wind up with performers continuing through the 1950s and 60s to do bits with Yiddish accents or doing performances in performing English language jokes with Yiddish punchlines. You have performers like Belle Barth and Pearl Williams who are doing a type of female Jew face. And of course, I think most famously, beginning in the early 1960s, Mel Brooks starts doing the 2000 year old man who is a 2000-year-old Jewish man because he clearly has a Yiddish accent. And what's, what's really amazing to me is, is the tenacity of this accent that remains long after, you know, other ethnics, you know, disappear from the scene. I mean, I mean this, the Yiddish accent became this really sort of central trope in American comedy. I can add that Yiddishists hate this. It's problematic for them in a lot of ways because it's not really Yiddish. In fact, that's why in the name of the exhibit, I have Yiddish in scare quotes. It's not really Yiddish. It's sort of an Erzatz Yiddish. But what's amazing is how long it really lasted. And you can still find remnants of this in things in like the mother from the Big Bang Theory speaks with a Yiddish accent.

[G]

Why?

[B]

Because she's supposed to be Jewish. It's an identifier and it's. And there's a certain comedy to it.

[F]

Right.

[B]

You know, why is a little bit odd. It's almost inexplicable.

[G]

Well, so I do feel like it's actually resurfaced again very recently. And I don't think that it's an accident that we're sitting here now. Like, I think that there's something that's going on in American culture that's wanting to either re. Embrace or reassess or re. Eng with some aspect of the Jewish immigrant experience that maybe feels unfinished or maybe feels still complicated or something. And I don't.

[B]

There's loss. It's. I mean, you know, I mean, actually, you know, be sitting here in Yivo. There are 24 million documents in Yivo's archives that are, you know, evidence of the enormous loss that Jewish immigrants underwent that, you know, they, they. An entire culture existed and it's only. It now only really exists in echoes. So that I think That's.

[E]

Yeah, I definitely think it's that. And it's also, I think just in terms of like. And Eddie can speak to this way more than I can because I'm just like a hack journalist. And he's actually a. He's a professor with a PhD and all that. But he's not. But, but, but it's like, you know, it's kind of. There's. There's this. It's sort of transgressive vaguely to be into this material. A lot of Eddie's career, of course, is filling in the gaps in Jewish historic historiography because there's been a somewhat sanitized picture of, you know, kind of heroic, triumphalist picture of Jewish history that has been handed down. I can no tell you that my own attraction to this material was because this stuff wasn't. I didn't hear about this material. You know what I mean? I, of course, knew about other Irving Berlin songs, but I really didn't know that much about Cohen owes me $97, et cetera. And by the way, Berlin was a prolific writer of this material. Perhaps the most prolific, certainly the most prolific, well known songwriter who did this stuff. But other songwriters whose names or at least whose songs you may know did this. And it's interesting how many great illustrious Jewish performers of this period worked in this did Jewface stuff. And maybe some even got their start that way. Al Jolson as a child performer on Vaudeville. Al Jolson and his brother did a Jew Faced two Act. They were both young kids who did Jewish dialect performances. A little bit like the wonderful performances we saw up here, you know, including not just the songs, but the dialogues. Also, Sophie Tucker performed this. You can see an inset photo of her on the. On one of the sheet music covers out there. Fanny Brice famously did this stuff, as I'm sure some of you know, and really got her start doing this. And the list goes on. And one of the things that most interested me, and here's a very neat way that this stuff sort of haunts American pop music and popular culture to this day, and you could say Jewish music. One of the things that I discovered when I started looking at this sheet music was there's a song out there. One of the most offensive sheet music covers you'll see out there is for a song called When Mose With His Nose Leads the Band. Okay, so this is about a Jewish, kind of John Philip Sousa type bandleader, right, who. He doesn't need a conductor's baton because his nose is so big. So he uses the schnoz as a baton.

[D]

Okay.

