I ENTERTAINMENT I Best Wishes lb Our Customers and Friends For A Good Year Filled With Health and Happiness Yiddish Theater Is Hanging On NAHMA SANDROW Special to The Jewish News T Call Us For Your Next Affair • • • • Weddings Bar/Bat Mitzvahs Showers Reunions • Golf Outings • Corporate Functions • Anniversaries • Birthdays 360-0600 4001 Haggerty, West Bloomfield OPEN 7 DAYS MON.-SUN. 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. FRANKLIN SHOPPING CENTER Northosostorn N. of 12 358-2353 Wishes Its Customers and Friends A Happy and Healthy NEW YEAR L so UPON HAPPY NEW YEAR/ 1 FAMILY ITALIAN DINING & PIZZA 4033 W. 12 MILE, 3 Blks. E. of Greenfield Berkley 548-3650 TO ALL OUR FRIENDS & PATRONS Best Wishes For A Healthy & Happy NEW YEAR CHUCK JOSEPH'S PLACE FOR STEAK 2555 W. 12 Mile Rd. at Coolidge 399-6750 DAILY LUNCH & DINNER SPECIALS PIT/A-1 RION 8Alit IMO III PEA MARE PM 111Ali OR LANE SNAL-18-LARGE ON FOOD PURCHASES OF $6 OR MORE Now — breast cancer has no place to hide in Michigan. Call us. $1 OFF DINING ROOM, CARRY-OUT Expires Dec. 31, 1990 COUPON NOT VALID WITH DAILY SPECIALS L • BANQUET ROOMS • BEER • WINE • COMPLETE CARRY-OUT • COCKTAILS 132 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1990 J SCI OGIICER ANIERICAN ETY en years ago, when she was just another cute kid living in New York and trying to break into show business, Eleanor Reissa answered a casting call in Backstage to audition for a place in the chorus of a Yiddish show. She got the part. Yiddish theater was not Broadway, but it was a job and she decided "it was better than waiting on tables," which is where so many show biz careers start and end. Eleanor began in the chorus, rose to playing saucy soubrettes in other Yiddish productions, and several years later, when the star happened to leave her show, she was ready to step center stage. At the same time that her "American" career kept making steady progress, the spotlight on the Yiddish stage was coming to feel like a comfortable place to stand. All the same, last season, when she got a phone call offering her a starring role in the Yiddish musical Songs of Paradise, she groaned, "Oh, no, not again!" and made a rude face at the receiver. Still, she didn't turn it down. Songs of Paradise, a frisky and irreverent retell- ing of Bible stories, newly adapted from Yiddish poetry with a cast of young actors and fresh references to salsa, reggae, and disco, delighted the New York Times as well as the Yiddish Daily For- ward. So did Eleanor. And this year finds her yet again belting out big numbers in a Yiddish revue, Those Were the Days. In her bemused, affec- tionate, edgy, ambivalent attitude toward the Yiddish theater, Eleanor is typical of most American Yiddish actors of the younger ge- neration. ("Young" in today's Yiddish theater means roughly twenty to forty-five years old). She is more comfortable in English than in Yiddish. She was born here and is Ameri- Nahma Sandro is a writer in New York City. This article was made possible by a grant from the Fund for Journalism on Jewish Life, a project of the CRB Foundation of Montreal, Canada. All views expressed are solely those of the author. can in acting style and per- sonal style. She is Jewish but not at all religious. Final- ly, unlike Yiddish actors of the past, she feels no perma- nent commitment to Yiddish theater. This above all is what Leon Leibgold, a grand old man of the Yiddish stage, really means when he com- ments flatly that, "There are no young Yiddish actors any more; there are only young actors who play in Yiddish." Like the larger Yiddish culture of which it remains a resonant part, the Yiddish theater continues to shrink painfully with age. Yiddish actors and playwrights, like Yiddish journalists and poets, are remnants. They've held on through assimila- tion, the ascendancy of the Hebrew language over Yiddish, and the destruction by the Nazis and Soviets of the source of Yiddish speakers. There is no longer a range of Yiddish newspapers to publish theater reviews, argumentative critiques and columns of backstage gossip. Gone is the nightlife assoc- iated with Yiddish theater going, the sociable sidewalks and crowded cafes. Most of the splendid artistes and their devoted fans are dead. The old Yiddish quip sharpens its bite: "An old Jew just died; move another seat out of the theater." Although the Yiddish theater was once as famous for its literary avant garde as for its popular enter- tainments, now when au- diences want something new and intellectual, they find it more conveniently in Eng- lish. Most regular Yiddish ticket-buyers crave a trip in a time capsule: the old famil- iar repertory performed in the old familiar style. The audiences still get themselves there, even if the nursing home has to charter a bus. They love to hear the language, they love the link with their youth, and besides the shows are sometimes terrific. There are also community institutions such as the Workmen's Circle which chip in subsidies, for the culture still feels strongly about its theater, values it, and even measures itself by it. On the fringe of this world, a pool of several dozen younger actors like Eleanor Continued on Page 134