>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Pause ]   >> And I want to introduce myself.

My name is Betsy Peterson.
And I'm the Director of the American Folklife Center.
And I've been here all of about 7 months.
So this is my first symposium or my first opportunity to introduce one
of the symposia of the American Folklife Center.
And it gives me great pleasure to kick off and welcome you all
to the stations that spoke your language,
radio and Yiddish American Cultural Renaissance
which is a 2-day public symposium celebrating the history,
impact and contributions of Yiddish radio in the United States.
And I see we-- the places jump and this is great.
I'm very excited.
Over the next 2 days, we're going to have and opportunity to listen
to an impressive line up of leading Yiddish language scholars,
Yiddish cultural experts, media scholars and the Library
of Congress Content Specialist as they explore
and discuss important aspects of Yiddish radio in America.
And we're really pleased that you braved the drizzle
and the earlier rain to join us for these 2 days
of discussion and presentations.
This symposium marks the center's recent acquisition
of the Henry Sapoznik Collection of more
than 1,000 historic Yiddish radio broadcast from the 1920s
to the 1950s which is pretty exciting.
And we're honored to present this programming in collaboration
with the Hebraic section of the Library of Congress, African
and Middle Eastern Division, put your hand up Mary Jane.
And with the assistance of the division of Motion Pictures,
Broadcast and Recorded Sound.
As always, these events take a cast of thousands.
And there had been many people throughout the library
who put effort into making this happen today.
I also want to say thank you to Yiddish of Greater Washington
for their support of this evening's reception.
And just a reminder that I hope you all plan to stay--
stick around for the reception
and the fabulous evening performance that will occur later.
Now we all know a lot has been written
about main stream American radio, its influence and its impact
on society and on American culture in mid to late 20th century.
But very little has been written or available to us about the history
and development of non-English language broadcasting
in the United States during this period.
And part of that has been because there has been little access
to primary source documentation.
But with the acquisition of the Sapoznik Collection,
library researchers will now have access to over
and let me get these numbers right, 1,145 disc and images,
correspondents and wealth of related materials documenting some 212
Yiddish radio programs.
The collection includes a wide range of genres including news drama,
musical comedy, man on the street interviews, quiz shows,
mediation programs, I would like to hear those, advertising,
poetry and religious discussion.
The Sapoznik Collection was the basis
for the 2002 Peabody Award winning NPR Series,
the Yiddish Radio Project which I imagine some of you heard.
But it reached over 13 million listeners a week and was co-produced
by Henry Sapoznik and Dave Isay of StoryCorps.
So we're pleased that the Sapoznik Collection is going to join
so many other incredible collections that we have
at the American Folklife Center.
And just as a note, the American Folklife Center was created
by Congress in 1976 and placed at the Library of Congress specifically
to preserve and present American Folklife.
So it's very appropriate
to have Henry Sapoznik's Collection join us here.
So now just a couple of words about what will happen
and what we're doing here.
Like all American Folklife Center Symposium, like our home go
on concert series and our Benjamin Botkin Lecture Series
which I also invite you to those if you have never been.
This symposium allows us to highlight some
of the best scholarship and some of the best work in or focusing
on folklore, ethnomusicology, oral history and cultural heritage.
And it also is an opportunity for us to enhance our own collections
at the American Folklife Center.
The symposium also is an opportunity for us to acquire new materials
for our collections at the Folklife Center.
And as with all of our public programming, we video tape this.
So just so you know, we will be video taping,
and this symposium will become part
of the Center's permanent research collections.
And in addition, after the video tapes are edited, the proceedings
of the entire symposium will be up on our website,
they're now streaming online videos.
So, just FYI, and it's also an opportunity for us
to share these two days with a lot of other people for a long time.
So, also in keeping with this as it's being recorded,
if you haven't turned off your cellphones, please do so now,
unless you want it to be on the video, or on the web.
And then finally, just for more information
about the Folklife Center, I see some of you have packets
of information about the American Folklife Center,
but if you haven't, please pick them up.
And if you want to visit our website, oh,
I heard somebody's cellphone, I think, please come and go
to www.loc.gov/folklife/ and sign up for a newsletter outside
and be our friend on Facebook, and come by our reading room,
across the street, in the Jefferson building, on the ground floor.
And so, that's preliminaries.
And now, I'm going to turn you over to also another sort
of newcomer here to the library, Roberta Shafer,
the Associate Librarian for Library Services.
She was previously the Director of the Law Library here at the Library
of Congress, and is an all around great gal, and I'm pleased
to introduce her, Roberta.   [ Applause ]

>> Thank you Betsy and thank all of you for coming today.
I do not think that you will be disappointed.
In fact, I'm sure you won't be in the next day and a half.
I am Roberta Shafer and I do have the pleasure of serving here
as the Associate Librarian for Library Services,
and the Folklife Center falls within my portfolio.
And so, I've been get the right to participate in this event,
by nature of post, but I love the topic and I think
that it's very opportune for the library to have this collection,
and also, to showcase it.
So they have the collection because it joins so many other collections
that we have that highlight the work product, the output,
and most importantly, the creativity and innovation of a number
of communities that have come together in America over the course
of the life of this country.
This is particularly interesting because for many reasons,
but particularly, because what we're going to be listening to and hearing
about reflects the goals and age of a particular new technology,
and that is radio, so the late 1920s to the mid 1950s.
And it also fits very, very well within the library's philosophy
that we have a universal collection of material.
And that together, this material can be used to uncover similarities
and differences among the way people create and approach knowledge.
So, the final thing that excites me about this particular symposium,
which isn't always the case for collections
that the library receives, is that we have the privilege
of having the person who collected the collection among us,
Henry "Hank" Sapoznik.   [ Applause ]

And many times, unfortunately, the person who collected collections
that we receive has long since left.
And we have to use extraordinary technology in order
to communicate with him or her.
So we're lucky to have Henry with us totally alive and well today.
There is a Jewish proverb which I would like to end with today,
and I think it's very opportune for the Library
of Congress and this symposium.   "Who is wise?

He who learns from everyone."
So I think we are going to believing that proverb in the next day
and a half and forevermore.
Before I leave the podium, I know Betsy was very clear that you need
to turn off your cellphones, and we didn't want to hear your ringtones.
But I think I'm going to be sharing a ringtone that some
of you may remember or be familiar with.
And I know that you're going to be contacting your cellphone carrier
and want to reproduce this.   So, just one moment.

[ Pause ]
[Ringing tone] [Laughter] We're on the air, thank you so much.
[ Applause ]   >> Well, what an amazing turnout.

Welcome again [foreign word].   My name is Aaron Taub.

I'm the head of the Israel and Judaic Section.
I am a long time cataloger of Yiddish, a long time Yiddishist.
A poet who writes in English and Yiddish and I'm delighted
to be your moderator of this first session of what promises
to be an amazing symposium.
I'm going to introduce our three very distinguished speakers.
They're all going to give their talks and then we'll have time
for questions and answers at the end.
We have plenty of time, so I think we'll have a discussion.
Our first speaker, Jenna Weissman Joselit,
the Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor
of history at the George Washington University, also directs its program
in Judaic Studies, and its brand new MA in Jewish Cultural Arts.
She is the good fortune to be a Distinguished Visiting Scholar
of the Kluge Center, right here at the Library of Congress,
where she conducted research on America's Embrace
of the Ten Commandments, the subject of her current book project.
The title of Professor Joselit's paper today is A Listening Audience:
A Profile of the American Jewish Community.
Our second speaker is Alexander Russo.
Professor Russo is Associate Professor in the Department
of Media Studies at the Catholic University
of America here in Washington.
He received his BA and MA in American Civilization from Brown
and his BA in American Studies and History from Wesleyan.
His research interest include the technology and cultural form
of radio and television, sound studies,
radio and television criticism, the development of old, new media.
I wonder what that is, I'm mean he'll tell us, the history of music
and society, the relationship between media and space
and the history of popular culture.
Dr. Russo is the author of Points on the Dial:
Golden Age Radio beyond the Networks 2010 and is published on localism
and radio formatting and satellite radio.
Professor Russo's paper is entitled Ethnic Radio
and Mid-Century American Culture.   Our final speaker is Henry Sapoznik

who probably doesn't need an introduction to most
of the people in this room.
Henry is a legendary figure in the Klezmer Revival movements
and in the British culture.
He is an award winning author, radio and record producer and professor--
and performer of traditional Yiddish and American music.
Among numerous anthologies, reissues and new recordings,
Sapoznik co-produced the 10-part series, the Yiddish Radio Project
for National Pubic Radio's All Things Considered in the spring
of 2002 which was previously mentioned
which won the Peabody Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism.
Sapoznik is a five-time Grammy Award Nominee and producer of reissues
of historic Yiddish, country,
blues and early American popular 78 rpm records.
He is currently finishing a biographical essay on actor,
banjoist and blackface singer Harry C. Browne entitled
"The Banjo Evangelist: Harry C. Browne and Decline of Minstrelsy,"
for a forthcoming box set on Archeophone Records.
Sapoznik is the Founding Director of the Mayrent Institute
for Yiddish Culture at the University of Wisconsin,
where he oversees the thousands of Yiddish 78s
in the Mayrent Collection, teaches,
and runs public and academic programs.
That's just the tip of the iceberg, there's much, so much more.
He was the founding member of the Klezmer Ensemble Kapelye
which was really a pioneering group.
I believe he was the founder of the Sound Archives,
the YIVO where countless musicians and scholars have come
to do research and to just soak in Yiddish culture.
So without further ado, here is Jenna Joselit.
[ Applause ]
>> Sometime in the mid-1920s when the Jazz age was in full swing,
The Union of American Hebrew Congregations turned
to its constituents, middle class, reformed Jews and ask them
to take pen and hand and to fill out a questionnaire.
How many of you own a kiddush cup?
The organization wanted to know how many a Bible?
When was the last time you attended services?
Do you celebrate Hanukkah or Passover?
Keep the Sabbath?
Putting its faith in numbers rather than in anecdotes, the union's team
of social scientist went
on to tabulate the answers giving rise along the way to charts
and graphs and other displays of the quantitative imagination.
The survey yielded lots
of fascinating detail including the statistical revelation
that the number of American Jews who lay claim to a kiddush cup,
let alone actually used one was willfully small.
What the Union of American Hebrew Congregations did with this
in other findings is anyone's guess.
But years later, the data it collected is grist for the mill
of historians like me whose work builds on the choice nuggets
of informations through and throughout.
And yet, even as I profitably indulge in this material,
I find myself thinking how much richer and more complex a portrait
of American jury would have emerged,
had the studies sponsors only taken their cue
from Frederick Lewis Allen.
Heralded as the Herodotus of the Jazz Age, Allen owed his fame
to having published a rollicking and best selling account
of the 1920s called Only Yesterday.
Weaving together anecdote and analysis
or what he called beautifully incident and delusion,
the book emphasized the quotidian and the cultural at the expense
of the grand and the political.
Rich and ethnographic detail, Allen's book paid close attention
to what he called the fads and fashions and follies of the time,
the things which millions of people thought about and talked about
and which had once touched their daily lives.
By the time readers reluctantly put down Only Yesterday,
they'd come away with an intimate textured portrait of themselves.
Within the pages of Only Yesterday and exercising what Allen
or his publishers dubbed informal history, we learned what Mr.
and Mrs. Smith had for breakfast in 1919,
what they did with their free time, how they reared their kids
and really felt about going to church.
Mrs. Smith, we also learn turned up her pert little nose
at makeup thinking it [foreign word] while Mr. Smith,
like his wife was a bit starchy and sat in his ways.
Allen goes on to reflect on how the tidy little world of Mr.
and Mrs. Smith would soon give way before the juggernaut of modernity,
whose long reach encompassed crossword puzzles and mahjong,
racketeers and the Teapot Dome Scandal, speakeasies, Al Capone,
traffic lights and the relentless advance of advertising
or what he lyrically called shouting in the public ear.

Situating the embrace of novelty at the very heart
of the modern American experience, Only Yesterday made sure
to highlight the impact of technology, of the car and the radio
on the lives of Mr. and Mrs. Smiths, everywhere.
The automobile, the text related rapidly made America into a nation
of nomads while the radio, at first just a thrilling novelty was
designed, he said, ultimately to alter the daily habits of Americans
as profoundly as anything that the decade had produced.
I hasten to point out that American Jews,
both those who are adapted questionnaires and those whose grasp
of English was not quite up to snuff, American Jews do not figure
in Allen's account except his hapless objects of anti-semitism,
nor for that matter
to African-Americans, Italians or Poles.
His gaze was squarely fixed on a white middle class pool of folks.
In fact, I suspect Allen wasn't even remotely aware
that American Jews led an independent existence let alone the
WEVD was a close neighbor of WINS.
But what if he had reckoned with American jury?
What if Allen had been commissioned by the Union
of American Hebrew Congregations to figure
out what made its constituent stick?
What kind of portrait might have emerged?
It's wishful thinking, I know.
Even so, the idea appeals to me so much
that over the years I've been sorely tempted to try my hand at conjuring
up an Allenisk vision of American Jewish life.
Thanks to the symposium, I now can.
And so with a very deep vow to Frederick Lewis Allen,
here is my very own equally informal history
of American jury of the interwar years.
And what follows, I make no attempt whatsoever at comprehensiveness,
rather taking my cue directly from Only Yesterday.
I broadcast a highly idiosyncratic, impressionistic
and admittedly breezy even compact account of what went on,
on the grassroots and within listening range of Yiddish radio,
all with and eye and an ear towards placing the latter's history
within the context of its audience.   My tale goes like this.

Sitting down of a wintery December morn in 1923 to a hurried breakfast
in their brand new elevator apartment on the Grand Concourse,
Mr. and Mrs. Schwartz, a young couple in their roaring 20s,
exchanged pleasantries before diving into their respective newspapers,
De Morgan Journal for him,
the Jewish Daily Forward, The Forverts, for her.
Watch up what they know about the world
of the latest political scandals, books, place, consumer goods,
films, celluloids, celebrities.
They called from the traditional medium of print rather
than the new fangled one of sound.
True, like everyone else in their Bronx neighborhood,
the Schwartz's had recently succumbed to the siren call
of America's latest craze and purchased a Zenith automatic radio.
But taking its measure, much less fiddling
with the dial was a nocturnal pursuit,
something to do a day's close rather than added start,
a form of entertainment rather than information.
Besides, it was hard to hear the radio from the kitchen,
lodged in the living room where it shared the pride
of with a heavily tufted conscientiously matched set
of sofa and chairs.
The radio was more furniture than medium.
Before long, Mr. Schwartz clapped his fedora,
one of Pitkin Avenue's very best, he clapped his fedora on his head
and he made for the nearest subway which in a manner
of minutes wisped him downtown to the garment center where he worked
as a production manager for the grisette dress company.
Mr. Schwartz in turn lingered over a second cup of coffee.
The Cheek-Neal brand or what would later become known
as the Maxwell House brand of coffee was her preferred cup Joe.
She lingered a while before attending to her daily rounds
and mix of house cleaning and do-gooding.
You see, since marrying Mr. Schwartz a year ago,
Mrs. Schwartz Nagelberg [phonetic],
a long time factory hand no longer had to work.
Her husband whom she had met
in the Catskills made a decent enough living for the two of them
and for the children they hoped would eventually come their way.
Much of Mrs. Schwartz's day would be spent getting together
with the girls to plan a mahjong tourney.
No mere leisure pursuit, this was a fund raising venture.
The proceeds of which would go towards the local synagogue's
expansion campaign.
But well before Mrs. Schwartz would put
on her sportelite [phonetic] corset which enhanced her boyish figure.
Brush her teeth with the latest so called novelty
from Colgate, meaning toothpaste.   Dap her cheeks with a hint of rouge.

