There’s a lot more to Yiddish music than “My Yiddishe Mama.” For proof, just slip in the back at the next rehearsal of the Yiddish Choristers, a Palo Alto-based choir now in its third decade of perfect harmony.
Reviving shtetl tunes, Yiddish theater classics and some recently composed pieces, the choristers keep alive a tradition that once tottered on the edge of extinction.
“Yiddish is a language spoken by my ancestors for generations,” says Karen Bergen, current director of the choristers. “There are not many opportunities anymore to hear this music live.”
Bergen doesn’t like to take much credit for the choir, even though she serves also as conductor and shlepper-in-chief. Rather, she tips her hat to the singers themselves — 18 at most recent count — for making the ensemble what it is.
“Sometimes I go to rehearsal after a full day of work thinking I’m really tired,” adds Bergen, who teaches communicatively handicapped students in Sunnyvale, “but I come out feeling energized, making connections, having fun with people and singing the great music we get to sing.”
The group performs only a handful of concerts each year, but most members enjoy the weekly rehearsal — kind of like a secular farbrengen, or get-together — as much as anything else. Members range in age from the 40s into the 80s. It’s a time to socialize and to revel in their mutual Yiddishkeit.
“It’s wonderful,” says Marti Krow-Lucal of Burlingame. “It’s something we don’t miss if we can help it.”
Lottie Solomon founded the choristers in 1982. It was a modest beginning, with only a handful of singers showing up initially at the old Palo Alto Jewish Community Center on East Meadow Drive. The group stayed with the Albert S. Schultz JCC through its years at the Terman Middle School and then on to its present location at the Cubberley Community Center.
Bergen was one of the earliest and now among the longest-tenured members.
“I’ve been a singer a long time,” she says, “but I had never sung Yiddish music before. I was curious and realized I loved the music. It told the story of the Jewish people, their aspirations and disappointments, the country life and city life. As a person who loves music and as a Jew, this was something I could really focus on and help share with others.”
Although knowledge of Yiddish is not a prerequisite for membership, some choristers do speak the language, including two elderly Russian-born couples. The group performs in tandem with longtime piano accompanist Alex Eulenberg and mandolin player Herman Ranes, a more recent addition.
For university professor Krow-Lucal, singing with the choristers blends her multiple loves: music, language and her Jewish cultural background. A Ph.D. in Spanish literature, Crow-Lucal has a linguist’s appreciation for Yiddish, even though the language had often been derided in some circles as mere pidgin German.
“Someone once said a language is a dialect with an army and a navy,” jokes Krow-Lucal. “But Yiddish is like any other language.”
The group performs songs from across the Yiddish space-time continuum. All are secular folk tunes, some from the old country, some from the new (Molly Picon’s Yiddish theater gems frequently turn up on the program). Most are written out in two and three part harmonies.
Krow-Lucal loves the more folk-oriented songs like “Unser Nigndl” (Our Song) and “Sapozhkelekh” (Little Boots). But she readily confesses a dark secret. “I hate ‘My Yiddishe Mama,'” she says. “It’s lachrymose and overly sentimental.”
But the choristers do sing it from time to time, like it or not.
For several years, the choristers have been a fixture at Palo Alto’s annual “To Life” street fair. They will also perform during the “Night of Jewish Unity,” which begins at 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 29, at Congregation Beth Am, 26790 Arastradero Road, Los Altos Hills. The annual event kicks off the Bureau of Jewish Education’s “Feast of Jewish Learning.
And just about every time they perform, notes Bergen, someone will tell the singers “‘My grandma sang that to me 80 years ago.’ The joy we feel lifts our spirits. My strongest connection with Judaism is through the music.”