The San Fernando Valley of the 1950s was a smog-choked flatland dotted with orange groves and squat apartment buildings.
But for one Jewish boy, the North Hollywood apartment of his grandmother Bessie was a window onto a vanished world: the world of the Yiddish theater.
Bessie Thomashefsky was a turn-of-the-century superstar. Along with her husband Boris Thomashefsky, the Jewish immigrants were the Richard Burton and Liz Taylor of the Lower East Side, pioneers of a tradition that evolved into the Broadway musical.
In her little apartment five decades after her heyday, Bessie would sing the old Yiddish songs while the boy’s father, Ted, or his uncle Harry accompanied on the piano. The boy absorbed it all, taking note of the nuances, cadences and wry inflections of the music.
Fifty years later, his attentiveness paid off. Today, as a tribute to his grandparents, San Francisco Symphony’s music director, Michael Tilson Thomas, 60, is set to debut “Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theatre” at New York’s Carnegie Hall this month, with the San Francisco premiere set for June 29.
It’s the official coming-out party of the Thomashefsky Project, launched by Tilson Thomas in 1998.
The concert features a cast of seven and the 17-piece People’s Theater orchestra, with such special guests as Jewish actress Debra Winger, who will read a beauty column from a Yiddish newspaper, and Judy Kaye, who sings the vintage “Who Do You Suppose Went and Married My Sister? Thomashefsky.”
But for most of the show, Tilson Thomas’ memories remain front and center.
Blending personal recollections with multimedia images and live performance of songs sung in Yiddish and English, “Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theatre” restores the theatrical couple to their rightful place as progenitors of a groundbreaking art form.
“It’s totally taken over my life,” says Tilson Thomas of the premiere, “partially because it’s turning out to be a much bigger topic than I ever imagined. I was talking to [Broadway producer] Hal Prince about it and he said to me: ‘It’s not a show. It’s a miniseries.”
That suits the cast of “Thomashefskys” just fine. Ronit Widmann-Levy, the Israeli-born soprano who sings the songs of the young Bessie, calls the music “captivating, warm, beautiful and very user-friendly. It’s not simple music, but so well composed. The texts are about love, waiting for love and looking for love, but not in the least bit shmaltzy.”
Director Patricia Birch plans to keep things simple. “The material speaks for itself,” she says, “and I don’t want to cover it up. The central point of it is Michael, the orchestra and the music. It all comes down to him.”
Tony Award-winning actor-singer Shuler Hensley, who sings and reads selections from Boris Thomashefsky’s autobiography, says of the music: “The possibilities are limitless. It’s part of New York history, not just Jewish history. The music is so outstanding and was lost for so long.”
Indeed, some of that music languished for decades, hidden among Bessie Thomashefsky’s personal effects. When Tilson Thomas first conceived the project years ago, he began sifting through her memorabilia, from old props and costumes to scripts, full scores and crumbling fragments of music.
He knew he had a treasure on his hands.
“This all goes back to my childhood,” he says. “My father over many years wanted to do some kind of evening about the Yiddish theater and Boris and Bessie. I was always delighted by the music and stories, but I didn’t appreciate it as a kid.”
In 1998 he officially launched a foundation, called the Thomashefsky Project, and appointed Linda Steinberg, former executive director of the Jewish Museum San Francisco, as project vice president and executive director.
Their goals extended far beyond a single evening’s entertainment. They were determined to research the dusty archives of Yiddish theater, and to collect and curate Thomashefsky artifacts wherever they could find them.
To date they have discovered more than 1,000 items.
“Some of the material was in my family’s collection,” says Tilson Thomas. “Some was from the YIVO Institute of Jewish Research and the New York Public Library. We’ve had great cooperation.”
Scholars involved with the Thomashefsky Project have been impressed with the materials. “Without a doubt, among the most important producers of popular Yiddish culture in North America were the Thomashefskys,” says Steven Zipperstein, Stanford history professor and member of the project’s academic advisory committee. “The material that Michael Tilson Thomas has in his possession chronicles some of the most critical moments in the production, dissemination and the reception of Yiddish culture in the last century.”