Don her cloche-shaped hat and sally forth,
Mrs. Schwartz would spend time in the company of her vacuum cleaner.
Like so many women of her generation, she had become a devotee
of anti-septic consciousness.
Keeping the house free of germs was a major preoccupation,
although one made so much easier, thanks to the growing availability
of modern household implements.
The Jewish Daily Forward had seen to it.
Filling its pages with advertisements for this,
that and the other new fangled thing,
the paper actively encouraged the practice of consumerism.
The Jews maintained the highest standard of living,
the socialist daily explained
in an English language brochure pitched towards
with the advertisers.
It goes on to say the annual expenditures of the Jews for food,
clothing, furniture, and furnishings, fuel and light,
and miscellaneous commodities is truly staggering.
And so with her Hoover electric cleaner in one hand and a can
of germicide in the other, Mrs. Schwartz got
through her domestic duties and no time flat and will soon free
to pursue an even nobler calling, that of the synagogue sisterhood.

Hail does the American rabbi's best friend,
the synagogue was fast becoming an hallmark of the modern synagogue.
Its members may not have served on the all powerful ritual committee
or read from the Torah but they were just about everywhere else,
hiring and firing the janitor, raising funds, running a bazar,
buying presents for varmitsvah [phonetic] boys,
festooning the sanctuary with flowers, meeting
and greeting worshipers and feeding them too.
Thanks to the participation and the day to day affairs of the synagogue,
women like Mrs. Schwartz found a sanctioned outlet
for their many underutilized talents.
There was much to discuss at the sisterhood meeting
which run on and on and on.
Mrs. Schwartz left feeling energized but also slightly tuckered out.
Too tuckered out in fact to make dinner especially went true
to the dictates of Kashrut.   Since having married Mr. Schwartz,

she had become increasingly more observant, having not grown
up keeping Kosher, her bundus [phonetic] family wouldn't hear
of it, Mrs. Schwartz was not quite sure of herself in the kitchen,
but once again modernity came to the rescue.
A growing number of mass produced Kosher products,
among them 26 of Heinz' 57 varieties made it increasingly easy for her
to befriend her pots and pans.
So too did cookbooks such as the Gold Medal Flour Cookbook whose is
bilingual Yiddish, English recipes for soups and salads,
stews and desserts offered lots of tempting culinary opportunities.
Still, dinner preparations took time
and Mrs. Schwartz would much rather be doing something else perhaps
attending the screening of Cecil B. DeMille's extravaganza,
The Ten Commandments which was being shown in one
of the city's deluxe movie palaces downtown.
Everyone was talking about it.
Determined then to be in rather than out,
Mrs. Schwartz promptly made a decision and headed
for the neighborhood Kosher Delicatessen.
Its proprietor, a member and good standing
of the Morgan David Delicatessen Owners Association want
to emphasize what he called the nutritious, digestible
and nourishing quality of his smoked meats as well
as their time saving properties.
Deli sandwiches he proudly claimed were more concentrated
and more filling and they save time for they can be eaten ready made
without extra work on the part of the housewife or a host.
Mrs. Schwartz couldn't agree more and in short order,
purchased two hefty corned beef sandwiches on rye and a couple
of bottles of Cel-Ray tonic to wash him down.
Whether it was the accumulation of a full days of activity
or just too much corned beef, the Schwartz has decided in the end
to stay home that evening and to reserve DeMille's film for Sunday.
But no sooner did they settle in for the night then they realize
that wouldn't be possible after all, there were relatives to visit.
Mr. Schwartz's third cousin Alta [phonetic] had only recently arrived
from Minsk and together with his wife Rose
and their two small boys were now calling a Lower East Side Tenement
their home.
Bewildered by their newfound status as immigrants, they could use
with a word or two of encouragement.
Mrs. Schwartz and Eleanor and I'll write Nick [phonetic]
if ever there was one, is also in need of a friendly face.
At the far end of the social spectrum
that now characterize the American Jewish community,
she lived in a grand high ceiling department on West End Avenue
on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Put on airs, avoided Yiddish like the plague, attended a new kind
of synagogue, something called a conservative congregation,
and like to stick her nose in everyone's business,
ruffling feathers right and left.
As the Schwartz's weighed their options and talked about how
to shuttle between uptown and downtown,
between the immigrant ghetto and the one that have knots
like to call their tongues firmly planted
in their cheeks the gilded ghetto, the Schwartz's realized
that their plan for the weekend was no longer viable.
The Ten Commandments would simply have to wait.
Meanwhile, Sunday with its full compliment of domestic dramas,
Sunday eventually came and went.
Home at last and tired of talk, the Schwartz's made a cup of tea,
reclined on the sofa and turned on the radio.
But too much static and too few stations got
in the way of their enjoyment.   And so, within the exasperated sigh,

they picked up a newspaper instead and called it a day.
Their world, much like that of Mr. and Mrs. Smith had not yet expanded
to include the likes of Man-O-Manischewitz
or Joe and Paul's Fargenigen.
On air philosophers and rabbis, man on the street interviews,
home grown talent shows, and the sound of [inaudible] crooning sorry
with the fringe on top in Yiddish.   It would soon enough.

But in the meantime, a kiddush cup, a wedding gift
from the metalism [phonetic] and Eleanor [phonetic] needed polishing.
Thank you.   [ Applause ]

>> Good afternoon, I wanted to start
up by thinking how I was to be here today.
I've been doing radio research in the Library of Congress--
better part of well at full decade now.
And it's absolutely essential, it's resources that it offer
in the Folklife [inaudible] in the radio and their recorded sound room
for a whole new generation of radio research, much of which I'm going
to be talking about today.
I was asked to actually not talk about Yiddish radio.
I was told I should avoid it as much as possible.
But I was supposed-- was tasked with providing some context.
So at a certain point, I will be turning things
over for [inaudible] to take up later.
But to sort of discuss both the institutional
and the cultural context with which Yiddish radio was able to emerge
and thrive and in many ways outlast many
of its other non-English language rivals.
So with that in mind, I want to provide some context both
of what we think of as radio, as radios [inaudible] radios
to be clear remembered and why the non-English language radio,
Yiddish radio included a sort of both operated in conjunction with
and in opposition to them.
So I want to throw up with an image that readers may have encountered
and when they opened at the September 1927 issue of radio news,
they got in variety of promotional articles countering the wondrous
developments in radio technology.
Published by Hugo Gernsback, inventor
and a pioneering science fiction writer, radio news combined
with the fantastical and the practical.
If there are any science fiction fancier, the Hugos,
the science of fiction awards were named after him.
But within this issue, one article stood
out for its relatively modest arguments,
the radios making the English language more homogenous.
And encountering this article was this image, a map of a nation.
And I would argue that this image tends in for
that iconic understanding of network and air of broadcasting
and its focus on the English language to the emission of others.
Appearing just after the formation of National Radio Networks,
this image predicted and it promoted the possibilities
for cultural integration
through technology entitled the New Melting Pot.
The image depicts radio as a wired network that was capable
of unifying the nation
under a single linguistic entity and linguistic identity.
It identified a dual A and B barriers,
1920s radios required both AC and DC current
that powered the radio's receivers of that era
and these were identified as the English language and Americanism
and patriotism suggesting that the forms
of linguistic representation were as important as the contents delivered.
Significantly, radio is represented as a collective listening experience
in both micro and macro spaces.
All the figures listen to the same programming
and are listening on your hoops.
Even a one possible exception should see the African-American servant
in the south there is the only figure performing labor
while listening.
It's still exposed to the integrative effect of radio.
Although neither the technological capacities for, nor the meanings
of national radio were fixed
when this image creates the pages of radio news.
Its iconic graffiti of geographical differences overcome
by linguistic communities stands
in for this cultural hopes regarding broadcasting is technology
and cultural form.   This image lives on.

In more recent years, a generation
of radio scholars have been influenced
by Benedict Anderson's conception of an "imagined community."
An anthropologist, Anderson was interested
in how modern nation states maintain a sense of unity,
and especially given the individuals that comprise
of societies are not personally in contact with one another
in geographically defined territories.
Anderson links us with different culture and a feeling of camaraderie
that created by simultaneously experiencing events in the form
of a daily ritualistic newspaper reading.
And radio historians have taken this and this conjuncture of reading
and social connection and expand it mapping radio simultaneous
transmission and reception on to national communities.
When the golden age, radio is described
with their requisite references
to Roosevelt's fireside chats were the terror around the War
of the Worlds and the sanction over this national experience
of mass culture is implicit.
Recently however, a new wave of radio historians have began
to revise this national-- national based unifying an Americanizing
model of Golden Age of Radio.
Imagine the communities don't have to be national in scope at all.
They can be defined by region,
religious affiliation or ethnic identity.
And while the dominance of national networks is given,
this work has uncovered far more spaces of alternative cultural forms
on the airwaves that have previously been acknowledged.
Looking at case studies such as the technological limits
of radio distribution, dynamics and policies of localism and they played
out in individual communities, considerations of road broadcasters
who issued the limits of culturally stayed content and were loved
by their audiences for it, and the ways that audiences used letters
to talk back to broadcasters venting their outrage
over the representations of their communities.
All these revisionist histories
of Golden Age Radio are casting a new light on this era.
And I would add to this, the work of Henry Sapoznik
and his forum really fitting into this model.
Although there are still much work to be done in this area,
one result of this revision is scholarship as a recognition
of the complexity of the cultural form
of American broadcasting even during this era of network dominance.
So, today, I want to provide context for history Yiddish radio looking
at some of the dynamics of non-English language radio during
and shortly after the network era.
To do this, I want to sketch the contours of inter
and post war non-English radio in the United States institutionally,
aesthetically, politically, and culturally.
First, I'll discuss the economic and institutional arraignment
of non-English radio via a comparison
with the dominant network models.
Next, I'm going to chart the program structure and the context
of non-English language broadcast, Yiddish accepted,
and the ways how much they made audience appeals.
And within this is discussion,
I'm going to address specifically the dynamics of nostalgia
and negotiation of contemporary events as reflecting two elements
of successful English language radio.
And finally, I'm going to examine significant shifts that occurred
within these existing arrangements particularly censorship during World
War 2 and the collapse of the network system
in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
So economically, non-English language radio was both dependent
upon and yet distinct from the network era radio.
Commercial interest dominated all of the radio in the '30s and '40s,
but this system was a bifurcated one.
It was divided between national network programs
and non-networks there.
Network programs with the biggest stars, mass audiences
and national sponsors were fed live at the studios in New York,
Chicago, and Los Angeles.   And the AT&T; landlines used

to distribute those programs were quite expensive,
and we're using the barrier of entry cost such that, NBC, CBS,
and to a lesser extent mutual operated as an oligopoly.
The network affiliates who broadcast these shows were themselves among
the highest powered stations.
It was financially advantageous for affiliates
to air large amounts of networks programs.
They are after all paid based on the number of hours
of network originated programming that aired.
So, these stations schedules were dominated
by nationally oriented shows.   Network's radios advertising well,

it did not necessarily resemble the 30-Second magazine model that exists
in radio and television today.
Potential sponsors purchased a large--
a block of time and created programming to fill it.
This provided an advantage.
And that they were the sole advertiser
for a given 15-minute or half hour block.
However, in doing so required large deep pockets and an ability
to be successfully build a program.
And for this reason, network radio sponsors were generally the nation's
largest corporations and lacking expertise in program production,
and they relied on advertising agencies to create the shows.
The networks did produce some programs to build an audience
and attract sponsors or for public service reasons,
but by the late 1930s, commercial programs dominated
network schedules.
At that same time, a parallel economic system
that facilitated alternative programming types and most
of distributions served
as a valuable source of program and revenue.
Smaller stations, usually not network affiliated shared a
for profit orientation with their network brethren,
but their industrial practices were in many way distinct.
In the next section, I want to discuss two of these methods
by which a smaller stations obtain programming,
time brokerage and transcription discs.
Neither of these practices were exclusive
to non-English language radio,
rather they were widely used techniques
that provided an opportunity for different kinds of materials to air.
Because they were commercially oriented,
they share that basic orientation
about the industry called the American system, but they differed
in the alternative institutional arraignments they afford,
thus making ethnic radio possible.
Stations that featured non-English language programs used the practice
called time brokerage.
In this arrangement, the broker would contact
with the state radio station for a certain amount of time and here,
she would then create a program and solicit sponsors for that block.
With small budgets, programs were usually fairly rudimentary often
simply recorded music and announcements.
Likewise, these shows featured multiple sponsors
to reduce the cost of advertising.
Participating programs allowed smaller sponsors
to purchase advertising time much less expensively
that if they were solely responsible for of the production cost.
Over two thirds of non-English language programs were of this type.
It's important to remember this arrangement 'cause even though
if we look at schedule, we may see something like the Lithuanian hour
and may have a consistent theme and named from week to week,
had a variety of sponsors in the content could vary.
So, time brokerage was actively discouraged
by the mainstream industry for several reasons.
It reencountered to the predominant programming philosophy of the era
which dictated programming variety while alienating none.
The goal of the mass audience meant
that mainstream radio stations were highly skeptical
of non-English language program because it was perceived
as driving away English--
sorry, audience members who did not speak that language.
Smaller stations, however,
were willing to potentially ride off part--
portions of their audience in return for the guaranteed revenue offered
by the broker and the smaller sponsors.
Second, large stations and industry organizations condemn the time
brokering as overly crass and commercial,
and therefore threatening to the entire enterprise
of commercial broadcasting.
The industry position of brokers was that brokers were able to--
were reliable to loosen programming standards because they are
under weekly pressures to obtain enough revenue to pay the station.
The industry feared that as we see would tighten regulatory standards
if programming did not meet the standards
of universal cultural value that were-- we want to become widespread.
And, you know, to some extent, they are right,
as the 1946 Blue Book controversies suggest.
So with few exemptions, noted the WEBD, radio stations
that broadcast non-English language programs were not owned
by members of that ethnic group.
This also meant that very often, the station manager was not qualified
to evaluate, let alone understand the programming going
out under his license, right?   As I will address later,

this inability would have important implications among fears for Italian
and German language broadcasting and that broadcasters are sympathetic
to fascism during the one up to and during World War 2.
So, non-network affiliated stations
and their audiences were less dismissive of time brokering.
As Cliff Doerksen has argued,
world and working class audiences often resembled--
often resented the cosmopolitan tone
and euphemistic advertising on network programs.
They preferred what they perceived
as straight forward planes spoken talk
and often embraced the advertising pictured aimed at them.
Indeed, their loyalties to these products suggest an active decision
support brands that spoke to their needs, interest and world view.
This dynamic encompass non-English language programs as well.
Derek Vaillant notes that when the FRC challenged the licenses
of Chicago non-English language broadcasters in the late 1920s,
stations supporter deluged the agency with letters demanding
with the stations not be taken off the air.
So recognizing the loyalty generated by audience segments
that weren't regularly appealed to, various stations sought
to translate ethnic markets for mainstream consumption.

