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THEME: YIDDISH FILM AND RADIO Alternative Jewish media flourished in mid-twentieth-century America, distinguished by the use of Yiddish. The mother tongue of most East European Jewish immigrants, Yiddish was also familiar to many of their children. |
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American Jewish Historical Society (left) National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting (right) (click images for more) |
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Though only briefly popular and addressed to a limited community, Yiddish film and radio are among the most expressive achievements of Jewish immigrant popular culture, even as they shed light on the range and influence of American mainstream media. The forty feature-length American Yiddish "talkies" and numerous short subjects made between 1930 and 1950 provided their audience with its own cinematic universe, in which Yiddish was the predominant language and its speakers' sensibilities were central. The quintessence of immigrant culture, American Yiddish films demonstrate the distinctive creativity of a community negotiating the disparities between Old and New Worlds. |
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Similarly, Yiddish radio was, in its heyday, among the most popular forms of alternative-language broadcasting in America. Beginning in the mid-1920s, stations in American cities with large Jewish populations offered regular broadcasts in Yiddish: news reports, soap operas and other dramas, religious programs, musical and comedy programs. Much of this fare was actually bilingual, mixing Yiddish and English — sometimes within a single sentence. Unlike the derogatory dialect humor heard elsewhere on American radio, the bilingual interplay of Yiddish broadcasting demonstrated the immigrants' mastery over the challenge of integrating into the mainstream while maintaining ethnic ties. |
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Copyright © 2003 The Jewish Museum