While the scholarship has been impeccable, organizers say audiences at the upcoming concerts will be as entertained as any Broadway crowd. The music, painstakingly reconstructed by Tilson Thomas, reflects an orchestral sound not heard in New York since dapper Jimmy Walker was mayor.
“The oldest of the repertoire is about 120 years old,” says the conductor. “The latest from around 1920. The process I followed took me back to the original materials, even the orchestrations from musicians in the pit. When you look at the parts, you have some idea of what was done, but the musicians played around a lot with those numbers. So I had to invent musical business that in an earlier era may have been improvised.”
They may not be familiar names, but featured composers like Joseph Rumshinsky, though mostly self-taught, reached tremendous artistic heights, according to Tilson Thomas. “The first time you hear it,” he says, “you feel as if you’ve known it your whole life.”
One of the show’s songs, “Mirele’s Romance” from Abraham Goldfaden’s “Koldunye” (or “The Sorceress,” the first Yiddish theater production in America), strikes singer Widmann-Levy as especially lovely. “It has high spiraling notes that hang in the air, and every word has love and pain entangled.”
That’s a pithy description of the amazing lives of Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky. Both came to America from Ukrainian villages before the turn of the 20th century. In 1882, while still in his teens, Boris starred in his first American theatrical production. While on tour in Baltimore he met 14-year-old Bessie, and soon they were twin icons of the stage.
They very quickly began creating a Yiddish theater scene for New York’s burgeoning Jewish immigrant population hungry for entertainment. They brought to America the finest Jewish composers, playwrights and performers, greatly enriching the artistic scene of old New York. It was as if the talented pair took to heart an old adage of free enterprise: Find a need and fill it.
To great acclaim, they staged original dramas, comedies, their own Yiddish translations of Ibsen and Shakespeare (some advertised as “improvements on the original), and, above all, music. So pliant was his voice, sometimes Boris would play women’s roles. Bessie, too, was known for doing “trouser roles,” women playing young men.
Boris (who died in 1939) proved one of the most flamboyant figures in New York society. Like a Jewish William Randolph Hearst, he amassed a fortune but spent it. The couple and their three children lived in a Brooklyn mansion with servants and fancy cars at their disposal. Boris was also a notorious womanizer, which led to his 1911 separation from Bessie, though they never divorced.
Bessie went on to become something of a proto-feminist, running her own businesses and opening her own theater (the Bessie Thomashefsky People’s Theater in the Bowery).
“She was a real pioneer in understanding how independent and enterprising a woman could be,” says Tilson Thomas. “As a manager of her own company, as someone commissioning new work. For her entire life she had a very realistic sense of what she thought was dignified or appropriate.
Bessie Thomashefsky moved to California in the late 1930s to be with her children and grandchildren. She died in 1962.
But by then her influence had been felt far and wide, even if the Thomashefsky name had largely faded from memory.
“You can hear the increasing Americanization of the music,” says Steinberg . “Some of it sounds like Jerome Kern. It served as a bridge and enriched the musical fabric.”
Adds Tilson Thomas: “The real purpose [of Yiddish theater] was to create an entertainment around controversial social issues. It was a reflection of the concerns of Yiddishkeit, which of course had very much to do with social transformation. When you look at plays like ‘Death of a Salesman,’ ‘Inherit the Wind’ or even ‘West Side Story,’ these are all very entertaining evenings with underlying social messages. That’s very much the tradition of the Yiddish theater.”
After the initial performances, the project team will evaluate the program and determine the next step. Options under consideration include a documentary, a CD and a touring exhibit.
“We’re hoping people will think this is important and will want to support it and build on it,” says Steinberg. “It’s a question of what is Jewish. What we’re talking about here is real Jewish values being handed down — and Michael Tilson Thomas as a living embodiment of that and his ability to articulate it. He is the conduit. He is the real treasure.”
While Tilson Thomas’ admirers would second that emotion, the maestro himself views the project more as a celebration of his grandparents and of the Jewish genius in general.
“You have a people bottled up,” he says, “the Jews of the shtetls and ghettos, with their world of Torah Talmud and their level of self-discipline, study and criticism. Then suddenly they release all that immense energy and methodology to examine these other areas, and you have an amazing explosion of creativity.”
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