These ads here from New York City station,
WBNX which was [inaudible] featured a wide range
of non-English language programming touted the value
of the Polish community in New York as a market.
The ads argue that the size of the greater New York Polish community
which they note exceeded the population
of Lativ [phonetic] made it an ideal target for advertising.
In this way, ethnic broadcasters and time brokers acted as intermediaries
in the acts of cultural articulation,
is at the cultural articulation is what I'm taking from Stuart Hall
who refers to a cultural conjunctions
that have no necessary relationship to one another,
but are never less connected via context of social, cultural,
economic, and technological forces.
I think ethnic radio is a remarkable example of this process.
In countries where there's a small--
or there's strong public interest models in broadcasting,
ethnic or minority language radio is guaranteed a spot, however,
small within the national public.
And here, I'm thinking of examples like Aboriginal Radio
on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation or the BBC
which aired the show called Caribbean Voices
on the BBC World Service in the late 1940s and 1950s.
But in the United States, we have a much less centralized
and a more commercial system.
And so, ethnic radio has for better or worse coexisted
and was structured by commercial demands.
So interpolation into this commercial system was a requirement
for visibility and recognition.
So, for example, in the above ad there
on the left seen stannous loss was not a natural side of consumption,
right and someone is when somebody as one could argue
that a Catholic church would antithesis
of that least mass consumerism.
However, the fact that as a prominent building
with a larger congregation that signified the buying power
of a group defined by that religious and national identity.
It made-- it's still in forth that consumer power.
Similarly, this ad for the-- by the International Broadcasting Corp--
chain, the IBC defines Italians around the New York
by their consumption capacity
of what the claimed was a billion dollars.
Whatever varied cultural characteristic--
the diverse group of Italian-Americans in New York had,
they were filtered out, right by the lens of the consumer practices.
And the IBC's construction
of what it calls the Italo-American market is important
for another reason, that is for portability.
Although, it was connected to stations WOV, WBIL, and WPN,
it was a transcription based network.
And transcriptions became an important source
for non-English language programming,
like one of the reasons why, you know,
we are able to access the discs that we have.
So many were lost, but, you know, what we do have in part a result
of those kind of practices.
Transcription discs were high quality records produced
specifically for radio broadcast and we're quite common in 1930s radio.
They came in several forms, mix and match libraries,
spot advertisements, and complete programs.
Transcription discs featured scripts-- excuse me--
transcription libraries featured scripts, sound effects, and music
and allowed the station to quickly build music-based shows.
Distribution of complete programs was used or both used
by independent producers such as standard recording
of the world broadcasting company or by sponsors
with limited distribution areas for their products,
and wanted to create what were called chainless chains.
Transcriptions allow sponsors to pick and choose the stations
and locations where they would air the show
and its intended commercials.
For example, Chevrolet would often use transcriptions
to distribute a show called the Chevrolet Chronicles,
so that local dealers could tack on geographically specific ad copy.
By contrast, the 1930s network--
national networks had large minimum purchases which, again, made up,
and necessary for deep-pocketed sponsors only.
So there are number of examples of English language programs.
Here we go.
They've non-English language programs following this
distribution model.   From one in the late 1930s,

a woman named Hyla Kiczales used transcriptions of New York station,
WOV's Italian language programs that organize the IBC.
So the International Broadcasting Chain was a regional network.
It consisted of 15 stations in the Mid-Atlantic in New England,
and claimed the circulation of three and a half million listeners
and at 90 percent of its programs were sponsored.
Kiczales had become general manager of WOV and WBIL after serving
as the assistant to a guy named John Iraci who is the station's owner.
Iraci had made his money as an importer
of Italian specialty products, many of which were advertised on WOV,
but he died rather suddenly
and Kiczales succeeded him in running the stations.
In this way, we can see that the IBC was an outgrowth of both the rise
of transcription distribution as a technology, but also as a way
for the station to repurpose some of its programs
and to allow a wide range of sponsors
to advertise to this community.   The WOV and the IBC also gave us--

gave us a window into the filtration involved
when the ethnic groups were defined and sold as recognizable markets.
Is this at in the following quote will suggest.
In 1938, Kiczales described IBC's success using three related terms,
Americanization, a merchandisable package of the audience,
and a "product-free of all rough edges."
So it's clear from her comments that she was attempting
to distance herself from the poor reputation
of non-English language programs by stating quote.
It has taken much time and energy to undo all the mistakes of those
who first designed programs for foreign consumption.
Every contract that he get
for non-English language business was grabbed regardless
of how small the merchant's budget, how well-equipped they were
for production, or what language the sponsor even wanted
for his broadcast.
Slip-shot management was the rule rather than the exception.
Likewise, she cast Italians as, again,
Italo-Americans perhaps reflecting the fact that the advertisements
for the IBC programming displayed a curious contradiction
as you can see in this image.
The copy claims access to a previously non-reachable market,
because of its cultural otherness but the visual imagery was
that of the most American sports football.
Here we may suspect that the target
of this ad is not the actual Italian-American community but,
you know, American advertising agencies
who will be placing response there.   Clearly, they were quite successful.

WOV and the IBC were repeatedly written up in trade journals
for obtaining a wide range of sponsors of the program.
Not just Italian-oriented companies but mainstream American brands
like Old Gold Tobacco, Procter and Gamble and General Mills.
I think it's a long history that needs to be written of, you know,
these brands, ethnic sort of ethnic outreach over radio.
For example, Oxydol which is a Procter
and Gamble brand was a regular user of three
to five minute news programs in German, Italian, Polish, Lithuanian,
Czech, and Slovak, all right.
So, even if from probably preliminary research,
it's clear that Kiczales was not alone.
In Los Angeles, a company called Italo Radio produced programs
that were marketed throughout the country.
The Hispano Broadcasting Company also in Los Angeles did the same
with Spanish-language programs, and there are multiple others.
Indeed, I think it's worth noting in this context
that Moses Asch's Recording Studios sought to record
and distribute Yiddish radio programs that aired on WEVD, well,
before he made his money recording various blues figures, right?
So there's a kind of interesting overlap there as well.
So by the early 1940s, non-English language radio was
fairly well-established.
It was about over 1,400 hours of programming airing weekly,
over 200 different stations.
That's another one quarter of American total number of stations.
Like its economic basis, the program content
of ethnic radio differed significantly
from that of major networks.
Less than one-third of the programs were dramas, talks, or newscast,
the kind of programs that featured predominantly
on the national networks.
The remaining two-thirds consisted of music, commercial spots
and public service announcements.
Non-English language radio relied heavily on music shows.
For example, Italian broadcasters featured 61 percent
of Italian programs for music
and German broadcast were whopping 91 percent musical programs, right.
In the comparison, national networks were right
around 50 percent in music.
These figures also suggest some variation among ethnic groups
and their access to different kinds of dramatic
and traditions and comedic traditions.
11 percent of Polish shows and 10 percent
of Lithuanian shows were dramedy-- or sorry, we're drama,
but only about 2.6 percent of Spanish shows
and about 6.4 percent of Yiddish programs.
So there's a kind of interesting time there as well.
So, I guess, the one question we want to ask was is there any kind
of common feeling or cultural ethos in these programs?
And so in the next section,
I'll argue the non-English language radio function as a tool
for political and culture belonging.
Although non-English language radio broadcast tended to be saccharin
in their sonic construction of their homelands, they help listeners
to negotiate nostalgia as well as navigate the geopolitical present.
This tool orientation backwards nostalgia
and contemporary counter-public made non-English language program
and culturally resonate in the 1930s, but the by the 1950s,
as the percentage of foreign-born
in the US dwindled actively threatened it.
So in some ways, radio music has always been nostalgic.
With a very brief exceptions in the 1950s and '60s, radios had tended
to follow popularity curves rather than lead them.
And even in the 1930s, old song favorites dominated radio,
where most Cutting Edge Jazz was aired much less frequently.
Still, commentators noted a particularly nostalgic character
of non-English language programs.
In their pioneering 1941 study, Rudolf Arnheim and Bayne note
that both musical selections and the catch phrases in linguistic slang
up announcers dated from 30 to 40 years prior, right.
In one example, they note
that German programs evoke the social life
of lower middle class Imperial Germany, a cultural milieu
of beer sellers, men's choral societies, rifle clubs,
birthday parties, and the trappings of small-town life.
It should not surprise us, however,
the audience for non-English language programs was overwhelmingly
composed of first generation immigrants.
Listenership dropped off considerably
in the second and third generations.
A 1940 study of Polls, Italians, Russians, Jews,
and Germans in New York-- I'm sorry, in New Jersey, found that 37 percent
of first generation immigrants reported that they listen
to ethnic radio often, and it compares in only 10 percent
of second generation immigrants with the same claim.
39 percent of the first generation favored non--
favored local non-English language programmers
over commercial programs.   An opinion shared by over 5--

only 5 percent of the second generation audience.
So this generational divides in ethnic radio highlight some
of the distinctive ways, I mean, distinctive dynamics
for broadcasting the immigrant groups.
In some ways, we might adapt Hamid Naficy's work on Italian--
I'm sorry-- on Iranian, the sport broadcasting in Los Angeles
to highlight this process.
Naficy argues that the challenge of this sport broadcasting is
to not lose touch with the lived cultures of their homelands
to articulate a cultural sense of looking back
at what was rather than what is now.
And this occurrence, it then puts them in a position
of triple alienation, alienated from, means from American culture
with its emphasis on assimilation.
Politically, it alienated from the younger members
of their own community who embrace assimilation or cultural hybridity,
and finally alienated from more recent immigrants
who see their older groups as old fashioned even in terms
of the national or ethnic culture.
But one way that the sport broadcasting can respond
to this challenge is by addressing the internal and external pressures
on the ethnic community as they emerge.
Successful ethic broadcasting could help us audience negotiate the
contradiction of that group's geopolitical present.
This is especially true in a time of crisis, and what we see
and especially in the late 1930s and 1940s.
Over 10 percent of non-English radio in this era consisted of news,
programs and talks, and they run up to and during World War 2,
these programs informed the population of events
in their homelands in far more detail than if they relied
on American news stories.
And this that there were number of other forms too.
German shows often featured advice and services for sending money
and packages back to Germany.
Spanish language programming frequently featured programing
designed to encourage Pan-American feelings, as well as those designed
to aid Mexican immigrants,
or organize against practices of illegal deportation.
Polish language programming offered a range of incisive critics
of the daily experiences of new arrivals
in America on a regular basis.   And so in these ways, these kinds

of non-English language radio programs serves
as what Nancy Fraser called the subaltern counterpublics.
Parallel discourse of arraignment where members
of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter discourses
to formulate oppositional interpretations
of their identities, interest, and needs.
These were discourses bases in which the concerns
of that minority group could be discussed, framed,
and reframed in ways that were not always possible
in the larger public sphere.
Unfortunately, these characteristics were the same ones that for German
and Italian radio in particular invited official
and unofficial repression just before and during World War 2.
And though the German and Italian radio was focused on this,
they had the effect of suppressing ethnic radio as a whole.
Germans and Italian radio, Germans and Italians were two
of the largest non-English speaking populations in the US at this time.
And correspondingly, their radio represented to the largest blocks
of non-English language broadcast.
But even before the war, the US government took steps
to monitor broadcast in German and Italian.
In 1938, the Dies Committee investigating un-American activities
here the witnesses charging at five New York
and New Jersey Stations were broadcasting programming sympathetic
to Italy's issues to government, and as the worker goes for the FCC
and the FBI were increasingly concerned that German
and Italian broadcasters would represent access points of view
and their new broadcast will delivered codes to access agents.
In June 1940, the FCC pressured the NAB to institute new guidelines
that required licensees to review and clear non-English broadcast.
This represented a significant expense for the station owners
that featured any non-English language programing,
not just German and Italian, right?
It basically cost 28 percent of the stations that had been
on airing non-English language broadcast to cease doing
so by the end of the year.
After Pearl Harbor, the OWI pressured broadcasters to remove
from the air German and Italian commentators whom it considers
sympathetic to the access cost,
and it frequently withheld the license renewals for stations
that broadcast material that they found questionable.
To its credit, the OWI also attempted
to create non-English language programs
that supported the war effort, programs like "You Can't Do Business
With Hitler" and "Uncle Sam Speaks" articulated ways
that immigrant groups could demonstrate patriotic sentiment.
Although stations frequently aired this, they were generally regarded
as failures because they were overly didactic,
and in fact represented a kind of often had progressive Germans
who were-- the members of the German community found [inaudible] found
to forward thinking in their liberalism.
Ultimately, there's a result of the official and unofficial regulations,
the number of stations that aired non-English language programing
dropped by over 40 percent during World War 2
which created specifically challenge as the--
and the immediate after war period.   Now in some ways, the future

of ethnic radio seemed great after the war.
It had passed the patriotism test.
It was a relatively activist, FCC had committed itself
to program source diversity
and was basically authorizing many more new stations
than it had previously, and FM provided a potential new era,
one more established stations wouldn't have squatting rights.
The number of stations were doubled between 1946 and 1952
and these stations, many of them quite small, would need programming.
In 1946, saw two stations purchased for use a non-English broadcasting
and Italian-oriented station in New York,
and a Spanish one in San Antonio.
But this promise belied significant changes on American society
that created difficulties for non-English language broadcasters
with the exception of Spanish language.
So there are four factors
that limited non-English radio in this period.
One was that minority broadcasters faced difficulty
in financial support from banks and other institutions.
Bankers had long been reluctant to finance radio stations
but they were especially leery of providing loans for investment
and services that they did not understand such advertising
to groups that did not think that they had the capital to spend.
That's why you have the advertising campaigns like I described earlier.
Second, many of the smaller ethnic groups were not large enough
to constitute a market for broadcast advertising as radio moved
from a time brokerage to a format model.
And the format model stations in the 1950s begin
to seek a unified sound for unified audience.
Ethnic broadcast relied on smaller blocks
of time could not fill the complete schedule.
And these small stations frequently turned to use
where African-American markets for sponsors and revenue.
Three, ratings organizations did not categorize ethnic minorities,
making it even more typical for private investors
to [inaudible] radio, especially
as more established broadcasters were affiliated
with English language broadcasting.
And finally, as it moved into the 1950s, political pressure
in the form of the anti-communist suspicions of foreigners resulted
in the cancellation of 29 English language programs
in Detroit and in New York City.   But the most important challenge

to non-English language radio was social rather than economic.
Ethnic broadcasting was deeply impacted
by the long term demographic changes in immigration brought
on by the 1924 Immigration Act.
The 1924 Act set the immigration quotas to 3 percent
of an ethnic group's population as of the 1890 census.
These have the intentional effect of restricting the immigration
of Southern and Eastern Europeans.
For example, at the turn of the 20th century,
200,000 Italians immigrated annually.
The quota established by the 1924 Act was 4,000,
the reduction in Italian, Polish, and Hungarian immigration combined
with the aging of the existing first generation.
In 1920, 13 percent of the US population was foreign born.
In 1940, it was 8, in 1950 it was 6.
Those that remained were older and less viable to sponsors.
Conversely, I think, and we can take this up, there was a sort
of infusion of Jewish immigrants and I think that one was one
of the reasons why you had the continued success
of Yiddish radio going forward in this period
and I hope I'll speak a little bit about that.
The other group that flourished was, of course, Spanish language radio.
Cyclical Mexican immigration patterns increased the populations
of ethnic inclined enclaves increased numbers of stations.
Many in the southwest and west allowed more opportunities
for programming.
And by 1956, Spanish language radio had not only superseded the amount
of Polish and Italian programming but it represented two-thirds
of all non-English language programming in the US.
Indeed, it's notable that WBNX, a New York City station
that even before WEBD provided its moniker that the symposium takes
where the station dispute
for language had become a Spanish language station starting
in the early 1960s.
Actually-- and in currently, it's become a Mandarin,
24-hour Mandarin station.
But I think this continuity is important
for what make successful non-English language radio in the US, right?
By looking at this institutional and economic context,
we can see that in the-- in both embrace of the past and in terms
of nostalgia but also they're speaking to the present
since there's kind of successful, ethnic language radio can continue
and speak to the various ethnic populations of our country.
That's all.   [ Applause ]

