Cityscape

Colorful Yiddish Language Lives on in W. Bloomfield School Play

April 29, 2015, 10:10 PM by  Allan Lengel

Dress rehearsal, from left: Natalie Jacobson as Spirit of the Stone, Jamie Menuck as Spirit of the White Roses, Shayni Shecter as Spirit of the Red Roses, Jodi Levin as Spirit of the Tree, Bradley Bernstein as Spirit of the House.


Michael Yashinsky, a Spanish teacher at the Frankel Jewish Academy in West Bloomfield, has some showbiz and Yiddish in his DNA.

His grandfather, the late Rube Weiss, played characters on radio serial shows such as the Lone Ranger and Green Hornet, and was Santa in the J.L. Hudson’s Thanksgiving parade for many years. And, yes, Weiss -- as well as Yashinsky's other grandparents -- spoke Yiddish, a colorful language derived from German and Hebrew and other modern languages. It was spoken by Jews in Eastern Europe. 


Michael Yashinsky

Yashinsky, 26, is a big fan of Yiddish, a language he insists is not dying, despite what some say. He says he sees a revival.  He’s taken courses in the language you can still overhear at places like the Jewish Center in West Bloomfield and the Jewish delis in the suburbs.

Which brings us to Thursday night in West Bloomfield at 6:30 p.m. at the Two Muses Theater in the Barnes & Noble at 6800 Orchard Lake Rd.

Yashinsky is producing and directing a play, "After Midnight," with high school-aged students from the Frankel Jewish Academy. The play will be in all Yiddish, with subtitles displayed on the stage.

He’s gotten a grant from the NY-based Fishman Foundation for Yiddish Culture.  There will be a second showing of the play Sunday, May 3 at 2:30 p.m. and he says his grandmother Elizabeth Elkin Weiss, 89, the wife of the late Rube Weiss, who is a speaker of Yiddish and a lifelong student of the language, and a veteran actress, will attend both plays. She insists on it.

"I’m very passionate about Yiddish,” says Yashinsky, who is also a stage director at the Michigan Opera Theatre. 

Yashinsky, in a flyer, describes the play as an "evocative story set in a dark forest on the outskirts of a bright city, where nature spirits emerge after midnight. They chatter and make merry in their isolated clearing, until humans wander in, with their dramas of hunger and jealousy and thwarted love. The resulting encounter between the spirit and human worlds is something unexpected...and forgettable."

The Yiddish Daily Forward called the upcoming event “the first time in generations that a Jewish School outside of the Chassidic (orthodox) world has produced a play in Yiddish.”

Yashinsky said the students have been very enthusiastic about being in the play.

“It’s definitely a challenge, theater is already hard," he said. " Doing it in Yiddish is many times harder.  But also many times more geshmak [Yiddish for 'tasty']."

He said for decades now people have said Yiddish is a dying language, pointing to the millions of Yiddish speakers who perished in the Holocaust.  But he said there's still deep and wide-ranging interest in the language. (Not  to mention that some Yiddish words have seeped into the American language, like the word "chutzpah.") The Three Stooges even used some Yiddish words in the show.

“I think for a long time people have been saying, even 100 years ago, that the language is dying.  But it has endured, like the Jewish people itself. Our vibrant performance, undertaken entirely by young people, is living proof of that."

Want to see it?

  • When: April 30 at 6:30 p.m. and May 3 at 2:30 p.m.
  • Where: Two Muses Theatre (Barnes & Noble theater space), 6800 Orchard Lake Rd., West Bloomfield
  • Tickets: $10 (general admission) at aftermidnight.yapsody.com, by contacting Michael Yashinsky at myashinsky@frankelja.org or at the door.



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