Video Club Brings
Yiddish Theater. Home

MARLENE GOODMAN

Special to The Jewish News

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ew York — The
increasingly popular
world of VCR enter-
tainment now presents
authentic Yiddish theater, in
all its schmaltz.
Specializing in this area is
the recently launched Yid-
dish Video CLub, the brain-
child of Raymond Ariel and
Richard Slote.
"We're a heimishe opera-
tion," Slote said, "but it's a
labor of love."
The first fruit born to that
small organization comes in
the form of a two hour video
cassette of A Match Made in
Heaven, featuring Reizl
Bozyk, of the film Crossing
Delancey.
A Match, which ran a full
season at Town Hall in New
York nearly three years ago
before departing on a na-
tional tour, appeals to several
generations, Ariel said,
because of its Yiddish song
and dialogue complemented
by English subtitles.
"All kinds of people are in-
terested in this," said Ariel,
who produced both the stage
show and the video tape. "It's
not just older people."
Slote, who directed the
video, agreed. "The whole
family can sit and watch
together. The grandparent
listens to the Yiddish and the
grandchild follows along with
subtitles!'
With a copy of the video
playing on a television screen
in Ariel's mid-Manhattan of-
fice, Slote paused to note the
pertinence of a song titled
"Nor Yiddish," which ex-
presses the hope that the Yid-
dish language will not face
extention.
"It's Yiddish nostalgia,"
Slote said. "It says 'only Yid-
dish is the sweet speech! "
Some 4,000 tapes have been
sold so far, Slote said, in-
cluding some that have gone
to universities with Yiddish
or Jewish programs, or
synagogues that may show it
on a projection screen.
Most orders, however, have
been by individuals who saw
the ads in the playbills for
last year's On Second Avenue,
another Ariel-produced Yid-
dish musical success.
"We had a video display in
the lobby during On Second
Avenue," Slote recalled, "and
people would run out and
watch 'A Match Made in
Heaven' during the intermis-
sion and not know which
show to see."

They began selling the
videos at that theater and, in
response to insistent requests,
decided to market the casset-
tes directly.
Emmy-award winning Vic-
tor Kanefsky, who edited the
video, had to piece together
footage of two different pro-
ductions of the show, both
filmed at Brooklyn College on
the same day, some time after
the Town Hall Run.
Each live taping used three
cameras to capture close-ups
impossible to catch while in
the audience, as well as
special microphones to limit
background noise.
"We used the same techni-
ques as 'Live from Lincoln
Center' productions," Slote
said.
But the subtitles created
other complications. During

"The grandparent
listens to the
Yiddish and the
grandchild follows
along with
subtitles."

the live stagings, Ariel said
that the translators attemp-
ted to accurately grasp the
language puns and mispro-
nounciations committed by
the lead character, Natasha,
played by Monica Tesler.
Natasha, the Russian maid,
continually spills her Russian
into her Yiddish. The
translators, therefore, repre-
sented these errors in broken
English.
The review in the New York
Times, however, faulted the
transcribers for poor English,
not realizing their intentions.
Ariel and Slote decided to
stick with correct English in
the video, causing even more
difficulty in relaying the
puns.
"I'm thinking of putting old
Yiddish movies on tape?"
Ariel said of future plans.
"But it's very hard to find the
originals and taped copies are
not as good quality?'
Slote said he is amazed by
the relative rapid-fire word-of-
mouth and publicity-inspired
popularity of the Yiddish
video.
"We had one woman flying
from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles
and the first thing she did
was call for a tape," Slote
laughed.
"But the most amazing
thing," he added, "is that peo-
ple constantly ask 'What else
do you have?'"

Jewish Telegraphic Agency