[ Pause ]
>> Ubiquitous in its day, nearly forgotten in hours.
Yiddish radio was a combination of all the elements
which made Yiddish culture the dynamic force it was.
The immediacy of journalism, the time listeners of literature,
the buoyancy of music, the visceral dynamic of theatre,
it was Yiddish culture with an electrical jolt.
Yet, Yiddish radio with its vast span
and sweep was unique only to the United States.
Why was this?
After all, the above mentioned elements
of Yiddish culture were omnipresent wherever a Yiddish word was spoken,
Warsaw, Vilna, Buenos Aires, Moscow.
There, like here, radio was controlled
and licensed by the government.
And yet only here, Yiddish radio took root and flourished due
to what Jenna Weissman Joselit happily reminded us was shouting
in the public ear, advertising.
Advertising allowed the community to speak to itself.
It created a cadre of vest-pocket demagogy, patrons of the arts
who during the day ran men's clothing stores,
sold chopped liver deliver to its patrons
or created new products such us hernia trousers.
It was these pioneers of broadcasting
who helped underpin the emerging new Yiddish culture which came
out of what David Sarnoff called the radio box in the kitchen.
Since 1922, some 178 stations
across the United States aired Yiddish programs.
Ironically, the last Yiddish show in New York radio is
on Christian station WMCA, one of the relentless number
of ironies dogging the amazing narrative of Yiddish radio.
Unlike mainstream programs, Yiddish language programs were only found
on local, low-power stations most under 500 watts.
Some like station WCNW was 50 watts of power and broadcast
from the front window of a men's clothing store on Pitkin Avenue.
The power was so small that they probably would have done better
to merely open the window of the studio and yell into the street.

[Laughter] These stations all came to the air as part
of complicated timeshare arrangements, whose allocations
where anything less than equitable.
Imagine then, the radio dial as a salami,
with the juicy inner chunks going to the networks
and the small dry slivers on the outer edges going
to small vest-pocket stations for non-English speakers.
I want to play a brief example of one
of these strange timeshare arrangements.
This was a series of stations in Brooklyn, New York who were forced
like a dysfunctional Noah's Ark to share one frequency,
1400 kilocycles, the Siberia of the airwaves.
These stations had to exist if we think of them as what was one
of the common economic and social phenomena of the period of taking
in boarders that is people who all lived in the same house
but who led completely different lives.
I'd like to play an excerpt of both the on air sequence
and of the sign off of the four stations, WC and WWARD,
WLTH and WBBC, these small stations unhappily shared the same tiny 1400
kilocycles on the airwaves.   [ Pause ]

Are we playing the sequence?
>> This is WLTH, the radio theatre of the Brooklyn, New York.
We have an operating on audio frequency of 1400 kilocycles
by authority of the Federal Communication Commission.
We are signing off now to resume broadcasting tomorrow morning
at 11:30.
This is [inaudible] wishing you a very pleasant, good night.

[ Music ]
>> Good evening ladies and gentleman.
This is station WBBC, Brooklyn's own station, owned and operated
by the Brooklyn Broadcasting Corporation, maintaining offices
and studios in the WBBC building located
at 554 Atlantic Avenue Times Plaza in Brooklyn, New York.
We operate on a frequency of 1400 kilocycles as authorized
by the Federal Communication Commission.
[ Pause ]   >> We have two more.

[Inaudible Remark]   >> No, cut, that's not, no, no, no.

Thank you.
Okay, we obviously do not have two more.
The other two stations WARD and WVFW, WVFW has changed its name
to the Veteran of Foreign Wars when they were being investigated
by the Federal Communications Commission in order
to seem more patriotic and attempt to stay on the air.
It didn't work.
Well, the year 1926 is really the watershed year
for the first radio broadcast on Yiddish.
While that was the first broadcast before radio was on the air,
Yiddish radio was in the air.
We're going to look now to a series of images
which give us the visual history of Yiddish radio.
And this evening, it'd be my pleasure
to present extended sequences of Yiddish radio broadcast for us
to hear in the voice of the creators of themselves
of Yiddish radio in its heyday.
I wanted to start first with this image that is on the screen,
this which reads radio programme.
This was radio program for those from out of town.
This is a column that appeared
in the Yiddish communist newspaper, the Freiheit.
It really expanded the image of Yiddish radio
for a large variety of listeners.
The year 1926 as I pointed out really saw the invention
of Yiddish radios as we know it.
This is an advertisement for the Libby's Hotel and Russian Baths
on the corner of Christie and Delancey Streets.
The advertisement touts its incredible new ones
of offerings including masseuse, a hat blocker,
and various Russian baths way, way, way at the bottom
of the advertisement which appeared
in the Jewish theatrical news, May 1926.
It advertises a Jewish broadcast over station WFBH
which was broadcasting from the far more swanky hotel majestic
in Midtown Manhattan.
Pictured here is a picture postcard which was on sale
in the lobby of the Libby Hotel.
And tucked away on top what is a obviously a hand-drawn flag on top
of the Libby's Hotel which was named after the owner's mother, Libby,
is actually the transmission tower.
On top f the Libby's Hotel was a radio ballroom
from which the hotel broadcast a melange of programs,
of Yiddish theatre, canters and declaimers.
The hotel really in the heart of the lower eastside was only a series
of footfalls from the great Yiddish theatres which catered
to the Jewish audience of the day and the great performers who came
to the Yiddish stage would often come and many of them even had rooms
at the Libby's Hotel and would appear on the air
to both plug their new shows and to give really a rise
to the emerging Yiddish culture.
But unfortunately, the days of the Libby's Hotel were numbered.
The hotel went into bankruptcy in 1926.
The hotel was raised soon after and it's now the location
of the Sara Delano Roosevelt Park on Delancey and Christie.
But I want to bring out the narrative of the visionaries
of Yiddish radio to who planned Yiddish radio
and to who stumbled into it.
And we're going to really look to these men as really the icons
of both great planning and great chance.
Here on the left, Baruch Charney Vladeck, a revolutionary socialist
who escaped the zares [phonetic] police only moments before his
arrest, came to the United States at the turn
to the century eventually becoming the general manager and one
of the editors at the Jewish daily forward.
He envisioned very early on a kind
of a Jewish homeland for the Jews on the air.
A kind of a hertz soul of the megahertz
who really saw this great new world invasion
for the emerging Jewish population and saw the radio waves as a new way
to spread the word of the great socialist message
of the socialist party which The Forward was the Yiddish organ.
On his right is David Sarnoff, one of the great capitalists of--
and one of the great visionaries at NBC.
It's perhaps one of the wonderful ironies,
these two men born only a few years from each other and only a few miles
from each other in Eastern Europe would come together
in the United States in a momentary interaction
in the creation of Yiddish radio.
How Charney Vladeck came to approach David Sarnoff about the creation
of Yiddish radio broadcasting is not known.
But what we do know from their very lively correspondents is
that these two men, despite their obvious political differences had a
great interest in each other.
An insight into the relationship and also
into Charney Vladeck's ethics is a letter dated March 21st, 1924.
The two men had already been corresponding about Yiddish radio.
This letter from March 21st, 1924 expresses Sarnoff's unease
about a gift he had recently receive from David Sarnoff of a radio law
for radio and he wrote, "It isn't really conscience
that is bothering me in returning this radio," he wrote.
"As much as foresight, I expect someday to be a secretary
of the interior under a socialist president.
You understand very well that I would be very much embarrassed
if a senatorial investigation in 1944 should find out that back
in 1923, the VP and manager of the Radio Corporation
of America made a gift to the secretary of the interior."
The radio was in fact returned.
But those the-- these two men planned, and their correspondents
between 1923 and 1925 was vigorous and relentless.
This was not to be the case.
In fact, the first joining of a Yiddish journalist and a newspaper
and an emerging Jewish radio mogul happened quite, in fact,
by accident only a few year later, and this happened through--
this was, by the way, the picture of The Forward building,
one of the tallest structures on the lowery side
where Charney Vladeck had envisioned a transmission tower.
And unfortunately this was one of the plans which went slightly awry.
Again, the actual creation of Yiddish radio happened
between two other men of a totally different stature.
Here, it's a photograph on the left is Z.H. Rubinstein
who was the editor of a more moderate newspaper called
"Der Tog" The Day.
And on the right is the Yiddish comedian and singer Molly Picon.
Z.H. Rubinstein had been running advertisements
for the Libby's Hotel program,
and when the Libby's Hotel program went off the air,
Rubinstein really got the idea to begin Yiddish programs on his own,
in fact, touted his new broadcast called Der Tog Program,
The day program, and invented as he said, Jewish radio broadcasting.
He found a small station on which to air his programs WABC,
not the WABC of today, a small station which allowed him
to run his program structured entirely on the same basis
of the program that of the previous Libby's Hotel program.
This small station found its audience although the programs were
broadcast on midweek, 10 p.m., not exactly primetime
for its working class audience who was its major listening community.
It poked along for a couple of years unbenounced, however,
to Z.H. Rubinstein and his program is that a major change was
about to-- was about to happen and this was from another
of the great emerging radio moguls, William Paley.
Paley whose father had a cigar store in Philadelphia had sent his son
to New York to locate new advertising outlets from--
for his cigar store.
The young Paley found a floundering network and decided
that this was his future, not cigars, but radio and decided
to go mano-a-mano with David Sarnoff
and began what was called the Colombia Broadcasting System.
Paley's idea was very simple.
He offered his newly-- his fledgling affiliates across the country,
free broadcast, free programming
if they would carry his programming as it was airing.
He located station WABC as he needed a flagship station.
WABC suddenly became the center
of the concentric circle of the new CBS network.
By 1929, there were 46 affiliates across the country,
all broadcasting the exact same program
that was being heard regularly on station WABC in New York.
One can only imagine what listeners in Sioux City,
Iowa thought when they heard Yiddish comedians
and singers coming on the air.
This was unbelievably, unprecedented moment, and in fact,
this moment of Yiddish radio being heard coast to coast was not
to be replicated for another 60 years
when the Yiddish radio project aired on NPR.
This was an incredible accidental joining of these two forces.
Paley probably never having listened to a Yiddish show,
unlike David Sarnoff, though they were both Jewish,
Paley was far more interested
in cultural assimilation than his rival at NBC.
The Tog Program continued on WABC and on the CBS network until 1933
when it was replaced with original programming
which CBS became famous for.
In this moment of coast to coast Yiddish programming
ended unfortunately.
Radio and Yiddish radio was to be forever a local phenomenon.
We're going to look at just a couple of.
Here's a photograph from station WBNX,
BNX being the call letters from the Bronx.
That station was actually founded by comedian Ed Wynn
in a misguided attempt to go head to head with NBC and CBS.
It was a major travesty.
But BNX very early on as we've just heard,
saw itself as a multilingual station and has pointed
out coined the slogan, "The Station That Speaks Your Language,"
a slogan it retained until the late 1940s
when it was taken over by WEVD.
This is the station, musical director Fred Mendelsohn.
And here's a-- this is a picture
of a radio drama featuring Jenny Goldstein.
She's the only one in the picture who's dressed
as if she's ready to leave.
Jenny Goldstein called the Queen of Tears.
This particular program really hinged
on Jenny Goldstein's virtuoustic ability to cry on command.
But-- and BNX actually, one
of the interesting thing was the most powerful of all
of the radio stations whereas the other stations, 50 watts
or 500 watts, WEVD eventually a thousand watts,
WBNX had a whopping 5,000 watts of power,
you could here it throughout the Bronx.
Actually, on a good night with a good air current,
you could hear it throughout New England and into the Midwest.
But again, as many of the smaller stations were far more local,
we're going to-- here is a picture of one of the great pioneers
of advertising for Yiddish radio.
His name is Al Anton [phonetic], and I'm very proud to say
that this picture among many others of early radio stars was supplied me
by his granddaughter Sandy Berger [phonetic].
She and her family have come here to see me talk
about their illustrious grandfather who is looking at a microphone
at WMLL-- WMIL, Brooklyn station, not sure if he likes it
or if he sees that it is a competitor, WMIL and Al Anton,
great advertiser for many years.
Here's a picture of a program which he appeared on WVFW.
It is entirely unclear what is going on in this picture.
[Laughter] It is so filled with images.
There is a wedding canopy.
There are canters, his boss, Samuel Glasgow [phonetic],
the dean of the world clothing establishment.
This, and this is one of the great things
about the small stations programming for many of the small stations even
at this point was a yawning maw of time, and radio stations looked,
not only to the great stars of the Yiddish theatre,
but also spread its net widely to shower stall sopranos,
young accordion players from the young Judea,
and performers whose last names were remarkably similar
to performers of much better renown.
[Laughter] And the idea that radio stations found an equitability
of these kinds of performers and performing
that really reflected the great diversity
of Yiddish culture at this time.
This is a rate card from station WLTH,
LTH standing for the Leverich Towers Hotel, a swanky hotel
in the eastern parkway section of Brooklyn.
And as the note here talks about how important advertising is
to reaching the multilingual communities of New York.
We have to think and keep in mind
that in the decades long before the term multiculturalism was
omnipresent, radio stations actively sought minority listeners in order
to create this crazy quilt of languages and programming in order
to really create an outlet not only for the production of programming
for foreign language speakers, but also the income
to sustain the stations on the air which annually had to look
to the FCC to renew their programs.
Here is a montage of various programs clipped from variety
of Yiddish newspapers which really give a sense
of the different kind of radio stations.
One of the problems with the radio--
with doing radio research in Yiddish radio was finding
out after several years that Yiddish newspapers would refuse
to run programs sponsored by rival.
They would not run the listings of programs sponsored
by rival Yiddish newspapers, but they would happily run paid
for display ads, for the show.
So, even though there was ideological difference
between the newspapers, they were perfectly happy
to take paid advertising.   And again, as a Yiddish radio,