[E]

Very anti Semitic. Okay. But interestingly, if you look at the sheet music and you listen to a recording of this song, this song was recorded. It was very. It was one of the earliest recordings of this material, of this kind of song. Okay. In the. In the chorus, there's a. There's a phrase that goes a little. I'm. I have to sing, and I really apologize in advance, but the lyric is ab, then starts to play. Of course, the protagonist in this song, like, as in most of these songs, is named Abby.

[H]

Okay.

[E]

And the song and the melody goes like this. A, B, then starts to play, which actually is the exact same phrase and the exact same rhythm as God Bless America and Irving Berlin. At the time, that song was out in the vaudeville theaters and was working as a singing waiter on the Lower east side. And his job was to sing the popular songs of the day. He certainly would have heard this song. And he had a habit of. Of borrowing and interpolating consciously, or maybe mostly unconsciously, older melodies into his psalms. So my theory is that when he first sat down to write God Bless America, which was only about a decade after that psalm was a hit, he plucked that phrase right out of when Mose with his nose to the van and put it in our great national, you know, Jewish American national anthem. So there's a Jew face legacy for you.

[G]

I was going to ask another question, but that's really the place for us to end our conversation. We do have some time for some Q and A with the audience. If people have questions. I know there are a lot of you, so if people have a question. Helena, when I ask people to come to the mics, please come to the

[B]

mics on either side of the stage.

[F]

We're going to start with this song. I just wonder if Jody would go on a bit.

[E]

You had started to talk about kun face and how it relates to Jew

[F]

face, because I really know nothing about

[E]

kun face other than Al Jolson is not popular at Yale anymore. Okay. Well, the. The term is. The term of art was blackface. Okay? And. And. But the songs were like the genre with. They were. They're called coon songs. Very offensive term, both then and now and. Well, from. From the. Basically the end of the Civil War on up, this was the staple form of American popular culture. It was the most popular stuff in the country. There were touring troops. I mean, I can't really. I don't want to bore you, nor can I do justice to, like, a real capsule history of Blackface minstrelsy. I can only say that, you know, minstrel acts were like the big hit acts on the popular stage for decades. And if you think about somebody like Stephen Foster, you know, the great American songwriter of the late 19th, of the mid late 19th century, Irving Berlin's hero, his songs are, you know, so many of his most famous songs are written in dialect, are written from the point of view of a now freed slave looking back fondly and sentimentally on the lost on the pastoral south and how great life was on the plantation. Okay, so these songs were virulently racist songs, which were extremely popular, and they were almost entirely performed by white performers who, of course, blacked up, who put on burnt cork and impersonated African American characters. Interestingly, there were also black performers who did this too. So it's a very complicated question. The thing I would say is that there was basically, if there's any takeaway from this rambling answer to your question, blackface minstrelsy was extreme. Was the very much more popular version of this kind of ethnic comedy.

[B]

Just. Just to add to what Jody said as part of the exhibit, there's a small image of a song called Darktown Strutter's Ball, which is written by Shelton Brooks, which is a blackface song written by an African American man.

[E]

And.

[B]

And so that sort of connects it to the concept of Jews writing and performing. Jew face.

[E]

Yeah, And. And probably the most popular after the first African American major popular music star was a guy named Bert Williams, some of you may have heard. And Burt Williams was an Afro Caribbean immigrant who was hugely popular. And this was the kind of staple material that he performed and interestingly kind of subverted in various ways. But.

[G]

Yeah, right here.

[A]

I was wondering if you could say something about Sid Caesar and the Marx Brothers, who I believe were all Jewish, seem to have come out of this tradition in every way, except their material, by and large, was not Yiddish based on. So I'd just be interested in their genesis and how they got to where they were, because they had a major impact on American comedy for a large

[E]

part of the 20th century.

[B]

Sure. Well, you know, the Marx Brothers, the Ritz Brothers, the three suits. All of these troops came out of vaudeville. They all came out of. They came out of the same circuits, and they weren't ostensibly Jewish, although all of them had what you could call Yiddish moments in their. In their routines. You know, Groucho famously sings, you know, did someone call me Schnorr? The Three Stooges did this much more extensively if you watch The Three Stooges shorts. There. There's really a fair number of Yiddish moments in. In their bits that are really, you know, as they develop their. Their acts, especially when. When, uh, they began to be filmed, uh, when they understood that their acts were forbidden, you know, much wider audiences than New York audiences who, you know, all of whom understood at least a little bit of Yiddish, they snuck Yiddish in as kind of inside jokes for their audiences and almost as kind of an homage to, to this genre.

