If Jillian Tallmer had come into this world a century earlier, she might have been a Yiddish cabaret star. But even today, in contemporary San Francisco, Tallmer has come about as close as one can get to that sort of status.
“I guess that I’m just a booster for Yiddish,” says Tallmer, the leader of Yiddish sing-alongs at the Bureau of Jewish Education’s Jewish Community Library. Once a month, this bubbly, curly-haired singer gathers Yiddish enthusiasts — mostly over the age of 50 — to belt out a number of lively tunes.
“We learn and sing about a dozen songs in two hours,” Tallmer says. “No previous experience of Yiddish needed, and all materials are transliterated into the Roman alphabet for easy reading.”
Indeed, Tallmer’s love for Yiddish didn’t start out that way. She had never heard a word of it growing up on the Upper East Side in Manhattan.
“Everyone around me was Jewish,” Tallmer says. “But I didn’t know there was such a thing as Yiddish!”
Well, not exactly everyone. Tallmer went to an all-girls’ Episcopal middle school — “We sang hymns and prayers, it was all very strange” — but attended services every Sunday at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue in which “the music was always in Hebrew.” (In 1998, Central Synagogue made the front page of The New York Times when a blowtorch burned the place.)
“I did all these Jewish activities,” Tallmer explains. “We had Shabbat services. I joined NFTY [the Reform movement’s North American Federation of Temple Youth] because I wanted to meet other Jewish kids, especially boys. But all this happened without my hearing a word of Yiddish.”
Ironically, Tallmer’s transformation happened in 1972, when she left New York to come out West: “I was in the dark about Yiddish until I moved to San Francisco. That’s when I went to see a movie about Second Avenue,” she says, referring to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which was once dominated by Yiddish music and theater.
After hearing Yiddish music, Tallmer was converted. She joined the Yiddish Folk Chorus, which still meets Tuesday nights at San Francisco’s Congregation Beth Sholom. By 1985, she was singing with both the Yiddish chorus and the Yiddish Song Circle; the latter is now inactive, “but it has spawned the sing-along at the library.”
Discussing Yiddish, “I don’t speak it well, but I understand it!” Tallmer says. “I’ve tried to grab it everywhere I could, but it’s never been enough.”
The mamaloshen (mother tongue), originally a medieval Germanic language spoken by Ashkenazi Jews, is still remembered fondly by Eastern European immigrants and their children.
Most of the singers in the Yiddish Song Circle were in their 70s, so “as time went on, many people were getting too old to come to the group,” Tallmer explains. “And we weren’t able to attract younger people to take up the reins.”
But today, with a pianist accompanying her at the library sing-alongs, “This is as close as we can get to someone’s living room.”
When Tallmer isn’t studying Yiddish — she has taken many classes, including at Columbia University in New York City — she is teaching Ukrainians at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco about Jewish culture. (Paradoxically, perhaps, Tallmer says she is more fluent in Russian than in Yiddish.)
Meanwhile, in the Bay Area, Tallmer gave birth to her baby: an all-women’s international folk-singing group called Loose Canons.
Six women get together every Sunday night to sing in languages from all over the world, including Russia, Haiti, France and Chile. Tallmer adds: “There’s always Yiddish on our program, too!”
Asked about the future of Yiddish music, Tallmer is enthusiastic: “I think that Yiddish music is wonderful and so worth singing! I just wish people could learn it, love it and keep it going. I have a double goal: to keep it around for people who already have it, and to inspire people who don’t know it to learn it!”
After a moment, Tallmer adds, “The small number of people in the Yiddish pool is a concern.”
The next free Yiddish sing-along is 1-3 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 27, at the BJE’s Jewish Community Library, 1835 Ellis St., S.F. Others are scheduled for the same time on Sundays, March 13 and April 10. Information: (415) 567-3327.