although Yiddish radio did find its largest number of stations
in the New York City area over 35 in the New York City area between 1926
and 1950 with a dozen in the burrow of Brooklyn itself,
the social advocacy group Common Council for American Unity
in 1941 identified 56 different foreign language groups
which enjoyed broadcasting from coast to coast.
So, this really refers to a really dynamic universe
in which Yiddish was only one of many foreign language stations
and language groups, in many cases defying the stereotype where Jews
and especially Yiddish speaking Jews were thought to inhabit,
to take them out of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and so forth.
This is an advertisement from a Yiddish newspaper in Philadelphia
which this was WPEN, there's a part of the message here it says,
"Hear the message in Yiddish English, hear the message
which Morrie Schwartz has for the Jews
of Philadelphia," this is from 1930.
Yiddish radio was vital in the propagation and continuation
of Yiddish theatre certainly during the depression era
when theatres were closing and only through the intersession
of Yiddish radio where many traveling Yiddish theatre thespians
able to continue there careers.
The Forward, as I pointed out, even though through a visionary
like Charney Vladeck began its March to create a Yiddish radio.
This is a photograph of one of the first Forward programs,
ironically not on station supported by The Forward.
This is a broadcast from May 21st 1926 on radio station WNYZ,
the Municipal Broadcasting Company in New York.
Featured on the right is the Yiddish contralto, Isa Kremer,
accompanied by the Metropolitan Ensemble.
This particular, this The Forward understood through the intercession
of Charney Vladeck about the importance of radio.
And we are about to enter into its emergence into Yiddish radio.
Here is a-- this is a book of shares in the creation
of the Debs Memorial Fund.
The death of Eugene Victor Debs, the leader of the socialist party
in 1926 resulted in a memorial to Debs.
At a meeting of American socialists in Terre Haute, Indiana,
a number of solutions and memorials to Eugene V. Debs were put forth.
Some at the conference suggested a library, others a monument
but it was Charney Vladeck who again brought up his idea
of a radio station in Debs' honor.
And station WEVD was soon to come on the air.
By the way, this book of shares here is a one of the shares,
this one owned by socialist leader, Norman Thomas.
This was actually found in radio station WEVD propping up the leg
of a table in the record library.
This WEVD from 1927 when it went on the air until 1933
when it was forced off the air or almost forced off the air
because as the first listener subparted station reaching
out to workers, it could not sustain the program.
Instead, Charney Vladeck convinced his boss, Ab Cahan,
publisher of The Forward to bail out WEVD and to purchase the station
for the kingly sum of 350,000 dollars.
WEVD became the outlet for Yiddish radio although it should be pointed
out that there never was a radio station
which was solely Yiddish broadcasting.
WEVD sustained its socialist
and worker oriented programing into its last days.
This is a picture of the diamond and the tiara program
which characterized WEVD, was called The Forward Hour.
And not surprisingly, took on the exact same structure
as the earlier [foreign word] which had taken on the exact structure
of the earlier Libbys Hotel program.
And, of course, with each subsequent generation of broadcasters,
each claimed to have invented that format pictured in this--
picture, third from left is the comedian Luwdig Satz,
next to him Molly Picon, the Yiddish theater actor Maurice Schwartz,
Cantor Mordechai Hershman is the next to the end on the right,
and pianist Ab Ellstein is on the end.
And what this really tells us,
this melange of both Yiddish popular culture and music
of the synagogue was considered part of the general literacy
of the Jewish listeners of this time.
These programs, they did not tend to segregate these elements.
Each one of these was considered a vital part of the DNA
of Jewish cultural literacy
and radio stations tended to underpin that.
The Forward Hour was the Kreme de la Kreme
of Yiddish programming on WEVD.
Its major contribution to Yiddish listening was to move the program
from Wednesday night at 10 p.m. when dozens of people could listen,
to creating the new Yiddish primetime which was Sunday morning
at 11 a.m. This became the cornerstone of broadcasting
for Yiddish radio in New York.
Ironically, for a program that was so well-heard,
if I heard this anecdote once, I heard it a thousand times
from interviewing both listeners and performers and producers of WEVD,
you could walk on a warm spring day.
If you were in a Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx or Brooklyn
and you could walk down in the neighborhood,
in your Jewish neighborhood, the windows being open
and the betgevant, the blankets and pillows hanging out of the window
and you could walk down the street and hear the program coming
out of each window and never miss a moment.
You would hear the entire program.
And yet for a program that was so ubiquitous, that was so long-lived,
that was so popular with its listeners,
only a precious few moments of The Forward Hour program have survived.
And I would like to just play a brief moment
of one the few remaining shards of this.
This is a closing moment of WEVD.
John, do we have that?   Yes, could we play that, please.


[ Music ]
[Background music] This is their theme song.
This is written by Norman Zaslavsky [phonetic].
The Forward is the name here.   It's a medley of tunes.

[ Music ]   The Internationale.

[ Music ]   >> WEVD, New York.

>> As I said at the station, to this medley liberte,
fraternite, [foreign word].
[Laughter] And, by the way, by the way,
the chimes that we heard closing are these actual chimes.
These were found in the dumpster.
I used to worked in the-- at the graveyard shift on WEVD
and found these and they are now part of the collection here at--
very thrilled that they have found this home.
One of the great moments that unfortunately nearly went unnoticed
in terms the history of Yiddish radio was a brief moment during
the-- during the mid 1930s, the WPA ran a Federal Theatre Project.
A small subdivision of the Federal Theatre Project was the Federal
Yiddish Theater Project.
And the small subdivision of The Federal Yiddish Theater Project was,
in fact, the Federal Yiddish Radio Project broadcasting programs
on a number of stations, WNYC, WBNX, WNYC.
Here is a-- here is a page from one of the programs.
This is from a play, Yiddish place
that was serialized for Yiddish listeners.
Here's a picture of one of the Yiddish place.
This is one of the great Yiddish personalities, in the front,
Zvee Scooler who has referred
to as the Grammeister, The Master of Rhyme.
Here he is directing a production
of an Abraham Goldfaden opera, The Witch in 1937.
Scooler who was best known for his daily 15-minute new summaries
in rhyme was one of the great Yiddish actors and presence in WEVD
until it's very late day on the air.
This is a wonderful image that was found.
This is a cartoon which appeared in the pages of the Morgen Freiheit,
the Yiddish communist paper.
And it's an editorial cartoon about a Yiddish radio broadcast on WEVD.
The man on the right with the tongue not on rye is a man, Luigi Antonini
who was head of the International Ladies' Garment Worker's Union
and the man rolling up his sleeve is a member of the Dressmakers Union,
obviously unhappy with Antonini's editorial perspective.
This ran in the Freiheit in an unknown gate.
This drawing by William Gropper who was one of the great editorial
and satirical cartoonist of his period.
This is only a small sampling of some of the images
which give us the real scope and span of Yiddish radio.
Its demise was really unbeknownst to its great fans.
When one listens to this broadcast in a context of the moment,
we really feel the immediacy, and the power, and the advocacy
of the creators of Yiddish radio, unbeknownst to them,
we're about to have a super nova of sorts Yiddish radio
to receive a series of devastating body blows through a combination
of both the demise of Yiddish because of the decimation
of Yiddish culture for Eastern Europe, the relentless presence
of American assimilation and, of course, the unprecedented change
from interest in radio to television in the 1950s.
The collection here at the library, 1,145 discs plus a large number
of images between 1925 and 1961 reflect over 212 separate
and distinct programs which show the vitality
and distinction of Yiddish radio.
Subsequent research of looking through Yiddish radio listings
and newspapers around the country reveal four times that number
of other programs whose broadcast may be lost to us forever
but which really reflect the incredible diversity
and enthusiasm of Yiddish radio.   Though the days are behind it,

stations which have unfortunately gone off air,
WEVD has now made its way to the new airwaves, it is now on the internet,
and still produces programming in the Yiddish language.
But for our purposes of a moment that reflects great diversity
and great enthusiasm and unprecedented content
with a vital community, both listeners and producers,
the stations that spoke your language will live forever here
at the library.   Thank you very much.

[ Applause ]   >> Does this work?

>> No, I guess not.
>> Thank you for those wonderful talks.
We have, I guess, an hour.   We have a lot of time.

[Laughter] So maybe identify who you are and to who you want
to address your question.
I think there are roving mics, is that true?
Are there roving mics?   >> They're roving elsewhere.

>> If there aren't, I can sort of try to recapture just--
oh, here they come, okay.   So, let's open up to questions.

Yes. Yeah, she's coming with the mic.
>> Hi, absolute total delight, this was absolutely marvelous.
My name is Mindy Reiser, I've had a chance to work
in the former Soviet Union where Yiddish, as we know was spoken.
But my question here is regarding the FCC and I'm wondering in terms
of those powers that be and looking at the license renewal process.
Was there ever any sliver of anti-sematism?
Was there any concern about this strange language Yiddish?
I know you've mentioned this for multi-language stations
but still I know some people might have wondered
about what this really was.   [Inaudible Remark]

>> I mean I think they just objected to all non-language,
English language programming.   They just didn't like it at all.

But I think the one that's sort of exception to that perhaps is
that perhaps you can fill this in.   I think during World War II,

they did embrace Yiddish language programs that were designed
to aid the war effort so that there was some sort
of positive recognition in that sense, but you may speak to--
>> Well, I actually think that rather than foreign language
and eventually what was brought out earlier,
post war there was a major decline in foreign language programming,
but actually the bias of the federal communications commission was
actually against, I mean imagine though, I mean here,
WEVD which was one of two socialist radio stations in the United States,
WCFL, Chicago Federation of Labor was the first.
I mean it must have been ironic that here,
WEVD comes to the Federal Communications Commission,
so we are dedicated to the overthrow of capitalism.
Oh, by the way, can you renew our license?
I think, you know, the idea that this kind of irony and we have
to keep in mind that this was one of the great, those were one
of the great bizarre realities that on the one hand,
the bill of rights gives us freedom of speech and that really refers
to that old fashion medium of printing.
But broadcasting was not a right, it was a privilege.
So the Federal Communications Commission would employ
that privilege and made stations like WEVD crawl over broken glass
in order to get their license renewed.
[Inaudible Remark] Well, the crawling was that they would--
the crawling over broken glass was they would make it extremely hard.
If for example, like for example WEVD shared its frequency
with Christian Science radio station, WBFR, I believe it was.
And one of the great ironies was the Christian language station
which came on the air because of the timeshare, right before WEVD,
the last 10 minutes of the programming on Christian Science was
in Yiddish hoping to convert Jews who were to turn
to the station a little bit early and think, oh my god,
The Forward is now advocating, we become Christians
and WEVD complained through the Federal Communications Commission.
But if you missed making a station identification,
if you went over your timeshare allotment,
if your transmitter was not up to snuff, you could lose your license
and WEVD was subjected to this more strenuously than other stations.
>> So my question is for Professor Russo.
My name is George Jocknowitz [phonetic].
Until 1949, I was a student at P.S. 131 in Brooklyn,
half the students were Italian-American.
If they spoke Italian, it was never standard Italian,
it was very obviously southern.
WOV, to the extent that I remember it spoke standard Italian.
How did they understand each other?
[Laughter] Were there any stations in Neopolitan or Sicilian or other
such variance of Italian?
>> Yeah, that was one of the issues that they had is they sort of--
if there were variations then they was--
would be approached to standardize the language precisely,
so it could be-- so that the sponsors basically would be able
to embrace the programming like that.
I did see that there were-- I come across a reference to in like 4
or 5 different regional variations in Italian that were spoken
on various stations and I think that sort of--
and one of the things that they haven't mentioned is how small these
stations were so that if you're only broadcasting to an area of,
you know, 15 square miles at most, you know, then you can, you know,
tailor your dialect to the various community in that area.
>> Actually, WOV just had a program.
It was the only all Italian, it was the only station that was all
in a foreign language as far as I know.
They had a program where I don't remember the title in Italian,
it was called Letters from Home where they would record messages
from people in Italy and play them on the air in New York.
And these were regional dialect.
I think-- and if Yiddish is any indication, and again,
the Yiddish performers were the masters of dialect.
There was no standard Yiddish, this wasn't the BBC
which invented a standardized language.
I think foreign language radio, according to Jack Ferran [phonetic]
who was head of the Common Council for American Unity really talked
about how these regional dialects empowered listeners
by giving them a sense of cultural ownership
by hearing their local dialect on the air.
>> I just want to know, when did WEVD go off the air?
[Inaudible Remark]   >> No, but there was a microphone.

That was actually invented by--   >> When did WEVD go off the air?

That was the question.
>> That's as simple as it seems to me, well,
we gave up our Brooklyn apartment few years ago that it seems to me
that the last year so that I was in Brooklyn, we got WEVD 'cause I used
to listen to the phone with our-- when did they go off there?
>> I think, I think EVD went off the air in 2003--
>> It's earlier--
>> Or 2004, somewhere, it had and it's actually an incredible story
of WEVD, the Forward Association going off the air, selling--
it had I think 3 or 4 different frequencies over its lifetime.
3 AM frequencies and 1 FM frequency.
But it finally went off the air in early 2002, 2003,
and as I mentioned it is now internet,
you know, internet radio show.   Yes sir.

>> This is Pete Sokolow, I'm the pianist for tonight's performance.
Stick around, you'll hear some pretty nice stuff.
I found it interesting that Professor Russo mentioned before
that most of the non-Yiddish stations were largely music and most
of that recorded, I'm going to correct in assuming that.
I think that Yiddish radio in that sense was more like the broadcast
that were being done on the networks in the sense that much
of it was live, though they have live orchestras backing up people
or pianist or whatever, so that you have heard these performers coming
right at you.
This would not-- these were not like, you know, the antecedents
of DJ programming if that were it.
Is there any recollection perhaps of, well, you know, like drama
or things like that or live performers
on the other stations especially Italian?
>> There are, and there's been some sort of small amount of work done
on particularly on Polish broadcasting in--
from Chicago whether a number of [inaudible] and dramatic programs.
But again, it's been-- this is one of the, you know,
areas that really needs-- there needs to be more research on.
I mean, this program existed in Italian language
in particular because-- that they had a fair number of dramatic shows.
But, I mean, the records of these are--
>> If they did not have staff orchestras there.
See the Yiddish, even the small Yiddish stations because one
of our very close colleagues Max [inaudible] was working.
He would sit in the Brooklyn studio while--
the call letters of the station changed
and the same orchestra would play for each one of these things.
So in other words, Yiddish radio was very distinctive in the sense
that it was much, much more live than they must have had a goal for,
you know, like more expensive stuff.
>> Well, and it's a really good point.
One of the great things about low power radio stations was that again,
it gave a stage to local performers.
The WBBC sequence that I played, I cut it off right before it gone
from a Yiddish program to a program called the Irish Parade
and it had a series of local Irish performers.
What was interesting about music on--
at least this far as the Yiddish programs is that the smaller--
the lower the power frequency, the more traditional the music.
That is the larger stations
like WEVD would not play traditional music.
It was usually art versions of Yiddish songs.
Small stations like WBBC would have Klezmer music,
but these were only the very, very small stations and it made--
it made up of an incredibly tiny percentage of the Yiddish shows.
In many ways, it reflected and something this is what we'll hear
from Sherry Mayrent, it reflected the dynamic of Yiddish recording
that is the vast majority of Yiddish songs
on '78 recordings were really theatrical or art versions
of traditional music, not traditional music as heard
in real grassroots context.
So, a lot the music really reflected the cultural aspirations
of the community rather than an actual ethnographic reflection
of what people listened to on a daily basis.
[Multiple Speakers]   >> Yeah, go ahead.

>> This gets back to the dialect question.
Although I grew up speaking Yiddish before I spoke English,
this was in Lincoln, Nebraska.
[Laughter] We did not get Yiddish radio at that time.
>> He did when CBS had in 1927.   >> But I was not--

>> But I was just saying--   >> From 1933.