[D]

Yeah.

[E]

Okay.

[A]

A possible connection between the work presented

[E]

today and later work of Woody Allen and Larry Davidson that Jodi pointed out immediately comes to mind. Of course. So my question to Eddie is, as

[A]

a fan of both of them, I

[E]

just keep wondering, is that a hypothesis or is there an academic research that you know of that would definitively prove and establish that association?

[B]

I mean, I don't think you could definitively prove that. I mean, it's not hard science, but, you know, like Jody said, I think that there's certainly a connection between, you know, Woody Allen worked the cat skills. Larry David probably worked the cat skills. In fact, in one of Larry David's episodes, he actually, there's actually a fight between him and his manager's wife when they're trying to join a gentile country club.

[E]

They're.

[B]

They accuse each other of having Jew faces. So that actually appears in, in one episode. But I, I, you know, I, I don't know of any academic work that that, you know, makes a definitive. I don't think you could really make a definitive connection, but I think that, you know, there's a. There's a causality there that you see, that there is certainly connection, you know, between the, the, you know, the later comics and the, the earlier material.

[E]

I just actually cite one quick thing which is that, you know, this is something we didn't really emphasize, but, you know, the Jew. The typical quote, the term of art at the time was actually Hebrew comedian for these Jew face performers. And the Hebrew comedian typically wore a fake crepe beard, put extra putty on his nose to make the nose appear more hooked, you know, wore shabby clothes. The idea was that nearly all these characters were Lower east side pawn brokers or owned, like, you know, were in the shmata business in some capacity. Right. But so I think about that whenever you see someone put on Jew face, I think of the scene in Annie hall, remember, when Woody Allen is at, whatever, he's with the Waspy family having lunch, and he sees himself through the eyes of the old grandmother with, like, the payas and the be right. He was wearing Jew face.

[B]

Yeah.

[G]

Oh yeah, I'm sorry.

[I]

Yeah, go ahead.

[H]

I was thinking about this as you were having your panel discussion and something that you hadn't really mentioned, but then Jodi started to mention it in the question period. I'd like you to comment on. It seems ironic that you were talking about blackface. Stick around, folks, you ain't heard nothing yet. Al Jolson, very famous Jewish singer. His father was a, as you know, was a cantor and he was supposed to be a cantor and he went off to sing vaudeville and we're talking about gentiles, non Jews who sing in Jew face. Al Jolson sang in blackface. It seems very ironic to me and I don't know if this was characteristic or unique to him. I'd like you to comment on it.

[E]

There were a lot of Jewish performers who did this. Sophie Tucker began her career like this. Think of Eddie Cantor, George Jessel. Right. This was largely a Jewish practice. Now that's also because Jews were so dominant.

[G]

Right. Jodi, Were there a lot of non Jews doing the Jew face songs?

[E]

Some, but it became more Jewish. But then again it's sort of. It's a chicken and egg thing. Right. Because there's so many Jewish performers in the first place that like there were Jewish Irish comedians too. Right. But what I would say is there's a very directed to a very interesting book by a scholar named Michael Rogan

[B]

called Blackface White Noise.

