Saving an ancient tongue of wisdom
CAELY-JO Levy is an unlikely champion for an old language that was almost wiped out by the Holocaust.
But the Sea Point actress has become a flag bearer for Yiddish and is sharing a stage with a non-Jew who is touring the world in an effort to revive interest in a language that has its roots in the 9th century.
Levy, a graduate of Cape Town’s Waterfront Theatre School, got hooked when she was invited to sing at the Cape Town Yiddish Song Festival.
“There was no one my age in the audience, but I felt a need and a sense of responsibility, as a young Jewish artist, to help preserve the songs and share with my generation some of the history and culture that goes with this exquisite language,” said Levy.
She agrees with Shane Baker, from New York, who said: “Yiddish is like heroin.”
Levy and her band, Yid Dish, appeared in Baker’s touring show in Cape Town last Sunday, and will be at the Theatre on the Square in Sandton today.
The US actor said: “If we can get people to try a sample, they’ll be hooked for life.
“It’s the outlook, the humour, the curses, the vowels and consonants and the rhythms of the language, and the delicately robust, tragically funny, foolishly wise words of its greatest writers.”
Philip Todres, who started the Yiddish song festival 15 years ago as a fundraiser for the Cape Jewish Seniors Association, said: “There is a moral imperative to resurrect a culture that was decimated by the Holocaust.”
It’s a cause that Baker embraced after realising on his arrival in New York City that “Yiddish theatre plays an important role in world theatre, but especially in American theatre. It also plays GIVE IT SHTIK: Yiddish theatre plays a big part in American theatre
Yiddish is like heroin. If we can get people to try a sample, they’ll be hooked for life
a big role in American humour.
“To keep Yiddish alive and growing it must be on people’s lips and tongues. And in the books they read.
“The best Yiddish writing has an incredible and sensitivity to the ups and downs of the human psyche that is unlike any other language.”