>> At one moment.
>> But we were all related to each other in Lincoln, Nebraska
and we all spoke [foreign word] Yiddish because we all came from--
most of the people there were related and came from White Russia,
that they speak Yiddish radio Galitziana,
Litvakisha, a mixtures of the two.
>> Dialects on Yiddish radio, we have to keep in mind
that Yiddish popular culture traded on dialect humor,
just like American popular culture.
The contrast of Litvak and Galitziana are the sort
of linguistic hot fields in macoise [phonetic].
And the idea that the Yiddish announcers,
especially on the small stations did not try to gassy up their Yiddish,
they spoke in there original dialects.
And this is one of the great things
where that makes the Yiddish radio archive such a gold mine of studies
for linguistics, for linguist to look at.
And we will hear tonight, for example, on some of the man
on the street interviews that will--
we will hear a diversity of Yiddish dialects from everyday people
that really reflect the vast diversity of where Jews came from
and the contrast of the emerging mixture of English and Yiddish
into the everyday speech patterns of American Jews.
[Multiple Speakers] There's--
there's someone who's been waiting there.
>> Oh okay.   >> Oh okay.

>> Yeah.   >> My name is Liz Milner [phonetic]

and my grandparents loved Yiddish theatre.
And I was wondering, an actress like Molly Picon,
I remember as a kid seeing her in sort of mainstream movies,
and I was wondering how much of an inter-permeation there was
between Yiddish theatre and the radio
and later the larger popular culture?
>> Yeah, well, I-- one of the interesting things
about Yiddish radio coming as it did in the middle 1920s was that it set
up an incredible dynamic of Yiddish theatre performances as we saw
from Der Tog Program and the Libby's program performers
on Yiddish stage would appear on the radio,
do a scene from a play they had on the air.
But with the coming of the depression,
Yiddish radio became even more vital
to the continuation of Yiddish theatre.
In fact, what would happen, there was a great story
of a Yiddish playwright, Israel Rosenberg,
who had a program called Mentshn on Oygn, "Men Without Eyes,"
and it was a program about a young girl who was horribly disfigured
in a fire and eventually became married to a blind man.
This is the kind of high-end art programming.
But what was so interesting about this show is
that they announced one week, it says, "Tune in next week
for the marriage between the young disfigured girl and the blind man,"
and the station was besieged by people coming to the wedding,
and bringing a presents with them.
[Laughter] And in fact, this was so popular
that Israel Rosenberg was able to stage the wedding of this show
on the-- on an actual Yiddish theatre stage, and it became part
of this incredible binary dynamic.
And so, people used radio to propagate more interest
in their stage shows, and of course,
stage Yiddish radio shows became popular through the air
and became free standing Yiddish theatre presentations.

>> Yes, gentleman in the white, yeah.
>> I'm Luis Landau.
I grew up in Buenos Aires and I remembered as a child,
my mother listening to Yiddish programs on the radio
and she would be crying and crying before they could understand why.
My question is during the '30s, there was a harassment
and persecution of the Jews beginning in Germany.
To what extent the Yiddish program in America focus on that?

>> This is actually a really interesting phenomenon
because of restrictions by the Federal Communications Commission.
One of the first broadcasts on WEVD when The Forward Hour came
on the air in 1933 was an editorial railing against the--
Hitler becoming-- winning the election in Germany.
Restrictions, and this is something that was brought out earlier
and you can certainly talk about this because in the paper
that we were just listening to, issues of--
political issues about Germany and Italy,
and about foreign language program is anti-seditious programming again
as was pointed out, HUAC, it's first hearing is in the 1930s
where anti-sedition, what's--
what are those foreigners saying on the air.
Yiddish broadcasters were hamstrung,
if you'll pardon me using a possible non-Jewish association.
[Laughter] But the idea that one could not necessarily say things
that would be of an overt political nature especially with America
as an isolationist country at the time.
So, Yiddish broadcasters in some cases would revert
to the historical illusions and they would talk about moments
in Jewish history where Jews were besieged.
Many times, they would talk about Khmel'nitsky uprising
in the Middle Ages, one of the holocaust of its era,
the Petlora pogroms in the early 1920s.
They would use this historic illusions to talk about issues
that were affecting Jews in Germany at the moment.
As we will hear, Roberta Newman is going to talk
about holocaust radio and the outwash of that.
But the Yiddish radio attempted to-- it was easier for the Jews to read
about issues affecting Jews in Germany in the Yiddish press
than it was for them to hear it on the air.
There was a dual kind of a conflict,
but there was a very well-known program, unfortunately,
we only have two short examples
of a program called the United States Treasury Program which was
about the violence and the war against the Jews.
It's no surprise that the US Treasury Program came
from the only Jewish member of FDR's cabinet, Henry Morgenthau.
And this was one of the few outlets which alerted Jewish listeners
to the impending violence against the Jews in Europe.
>> I want to tap in with the question,
maybe for all the panelist.
It seems to me like there's essential tension in all
of the talks between consumerism and socialism, unionism,
maybe not a tension but this coexistence.
And I'm wondering how specifically that was addressed.
Were there ways?
First of all, was it necessarily uneasy, easy,
were there are resistances to this consumerism?
I mean, Professor Joselit's paper talked a lot about products and kind
of the role of products in American life,
American Jewish life, American-Jewish life.
So yeah, maybe tease out that relationship.
I mean, we talked about Charney Vladeck and Sarnoff, capitalist
and socialist at the heart of the Yiddish Radio enterprise.
So maybe--
>> I was very struck by that too in all three presentations.
And what seemed to me to be happening is a kind
of transvaluation of immigrants from people who are on the margins
and to people who are the very center
of American life as consumers.
And so through the consumerization of Jewish life, or Italian life,
or this radio culture in general, Jews are normalized.
Now, we can sit back and see something pernicious in all of that.
But I think that for the people at that time
and for the larger social matrix of which they were apart,
to participate in American culture was to be a consumer.
We may feel a little bit unsettled by that but then these little facts,
and so I think that I was struck by the distribution of that.
It wasn't just a Jewish phenomenon, it was an Italian,
and a Polish phenomenon, and that, as I say,
at the heart of it is a way to render immigrantness less far
and less foreboding, and much more pleasing and normative.
I also think that for immigrants, the ability to lay claim if only
for 27 cents up to something that was part
of a much larger American culture was very, I don't know,
emancipating, empowering, expansive.
We may think, oh how pathetic, that's how they laid claim
to America but I think for them the power of durable goods was
as much symbolic as it was actual.
So I don't know if it gets at it but--
>> My name is Carol Jochnowitz,
I work for Jewish Currents for a number of years.
And my mind was a little bit blown to hear at the end
of The Forward Hour, The Internationale being sung
since I am familiar with the relations between The Forward
and The Forward and the Freiheit which were about as poisonous
as anything you've ever encountered.
I just wondered if anyone had anything to say about that.
>> Well actually, amazingly, I do.
[Laughter] I submitted a Freedom of Information Act request
to the FBI during the production period
of the Yiddish Radio Project 7 years to get back the phonebook,
the New York Yellow Pages Phone book [foreign word] on WEVD
and found perhaps not to my surprise, that WEVD was riven
with spies both who were informing on each other
and also informing on communists.
Part of the problem with this period of the conflict between the fidelity
of the workers of this period was that there was a major conflict
between these great movements.   And I think that the papers on--

and most of them are of course they are just blocked out, most of them.
But they really reflect a very difficult time of really,
a sense of the mission that the great worker movements,
both the socialist party
and the communist party really conflicted about this era.
It was troubling to find this but what we really--
what it really shows is how passionate the--
how passionate everyone was
about the issues facing the workers of this era.
One of the interesting things was finding that papers
like the Morgan Freiheit had absolutely no radio presence
through the 1930s.   In fact, in this particular--

I posted in that montage of advertisements, there was a 1942--
by 1942, the Freiheit had a radio show.
Not surprisingly, we had only become allies
with the Russians the previous year.
So suddenly, the Morgan Freiheit was allowed to come on the air.
So this was something that was not discussed at that time but seeing it
through the prism of WEVD and through broadcasting of this era,
it really requires us to rethink the received history
of progressive politics in the Yiddish-speaking world at this time.
There is-- we'll give someone else a chance.
[ Pause ]
>> My name is Eliyana Adler, I teach at the University
of Maryland, I'm a historian.
Thinking about, I mean on the one hand,
you've spoken about demographics and national tragedy, bringing an end
to this particular chapter of ethnic radio, but I'm also thinking
about the ways in which popular culture allows for hybridity
and wondering if anyone can speak to sort of crossover acts in the ways
in which Yiddish radio or people from Yiddish radio brought aspects
of Yiddish culture into the American society at large.
You go first.
>> The binary force of Yiddish culture
in American popular culture goes back long before the first Yiddish
Radio broadcast.
And we see these on Yiddish recordings
from the late 19th century, we see it on the Yiddish stage,
Abie's Irish Rose, stuff like this which really talks about really,
the contrast between ingroup and outgroup.
We're going to play an example this evening of a program
which was incredibly popular from 1938 to 1955 called Yiddish Melodies
in Swing which really reflects the influence
of jazz on the Jewish world.
I don't think-- I think in order to look at how dynamic this culture
in this period was, we have to do a way with the idea
of insularity special broadcasting does a way with this.
The idea that someone could live in an insular core when you realize
that all you had to do is turn your radio dial a quarter inch
to the left or a quarter inch to the right
and you are in a different universe.
So the idea that-- and as some-- as an interviewee,
I spoke to about Yiddish radio,
she said that the radio was more important to her than night school
for her acculturation and the idea of bringing in the larger world,
radio worked in both ways.
It both reinforced the Jewish world but it also showed
that there were these other outlets.
There was a question about people like Molly Picon who crossed
over both-- who did both Yiddish and American programming.
Performance like Eli Mintz who was a Yiddish theater star
but also appeared on a show called The Goldbergs.
So this was the idea
of both mainstream radio having a filtered view of Jewish life.
At the same time that there was an unfiltered view of Yiddish life
on the Yiddish radio programs.
There was no attempt to propagate a pure Yiddish culture.
That would have been a fool's errand because there were so many programs
and Yiddish culture had already established itself as a gateway
to really establishing a multicultural world view.
>> I would simply add that many of the formats that were deployed
by Yiddish radio came from a larger culture.
So whether it's the man on the street
or the-- what did they call it?   Talent shows, things of that sort--

>> Yeah, that's right.
>> They very much come from the outside and then moved within.
I wonder--
>> [Inaudible] was actually rabbi bows [phonetic]
on the Yiddish radio.   [Laughter]

>> I just wonder if I could build on Eliyana's question and turn to you,
Henry, darling [phonetic] and ask a question
about the larger implications of sound acoustics.
We're just kind of talking about radio
as if it's just another iteration of text, a different version
but still another iteration, so I want you to zero in a little bit
and talk about sound, the acoustic landscape,
what is replacing textuality with the reality?
I use very fancy words but you know what I mean that it's now
about the language, and sound, and music, and not so much
about mastery of a particular text.
What are the implications and I think for notions of community
for just the vitality or not of Jewish life?
>> I think what's really interesting, again,
I'm assuming Sherry is going to talk about this,
the idea of a canned sound of Yiddish coming
into the Jewish home had already appeared on Yiddish recordings.
So the Jewish listener was already used to having a sound come
out of a speaker in their bedroom,
the idea that they could have the full access
to Yiddish culture while lounging in their bathrobe.
This was really important because it personalize Yiddish culture while
at the same time, it codified it as a commodity
that really came from on high.
I think Yiddish Radio because it was far less mediated even though was a
medium that it reflected a broader diversity of Yiddish voices,
of Yiddish opinions, of world views rather as opposed
to Yiddish sound recordings which were filtered through A&R; man
and producers who wanted to have a polished final product.
Yiddish Radio really did reflect a huge amount of intimacy.
You would hear someone who live down the block from you
on the Yiddish Radio which is nothing you would've heard
on a Yiddish 78.
So I think what this did is it both created this as a special occurrence
in people's lives but it also made it a cotidian experience
that you would hear something coming through the intimacy
of hearing someone speaking to the human voices so incredible,
intimate in a way that having to dress
up to go to the theater was not.
So I think what we really saw especially in these small stations
that you could go down the block especially again,
WCNW which was a small station on Pitkin Avenue in Brooklyn,
you knew these vendors, you knew these people
who were selling you products, you knew these performers
who lived in your neighborhood.
I think this was a vital part of a sense of cultural ownership
that Jews had in this emerging medium.

[Inaudible Remark] There is a microphone on its way.

You may in fact-- oh, someone has the--
oh, we have several people finding for the mic.
>> My name is David Rosen [phonetic] and my question is at the same time,
the Yiddish Radio was growing, there was a great assimilation
as passion among Jewish youth for baseball.
And I couldn't help but notice in that collage of advertisements,
there was single one that advertised New York Giants first
at Philadelphia.   >> I left that, yeah, yeah.

>> Was there much of a relationship between Yiddish Radio,
and baseball, and any other sport?
>> Well, I will tell you two words, Hank Greenberg.
Actually no, other than the fact that Yiddish like baseball goes
from right to left, and actually not, I've--
no, there was no evidence of-- and I think this had to with issues
of commercialism, Yiddish radio station couldn't possibly afford
to broadcast baseball programs,
those belong to the various networks.
I don't even think The Forward did not have,
none of the newspapers had a sport section as far as I know.
I don't really see, I mean again, I left that ad in to show
that baseball, and acculturation,
and assimilation were still a vital part
of the Jewish world even though it wasn't always actively reflected
on the air.   >> In the middle?

Yeah, the mic.
>> Hi, I'm Susan Garfinkel and I work here at the library
with digital materials and I want to go back to this phrase,
old new media that came up introductions and so for Dr. Russo
or anyone else, it strikes me, that phrase "old new media" simply means
that now it's old but it was new at that time.
New media was what we used to talk about basically everything
after television, so the internet and all the digital stuff.
But now, we go back and we say, wait a second,
radio was a really new thing at that time.
And so, I was specially struck when Henry Sapoznik was just talking
about the intimacy of bringing people's voices
into the living room, or the bedroom, or wherever in the home
in the same way we now think about the intimacy of bringing somebody
from the internet right into our phone while we're waiting
for the bus.
That-- so there's two points there and of course you guys can elaborate
about what the newness of this might have done to instigate the community
and the ways it was used, and also it seems
to me their preservation issues in the same way that we have
so few survivals of radio programs from the Yiddish radio,
we're now facing a problem of not having the internet
when we can go back in 30 or 40 years
and be able to see what was there.
So I just wanted to raise those issues.
>> I'm sorry, was that a question?   [Laughter] Oh.

[Inaudible Remark] Okay-- [Multiple Speakers]
>> No, I think that exactly it, but one and I think one
of the important things that Henry was mentioning earlier, he said,
not only do you have the possibility of bringing someone's voice
into your own home, but it's also I think a counter experience
of the fact that you have other voices of other groups
that are also entering your home whether you want them
to or not, all right.
And that I think sort of creates a complicated relationship
that people have with both that we're being able to seek
out the voices that they want but then, you know, whether
or not those-- as particularly, you know, when among the population
that was nativist around this time that, you know, that this sort
of seeming this cacophony on the air.
And if there is a kind of-- or a gibberish on the air--
some sort of letter writers would sort of write into the FRC and say,
you have to get this foreign language radio off the air.
And so, I think there was a question earlier about anti-semitism
in general life, but I think it's for manifested itself more as kind
of nativism in the regulatory sphere.
>> It's interesting that you used the word intimacy
and when I think of-- I wonder if the internet
like we can really use that word.
There seems to me there's something very specific about radio,
I'm not sure what it is exactly, but that does allow for a kind
of intimacy that maybe our current new media doesn't have,
or it's more--   >> It's the voice.