[E]

Blackface White Noise. Thank you, Eddie. And he talks about the dynamics of blackface performance by Jewish immigrants or Jewish second generation Americans like Al Jolson and the way that they. This is going to collapse his argument into something that really is whatever makes a mockery of his argument, but basically said there's a key moment in Jolson's routine always where he would remove the paint and show that his white skin in fact was white underneath. So in Rogin's reading, a Jewish immigrant could remake himself could as a white American because of course the status of Jews as white people was suspect at this time. Right. To mainstream America. So what Rogan very interestingly argues is that Jewface helped Jews assimilate and assert their American ness because they could both, they could interpret, they could play, depict the black other and then assert that they weren't that other. The most maligned minority was they. They weren't that they weren't that. And, and also the, the other thing of course is that what. What scholars say is that Jew is that there's similarities between like for instance, motifs in blues music between different intervals in the blues and Jewish cantorial tradition. And that the expressiveness of both African American and Jewish music, of consonances. And so that there was some. Some. Some think that there was like a sort of natural affinity, both musically and. I don't know, what have you, mystically, spiritually, between black Jewish modes of performance? I don't know.

[B]

You know, when I was doing research for this, I found a statistic that claimed that Al Jolson, after the Jassica came out, Al Jolson was the most popular white actor among. In the African American community.

[E]

Just one last thing I'd add, which is that a lot of these performers and songwriters and stuff like that, their fathers were cantors. Irving Berlin, Al Jolson, Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, who wrote the lyrics to over the Rainbow with Harold Arlen. So it wasn't unusual.

[I]

Yeah.

[F]

So a couple of things. One thing that I just happened to find out this morning, someone sent me, apparently a rarity, which is Chaim Tauber Yiddish disc that was called Negro Boy. Like he's doing some English. So two observations and two kind of more broad questions. First of all, as Alan Rickman alluded to with the Nathan Weighton song, actually, Adelaide's lament in Guys and Dolls is very much along the lines of what you're saying. You've got the hazones and then you've got the sort of soft shoe, major key chorus. And another thing that I just wanted to say. Are you familiar with the song Yiddishahula Boy? Oh, it's. You know it?

[B]

I am, yeah.

[F]

It's great.

[B]

Janet Klein.

[F]

Janet Klein does it. And I think there's no recording of it up till hers, but she found the sheet music great. So it's got both the Hawaiian music craze and it's great. It's the whole thing about, you know, Izzy leaves Becky and goes down the Honolulu way, you know, Honolulu Fey. But the two things I wanted to kind of ask you to comment on, first of all, somebody was talking about Sid Caesar over here. And as you probably know, even before your show of shows, there was a show that had a direct through line from not exactly the Borschbolt, but a very sophisticated Jewish and somewhat Yiddish summer camp, Camp Tameman. So Max Liebman was the producer at Camp Tamemen. Then he was hired to be the producer of the Admiralty Review on TV or whatever, which was that, you know, which had Sid Caesar and Imogene and everything. So that was like an interesting through line. But. But on the other hand you had in that very early, late 40s TV into 50s. At first you had this very small network that really was around New York and just a few cities. And it was a big deal to even have a network at all. Like, literally to connect cities. But they were cities. They had large Jewish populations. So a show with Molly Goldberg seems kind of of like how the early, you know, sound films. Isn't it weird that, you know, the first American sound film is so much a Jewish story, you know. But then again, apparently there was pushback because, like, the dumont network, which kind of went out of business, but was one of the big four for a while. Apparently once they got more into places beyond the major cities, there was a pushback where people didn't welcome this sort of alien ethnic humor they didn't really get, or they felt like it was too much an in joke that they weren't in on. So. So there's even like a Variety headline. I just read this in the book about Jumont. But there was a headline in Variety that said something like, you know, it was the opposite. It was like the opposite of Hicks, Nick Sticks, pick.

[G]

Do you like, do you guys have any. Did you. Is this any. Is this news to you guys?

[F]

Are you.

[G]

Is this something you're familiar with? Either of you?

[B]

Anyways, it's, you know, it's interesting to hear about.

[F]

What's that?

[G]

Yeah, it's interesting to hear about.

[F]

So, so there's, there's that, but there's also, you know, if you want to contextualize, like, I think there's a kind of generational difference between Mickey Katz ethnic humor and then the sort of. The Next Generation is Alan Sherman.

[I]

Right.

[F]

And I think that's all interesting, so I won't take more time on Mike. Yeah.

[G]

We're going to go to the next question. Thanks.

[I]

Hi, Susie Rosenbluth from the Jewish Voice and Opinion. Hi.

[G]

Hi, Susie.

[I]

I guess I have two questions. One would be to ask you where this came from in terms of the traditional antisemitism on the stage. I'm thinking of Shylock, the Jew of Malta, and that kind of a depiction where Jews were wearing rather than big noses, often red noses and red wigs, which went back to Judas Iscariot and the whole image from that and the Passion Plays and where this comes from, which would be something that many Americans would be familiar with. And I guess also to ask you what part nostalgia played in. I know you've alluded to that. I'm thinking that the fact that there were so many ethnic theaters Italian theater that was popular in the Lower east side. I think even in the Godfather, they have a segment from that where they were showing Italian theater. And all I could think about when I saw that was, oh, my goodness, that sounds just like Yiddish theatre that I'm familiar with, except that it was a different accent and different songs. How much things like Meinschkettela Belz or mein Yiddish Mama and things like that resonated and allowed them to carry on so that even beyond the time when Jewface was popular, songs like that were being recorded and were being sung. And I'm wondering if you use any of the vibrant Yiddish culture that's around today, certainly in the ultra Orthodox community, whether any of this, this is something that would be something that that community would avail itself of. I know I've heard some of the jokes that have come out which go right through to here. Thank you.

[G]

Maybe each of you just to close, could talk a little bit about the role of nostalgia, both at the time of creation of this stuff and then maybe even in the reception of it today to the extent that you know it.

[B]

I mean, I think the nostalgia certainly plays a significant role. Although in regard to the Jewface material, I, I don't. I mean, for instance, in Yiddish material, my Yida Shamame, my state labels, all this kind of stuff, that nostalgia plays a significant role because Jews were here in America to stay. They weren't, they're, you know, they weren't going back to Eastern Europe to live. Whereas, for instance, Italians, something like 40% of Italian immigrants returned to Italy. But the, the Jew based material, like Jody said that one of the first, the first sheet music cover he found was I Want to Be an Oi Oi Aviator. You know, this expresses, this is not nostalgic at all. This is, you know, this sort of expresses a look to the future and what's more, a Jewish future. So it's, it's, it's kind of interesting, the Yiddish, you know, that the sort of real Yiddish material often has a tendency toward nostalgia, but I think that this material is, is much more in the present.

[E]

Yeah, I think, I think that's right. I think, you know, I think interestingly, like all immigrants and migrants of various kind, including black migrants to the north from southern US and migrants to different parts of the country. Because, of course, there's a lot of nomadism in the United States even today, but especially in this period, there were tons of songs that were nostalgic songs in this period. Hugely popular, kind of on the model of Victorian parlor ballads, and those were in the mainstream of pop culture. So a Jewish audience might listen to something like one of those songs, even a Stephen Foster song, which was. Those are still popular in this period and get their nostalgia fixed there. Whereas in the Jew, specifically Jewish themed stuff, as Eddie says, the Jewface songs were definitely comic novelty songs, and they weren't. Whatever nostalgia they were feeling there, they might have picked it up in the musical leitmotifs, but they weren't really getting it there. I do think, interestingly, and I said, I referred to this earlier, you can track this generationally. So the English language, My Yiddisha Mama, which was a huge hit in 1925. Right. Bell Baker and Sophie Tucker had a huge hit with this song. And this was an English language lyric. Right. And what's the dramatic situation that's being depicted there? It's a Jew remembering his poor old mother. Not in the old country on the Lower east side. Right. So this is for the next generation of Jews. Maybe they've moved up to the Bronx, right? Or left the old neighborhood, and they've. They're a little bit more assimilating and successful now. So now they're able to even look back on the very place, the very immigrant experience that was being sent up in the Jew fessons. Not as fodder for, you know, a lampoon, but nostalgically. But that's. That's a little bit later than the period we're talking about here.

[G]

Okay. I want to thank everybody for coming, for joining us, and thank. And I want to thank Eddie Portnoy and Jody Rosen, and thank you, Alana Newhouse. You're welcome.