>> The voice.   >> The voice, yeah.

I think it maybe the voice.   But in response to your question,

what's really fascinating is the larger question of the relationship
between ethnicity and technology.
We tend to assume, many of us that technology just enters into our home
and that perhaps, it's class more than any other variable
that defines how we make use of it and turns out no,
that they're all sorts of cultural practices that have to do
with religion, and origin, and culture.
And I think that radio is just part of a whole series
of constellation of new technology.
So I'm thinking since Rosh Hashanah ride
around the bend of the greeting card.
That greeting card is made possible
or the greeting card postcard is made possible by the emergence
of chromolithography and the development
in the postal system, and the penny card.
And it dramatically changes how people interact with one another
when it comes to the holidays.
It profoundly defines-- redefines ritual practice.
So I think that the radio is of a piece,
I think there are singularities to it obviously but it's of a piece
and I also think that the impact of technology,
the internet has a history too, isn't just sprung.
>> And this would connect that with every questions of consumer patterns
that they would actually really look residual media, and there're lot
of reasons why there still is foreign language broadcasting
in the United States.
And Spanish language broadcasting is the fastest growing segment
of radio broadcasting in general is that after other mainstream,
instead of American culture moves on onto the next thing,
right then there are spaces for groups
that were previously marginalized to the, you know,
the edges of the radio spectrum or whatever.
And can now take a more center--
a centered space as a center position there within the culture.
>> So, I just want to check in with our panelist how we're doing?
We've been going for a real long time, plenty time for more?
>> Yeah.   >> Okay, yeah?

>> My question is-- oh sorry, my question-- I'm Eve Jochnowitz,
my question is about language, the Schwartz's family--
>> It's your family affair, isn't it?
>> Yes, yes, yes.   [Laughter]

>> The Jochnowitz's are in the house.
[Laughter]
>> I know that the Schwartz's newly-arrived cousins are certainly
listening to the Yiddish language radio,
and their sister-in-law uptown certainly isn't.
But when they finally turned on the radio themselves,
they're primarily speaking English at home and at work.
Are they tuning in sometimes to Yiddish language programming?
Is the audience--   >> Yeah, I think--

>> -- the immigrant generation is it, you know, their kids as well?
>> They didn't have kids quite yet.
>> I mean-- but the Schwartz's themselves are the kids.
[Laughter]
>> Yeah, Schwartz's don't have kids quite yet.
They're listening to Yiddish radio because the universe
that they're inhabiting is a Yiddish-speaking one.
Remember, their daily newspaper is not The Times.
>> Yeah, right.   >> It is the Yiddish press.

But I think because of the paucity of offerings
that they're more apt perhaps to turn into the--
turn on the Yiddish style and then to the English style rather
than to look for Yiddish.
But the fact that they could move back and forth and the fact
that they're eager to listen to something
that quite literally speaks their language, a test I think
to this push-pull that we're talking about.
Clearly, they're upwardly mobile, they're proud Americans,
they're also proud Jews, and I think in my fictive creation
of my beloved Schwartz family, they are a very wonderful paradigm
for the fluidity of contemporary Jewish life.
And how we're not just this and we're not just that,
we think of that very much as a characteristic of ourselves.
Today, we take great pride and that where this that
and the other thing, I think they were too.
>> Yes, in the middle?   Nope? Yeah, in the middle?

The green in mic?   >> Yeah, pass the mic, yeah.

>> I'm wondering about the nostalgic programming and I don't know
if this is a question that any of you can answer.
But I'm wondering if there was a difference
in the Yiddish nostalgic programming as opposed
to the nostalgic programming for the homelands of the other ethnicities
and if there was some ambivalence for the home--
for the places in Europe that the Jews came from that they were not--
when they would have this nostalgic programming
about their so-called homeland.
If that was different, let's say then the nostalgic programming
that the Irish or the Italians had about the lands that they came,
is there any ambivalence at all that you--
>> There was a study done in the late 1930s about language retention
and foreign language groups against the common council
for American unity and they determined that the group
that had the highest dissimilation linguistic rate were Jews.
That Yiddish was abandoned
at a larger quantity than any other group.
What was-- what used to be referred to in anthropology as birds
of passage, that is, immigrants who would come to the Unites States,
settle in the United States, make a living, and then return back
to the homeland was lowest among Jews
than among any other language group.
That said, the idea of nostalgia, I was surprised how early
on Yiddish radio we hear this on Der Tog Program which broadcast on WABC.
There was a weekly segment by a group called the Boibriker Kapelle,
a group of musicians including Abe Schwartz
who co-wrote the Grine Kusina.
And the Boibriker Kapelle who's named
after a fictional town invented by Yiddish writer, [foreign word ]
which stage nostalgic set pieces set in the old world.
One week, it would be a Hasidic set piece,
another would be a wedding in the old country.
And the press in the Yiddish press advertising, it said,
relive a moment of your youth from when you were growing up to tune
in to hear the Boibriker Kapelle.
So immediately, there is a sense that the medium
of Yiddish radio even though it was an incredibly modern medium was
being used to really hone a particular sense
of this lost world even if it was a kind of a fictional representation
through use of a traditional music.   So the idea of nostalgia was one

that was a constant even though people didn't want to return
to the old country, who would want to return to life of mud
in the streets and pogroms?
The idea that evoking some of those moments were vital.
[Inaudible Remark]
>> Yeah, I would also add that it's even bigger than that.
It's more about the sentimentalization of Jewish life
which we're all very previtude [phonetic] today not just back
in the heyday of Yiddish literature.
There's something about gesturing towards the past
and towards Jewishness that takes a very sweet sappy,
and largely critically disengaged form.
And I think that that's just part of the modernization process, that is,
it would become increasingly more modernized, westernized,
acculturated, that there's a greater sense of loss and abandon.
And as a result, we look back with kind of a twinkle in our eye
as opposed to a hard stare.
>> I can keep this with the negative in the sense that for German radio
in particular, they were-- though the highest degree--
many of the advertisers were things like travel agencies that would sort
of organize your travel back to Germany or banks that have branches
in both America and Germany so that when you did return,
you had the money that you'd saved up would be available to you.
So, I think there's very much sort of--
I think there are some distinctions, they're based on and we were saying
about the likelihood of returning home.

>> So we have time for three more questions.
How about the lady upfront?   Oh, gentleman?

>> Just like to know--
>> Will you turn the mic-- you have to turn-- or just speak into it.
[Inaudible Remark]
>> I'd like to know how long the Bintel Brief Program ran.
>> The Bintel Brief pack of letters was a column that appeared
in the foreword from its earliest days for a brief time.
For several years, part of The Foreword, a variety show,
The Forward Hour contained a dramatic recreation of some
of the letters which were written to the editor.
And the Bintel Brief was about socialization, it was about manners,
it was about issues of how one deals with an accelerated American life
and how does one retain this.
For a while, there was a spin off program of the Bintel Brief
as a standalone program apart from The Forward Hour.
I haven't found a listing of Bintel Brief program much pass 1935, '36.
>> Okay, two more.   Gentlemen in the hat.

>> My name is Larry Golfer.
I'm a first generation, my parents were holocaust survivors.
Can you comment on the evolution after this sort of demise
of Yiddish radio into Jewish radio?
Because I remember in Washington D.C., my parents would listen
to a Jewish hour, Max Reznick Show in Washington.
And was there a natural evolution or did people think
that you still needed to have Jewish radio
after the Yiddish radio started to disappear?

>> I think if-- for to look critically at Jews on radio,
we have to look at it as a three-tiered phenomenon.
One is Yiddish radio which is in the Yiddish language specifically aimed
at people who have a cultural identity within the Yiddish world.
Another is Jewish radio.
For example, Steven Wise [phonetic] would have a weekly sermon
on Sundays, David Sarnoff, the yearly FCC dictated that part
of receiving a federal license to broadcast left Sundays
to having a broadcast from a variety of denominations
which would really reach out to people in English as part
of a kind of an acculturation.
The third tier of Jews on the air really talks
about Jewish representation on mainstream radio.
And here, we get things like Jack Benny, or Fred Allen who had
like Mrs. Pansy Nussbaum, or Jack Benny who had Shleperman
and Mr. Kitzel, and these really reflected the excepted image of Jews
that came right off the Vaudeville stage.
So the idea of Jewish programming either representing Jews
or being represented above had appeared from the earliest part.
People like Max Reznick who was again, a kind of a diminution
of older program because by then, there was no life performing
in the early days of radio.
In fact, record manufacturers restricted the use
of commercial recordings.
We actually see it on record labels which says,
not licensed for broadcast.   So you needed to have live music.

But eventually, these shows lost their listenership,
they were reduced to playing commercial records,
and the idea of Yiddish became a kind of an evocation,
it was a flavor rather
than an actual reflection of a dynamic culture.
So, stuff in English which reflected the Jewish culture became far
more omnipresent.   Art Raymond who had a show on WEVD

for many years really reflected this dynamic of playing Jewish music
that reflected with the rise of the Israel,
and Hebrew, and Zionism on the air.
It really reflected that Yiddish was no longer the Jewish language
but merely a Jewish language.   >> So we have one more, is that it?

Okay? [Foreign Language] Sir, yeah.
>> Hi. Hi, I'm Mark David from Boston and I'm the host of one
of the last Yiddish Radio shows in the world.
[Laughter]   >> Yiddish?

>> And it's in Yiddish, it's called Dos Yidishe Kol.
It's on WUNR 1600 AM Wednesday nights at 7:30.
[Laughter]   >> There's a plug.

>> A little plug.
That's-- and it's on the internet, yiddishvoice.com.
And I want to thank Henry Sapoznik and the Library Congress
for the wonderful collection and for this wonderful event.
We aren't' really a nostalgic show.
We're trying to hold on to have a Yiddish radio show interviews.
We have news and there are other radio shows,
not in America, but around the world.
So, if you have any information about Yiddish radio shows,
Yiddish radio producers are not that good about getting news
out about themselves, so if you hear of any that you don't see
on our website, please let me know.   We'd like to know about them.

And also, if you like to know about our show and other shows
around the world that do broadcast
in Yiddish nowadays, go to yiddish.voice.com.
We have a listing.   We're trying to maintain that.

Thank you.   [Applause]

>> So I want to thank you all for coming and thank you
for your engagement, your participation.
Thank you panelist for a terrific panel.
And I also want to thank Betsy Peterson, Nancy Groce,
and everyone at the Folklife Center especially Nancy Groce who've done
such an amazing job preparing the symposium.
It's just really great.
>> [Background music] This is the evening program for the "Stations
that Spoke Your Language: Radio
and the Yiddish-American Culture of Renaissance."
I am Betsy Peterson, the Director of the American Folklife Center.
I am going to make this very short and sweet.
I want to thank Yiddish of Greater Washington for our lovely--
for sponsoring our lovely reception
and enjoyed talking with it all of you.
Give them a hand.
[Applause] And I also want to thank our presenters from this afternoon
and just simply say thank you to Nancy Groce and incredible staff


[Applause] And then I want to introduce an alumni
of the American Folklife Center, David Taylor who has worked
for the American Folklife Center for 25 years, done an incredible job
and now has gone upstairs and works for the Associate Librarian.
And-- but was one of the key figures in working with Henry Sapoznik
and getting Henry's collection here at the American Folklife Center.
So he's going to talk a little bit about Henry,
give a little testimonial, and tell you a little bit
about the collection.   So, David.

[Applause]   >> And thank you very much.

Ladies and gentleman and welcome back
to WLOC here and thank you Bete.   Thank you very much.


[Applause] Okay.
I'm your temporary announcer, Dave Taylor, and I'd like to you
for a few minutes about my life.
That's right sir, about my life here in Washington
as a federal employee earning your tax dollars.
Okay. And my good friend, Betsy said, I worked at the library
since 1987, 25 years ago, almost to the day.
And for most of that period of time, it has been my privilege to work
at the American Folklife Center, the exalted sponsor of this event.
[Applause] That's right folks.   That's right.

But I did depart just a few months ago to work with the colleague
of mine you met this morning playing-- or this afternoon,
playing the chimes, the lovely, delightful Roberta Shafer
who may be with us right now.   I hope so, okay.


[Applause] Now, my pleasant duty right now is to talk
to you a little bit about a burning question that most of you have
which is, "How did the Henry Sapoznik Collection managed to come
to the Library of Congress?
And before that, how did Henry even get this collection?"
Okay. Well, it's a long story.
It's a story of peaks and valleys of excitements, of dumpsters and dips
into wallets, and all this kind of thing, but I don't have time
to tell you all about that.
But I want to tell you from my own perspective
as a former Acquisitions Officer of the Library
of Congress, how we handle this.
First of all, though, the story of Henry and the collection,
imagine him younger, slimmer, more hair suit, and perhaps no beard.
In 1984, he, around that time, he gained an awareness of Yiddish radio
in its great significance, culturally and historically,
and that made him go on the look out for these materials.
In particular, the transcription recordings from the radio station,
photographs, scripts, anything, he could find about this kind of thing.
And he looked and looked mainly in New York but in other places too.
And on his own, without support from anyone else,
he began to acquire this material.   >> I was with him.

>> Oh, an accomplish reveals himself.
[Laughter]   >> Joe Franklin.

>> [Background music] This is a good part of the story, yeah.
>> Everything in Joe Franklin's office looks the same.
>> But-- [Laughter]   >> Including Joe!

[Laughter] Absolutely.   Everything there looks the same.

The pictures, and this and that, the other thing,
we saw a pile of recorders.
Not just ordinary records but 16 inch transcriptions, pretty large.
And Henry got a deal going with Joe Franklin.
Franklin [inaudible] make no difference today.
[Inaudible Remark] And he gave us [inaudible],
we walk out with this type [inaudible],
went back to [inaudible] where Henry was working at that time
and I brought in a machine that would play his great big things
and we found out that it was-- we found out that it was Yiddish.
One program called [foreign word], right?
Yes, spies.
There was a-- like a war, like action kind of a program,
and some of the other things--
but, you know, in order to get a turn table
that would play these things,
it would have to handle a 16 inch record which is bigger the,
the LT is 12 inches versus a 16 inches.
But I had an old Gerrard [phonetic] thing and I wasn't using anymore
so I brought it in and we've managed to,
you know, copy them and whatever.
And that was the start of the entire collection actually.
>> There was something about Joe asking for a price.
Tell us what happened.   >> I think it was about 40 dollars.

I don't how much it was but [inaudible] that's sum
of cost was about 40 bucks.   >> What? You correct me if wrong--

>> Yeah.
>> About what-- the story that Henry told me--
>> Yes.
>> -- was that Joe Franklin said to him when he asked the question,
"How much do you want for this?"
He said, "I'll take all the money you've got on you right now."
Is that right?
>> It wouldn't surprise me because I wasn't--
no, I wasn't-- yes, exactly.
I wasn't in on this husband, but it sure sounds like [inaudible] Joe.
>> It's a yes.   >> Okay, okay.

We thank Pete for that I witness, first person account.
[Applause] Moving along quickly, very quickly, Henry continued
to acquire this material.
He was hired to work at a Yiddish radio station in New York, WEVD,
where he broadcast some of these materials and that, of course,
led to listeners contacting him saying they've got some of the stuff
or "I worked on these stations, or my husband or wife worked there,"
and so he interviewed those people that made the collection bigger
and bigger, jumping ahead a few more years.
As we heard earlier, Dave, I say the great radio producer
from New York contacted Henry and said,
"Let's do a radio series for NPR."
They did that in 2002, very successful,
13 million listeners from around the country.
They received a George Foster Peabody Award
for broadcasting excellence.
Bang. And around that time after the radio program ended,
Henry and I started to talk about the possibility
of this large complicated collection coming to the Library of Congress.
And to make a long story short, we continued to talk,
I brought in other colleagues here at the Library of Congress,
and we were eventually able to marshal the resources of the library
to acquire this collection, bring it to Washington.
It arrived in 2010 and we've worked on it.
My colleagues and I here, mainly my colleagues who make it organized,
to house it, to make it available to the public to use.
So that's the end of my little tale.
But I wanted to talk also about Henry's many accomplishments
which I don't have time to do really, but he is a musician,
an author, university professor, award winning writer,
a Grammy nominated five times, a record producer,
many other accomplishments, many hats he wears.
But I want to end by saying there's one hat that he never takes off
and that's the Mench [phonetic] hat
with a capital M, that he's always got on.
[Applause] So, ladies and gentleman, please welcome back to our stage,
the man of the hour, Henry Sapoznik
who will introduce tonight's program.
[ Music & Applause ]
>> Thank you, thank you, and good night.
[Laughter] What happened in my script?
Did you-- did you--   [Laughter]

I was going to ad-lib for an hour.   This would have been interesting.

>> No, it was just fine.
>> You now, that would have been just fine, yeah, absolutely.
Oh, thank you.
This is really-- this really thrill me.
I'd want to give you a brief overview.
We've have some great papers this afternoon
and there will be some great papers tomorrow.
But tonight, what's really exciting about this is I want
to threw this kind of set up that we have, give you an idea both
of the immediacy and the vitality of all time Yiddish radio
with it's dynamic between a live audience and live producers,
but also, to actually listen
to extended clips for some of these shows.
They are really, really terrific.
And hopefully we can put ourselves into the soundscape
of the great old radio shows, done a bunch of translations
which we will be having on the screen.
So, as we first heard, it is my honor as always,
my partner in crime, my cultural sidekick, Pete Sokolow has--
to have him be part of this.
When I-- when we produced our show at WEVD, I had Pete come in
and he played live music on the air.
We'd really tried to bring back the vitality
of what made a classic radio work as well as it did.
So for tonight, we're sort of reconstructing a little bit
of what made radio great but also to give you a small taste
because we're not playing full excerpts of any of these shows
but just to give you an idea of the great riches of the sounds
of the great Yiddish voices of the past.
And really, to start off with is to kind
of really reflect some of the live programming.
As I mentioned earlier, Yiddish radio was a cornucopia
of different kinds of performers, Yiddish theater stars, folk singers,
young children from day schools and stuff, but also,
cantorial music was really at the core of--
as it was at the core of people's understanding
of music for which they grew up.
And what I'd like to do is to start of with--
to give you a real sense of how this work.
And I am bringing up one of the presenters
who will be here tomorrow, David Rein to give us a sense of some
of the early shows which really the line between secular and sacred
when it came to religious music was nearly invisible
and because this was the music that was the DNA
of Yiddish secular music.
So it's my pleasure to bring up David Rein,
he's going to a cantorial piece [foreign word] which means "God
who sets things in order" and it's a piece for High Holy Days
which we will be celebrating next week.
Again, just to put us in the mood for how wonderful Yiddish radio was
in its time and what we can experience tonight, David Rein.
[ Applause ]   [ Music ]

[ Music ]   [ Applause ]

>> Everybody, thank you very much.
Before we continue, a word from our sponsor.
[ Music ]   >> That's right friends.

[Laughter] Now, religious music transcended its religious context.
Obviously, the radio was not a synagogue
and this music really reinforced people's sense of being.
But other traditions from the religious life found their way
on to the air.
And perhaps the most important and long lived, and in fact,
one of the most influential were ADVISE programs
and programs wherein situations of conflicts that people had
in their homes were resolved on the air.
We now know from television programs like Judge Judy, but here,
we are talking of programs like Judge Judaism.
[Laughter] And that is a major difference between--
and these kinds of programs, in fact, the first known program of it
by the air in fact was a Yiddish programming.
And this-- the picture we're looking at on the left,
Rabbi Shmuel Aaron Rubin, he was called Yiddish [foreign word],
the Jewish teacher of the way, the Yiddish [foreign word],
the Jewish path finder and Rabbi Rubin took his--
the sages of Israel, a synagogue
on the Lower East Side for indigent rabbis.
And from that, once a week,
in a place where Jewish families could resolve the problems
which they had, and Rabbi Rubin, with some of the members
of the Jewish community, would spend time to resolve these problems.
The program began in 1933 and ran until the late 1950's.
Here is a copy of one of the discs.
In fact, this show came to us because the building
in which the Home of the Sages of Israel was housed,
the subtenant of the building inadvertently took a 600 discs
of Rabbi Rubin's show and put them out on the street on the day
that the trash was being collected.
And it was only because of a phone call from a friend of mine
at the Museum of Radio and Television that we were able
to rescue these hundreds of discs.
What's really amazing, and Rabbi Rubin
who unfortunately had passed years before his son whose voice we'll
hear on this show called the saving of these discs [foreign word],
it was a miracle from heaven that these shows were saved.
What we're going to listen to now is an excerpt of one of the shows.
And I have the translations transcribed,
what is perhaps the most amazing thing
as we will hear Rabbi Rubin's son introducing the show.
He says, "And now case 8,870."   That is a real number.

[Laughter] This show-- and you can't--
I don't know if you could see it very clearly but grease pencil
on this show indicate that these shows were rebroadcast
over a period of years.
That, not only talks about that Yiddish speaking Jews invented
recycling, but something more important, that the issues
that these programs raised about interaction between parents
and their children between unscrupulous upholsterers.
Between people who had difficulties resolving issues
on their own were timeless and that these shows continue
to find great resonance for people in the Jewish community.
We now take you to the Lower East Side to listen to a program
by Rabbi Rubin entitled "That Woman Won't Do Nothing For Me."
[Music]   [ Foreign Language ]

>> You said you were married for four years?
>> That's right.
>> And for the past year and a half you haven't been living
well together?
>> No. We're not together, all together.
>> How about the two and a half years
that you lived together, was that--
>> No, I didn't have one happy day at all.
>> Not one?   >> Not one of happy day.

[ Simultaneous Talking ]
>> He didn't support you on the two and a half years?
>> No, he didn't give me a cent.   [Simultaneous Talking]

[ Foreign Language ]   >> I just want to have justice.

When I went out with this young--
>> Tell them to the microphone, please.
>> When I went out with this young lady, I told here I got a boy
to support 10 dollars a week and she said to me,
"All right, I'll make you happy."   Now listen closely.

This woman promised me she's going to make me happy
and she's going to put me in business.
I said, "I cannot make a living on three days a week.
If I can go into a little business, I don't want to get married."
She said to me, "Yes, I live with my mother.
I have a good home there."
She want to work and she dragged me out of my home, and today I live
in a family Szechuan house.   [ Foreign Language ]

>> I don't know.   >> You don't know.

[ Foreign Language ]   >> Look, I went down to court

and the court gave me permission to see the boy.
Now, I see the boy once.   I give him a couple of dollars.

He promises to see me.   I cannot take blood out of stone.

Now, she's got-- she remarried, you understand?
I cannot-- if he doesn't want to see me, that ain't my fault.
I was willing to cooperate with him.   He's going to high school.

I said, "I'll send to college, come and see me."
If he doesn't want it, I cannot take blood out of stone.
I come down to the school there and I see him, "How are you?"
and that's all.
Blood out of stone-- [Foreign Language]
>> Even though this woman, your wife, is in no position to put you
in business, can't you possibly see a way
to effect their reconciliation?   >> I'm bridging out.

When the woman's promised, she promised, she didn't keep her word.
That woman absolutely didn't want to do nothing for me.
But-- and of course she misled me
and then she threw me out of the house again.
And if a woman throws me out of the house,
I have no confidence to such people.   [Laughter] [Inaudible Remark]

>> What's the most important thing
in your life, money or your happiness?
>> Happiness.
>> What is it do you find that this woman can't give you
in the way of happiness?   >> Because-- because you know why,

I wanted to buy a little car and go out selling.
Except for me, you don't need no car.
>> What kind of business are you in?   >> Well, I was in the drivers.

>> In the drivers business.   >> Yes.

>> You said something that happiness was a very important thing
in your life, I mean in your life.
Rabbi Rubin brought out something which is very, very important
and that is a fact and you even admit it
that you didn't see your boy for a long time.
What happiness did you give this boy?
>> I gave the boy the happiness all he wants.
>> How often have you seen him?
>> I saw the boy whenever I had a chance.
>> How often is that?   How long has he been away from you?

[Inaudible Remark] He's 18 years old.
>> Yes.
>> Have you seen him six times a year?
>> I saw him maybe twice--
>> The mere fact that you just gave him a few dollars every now and then
or the 10 dollars a week, that isn't happiness to a child.
[Simultaneous Talking] Now wait a minute, just a minute.
That's not happiness to a child and you're not giving the love
to a child that a child deserves.
Don't expect in return that love and affection from the child.
Now we're getting back to this lady.   >> Yeah.

>> What happiness did you give her--   >> I gave her food.

>> -- that she in turn should give you the happiness?
>> When I wanted to go out with her, she said she don't want to go out,
she don't want to dress up nice, I was ashamed to walk with her.
>> But what have you done
to make her life happy-- [Simultaneous Talking]
>> I supported her.   >> What is it that you want now?

>> I don't want nothing.   >> All right.

>> I don't want nothing.
>> Now what would you be willing to do to even straighten this matter
out nor if you both feel you can't, what do you want?
>> What I want, I don't want nothing.
She isn't for me and I'm not for her.
I'm disappointed.   That's my attitude here.

If a woman could promise me and put me in business
and then later, and then later make me--
>> Excuse me, just a moment.   >> Yes?

>> You're being of a very touchy thing.
>> I'm not touchy.
>> You marry a woman for a woman to put you into business.
>> I told her before.
>> Wait a minute, did you marry the woman to support her to live
and live happily with her?
You're only looking for the standpoint of your own good.
>> No, I ain't.
>> Because you married her as you just said.
>> Yeah.
>> That you married her so that she could put you into business.
You didn't promise her that you were going to support her did you?
>> Yes.
>> Well, if you are looking for her to support you--
>> Well, how are you going to make blood out of stone?
What do you expect me to do?
Carry a hundred pounds of [inaudible] on my shoulder.
>> But you expect her to give you the cash and then support you.
>> Just a minute, I want to-- [Inaudible Remark] Do you expect me
to carry a hundred pounds of [inaudible] on my shoulder?
>> I expect you when you marry a woman to love and to support her.
>> Yeah, well-- [Simultaneous Talking] Yes,
but not when a woman fights her own with a man everyday
of money, money, money, money.   [ Inaudible Remark ]

>> It is the unanimous decision of this boy after listing
to the facts presented here in view of the fact
that both individuals involved at this particular time,
a very much excited and under terrific strain
because of personal differences, that this man will be held
in advance subject to a report to be rendered and returned
to us by the lady's auxiliary.
Between now and another session, will report to us
after investigating both families to bring back the reports
so that we can be guided accordingly.
>> It's a wonderful example of the dynamic Rabbi Rubin.
And here, again, to hear, people might be familiar
with the documentaries of Frederick Wiseman who developed a style
of placing a movie camera in the lives of real people
and then they live out their lives unfettered by the movie camera.
Well, Rabbi Rubin was doing just this thing decades before
where a microphone was placed
and people spoke clearly from their hearts.
And what's really also terrific,
this incredible dynamic of Yiddish and English.
And this is what really gives us a sense of the real lives of people.
And this is just one kind of an intro to some
of the great dynamics in Jewish life.
[ Music ]
As when mentioned earlier, Yiddish Radio shows mimic some programs
that were already on the air elsewhere.
And one of those forms were "Man on the Street" interviews.
We're going to listen to one of the more interesting programs.
This was by a man named Victor Packer.
And Victor Packer was an absolutely outstanding,
a poet, a dramatist, an actor.   He was the one man radio station

for station WLTH Daily ran 13, 15-minute shows.
Each one on a different theme, dramatizing Yiddish literature,
quiz programs as we hear, as we see here.
And his sponsors on little station WLTH reflected the local economy
of the Jewish world.   We're going to take a listen

to his show called the "Sterling Salt Program."
Ironically, sponsored by Sterling Salt.
[Laughter] And this is one of the more interesting progress because,
again, these shows allow us to hear the voices
of the Jewish community unfettered, unbothered,
by the fact that this was being broadcast weekly.
Victor Packer would head into Jewish groceries around New York.
And here is a picture of one of the broadcast
in a Jewish grocery in Brooklyn.
Perhaps, even the one we're about to hear.
This is a broadcast from approximately 1938.
We're now going to take you to Brooklyn,
New York where Victor Packer will be interviewing the balebostes
at a grocery store in Brooklyn.   [ Foreign Language ]

>> What is your name please?   >> Miriam Stein [phonetic].

[ Foreign Language ]   >> He says, "Thank you very much."

[Foreign Language] What is your husband doing in the tobacco line?
>> Tobacco line?   >> That's right.

[ Foreign Language ]   >> Thank you.

[ Music ]
Maybe the most important part of Yiddish Radio corresponded
to the rise and really the renaissance of the Yiddish theatre.
It pointed out earlier, many of the Yiddish Radio stations were
in the Yiddish theatre district.
And it took no pro trouble at all for the performers
of the Yiddish stage to come by the station
and plug their upcoming program.
Perhaps one of the most important of these performers
from the Yiddish theater was a man named Joseph Rumshinsky.
Rumshinsky was an heir apparent
to the invention of the Yiddish theater.
His influence was a man named Abraham Goldfaden
who really invented the Yiddish theater in Jassy Romania
in the late 19th century.
And from the earliest days of Yiddish Radio,
Rumshinsky found a place on the air.
We're going to listen to an excerpt of a program.
Perhaps, one of the most interesting program,
it's called the Chunky Theater of the Air and for those of you
who perhaps are candy aficionados might recognize the name Chunky.
Well, it turns out that the Chunky Chocolate product was invented
by a Jewish candy maker named Phil Silvershine [phonetic]
and it's an actually fascinating story.
The original chocolate was really his idea.
One among the many contents of the chocolate or addition
to chocolate were two really important contents,
raisins and almonds.
And what was so interesting is that raisins and almonds is also the name
of a very important song that was composed by Abraham Goldfaden
in an opera called Shulamith.
[Background Music] The idea that the chocolate was originally
in the shape of a pyramid,
a structure which figures largely in biblical Jewish life.
And the-- when Silvershine was looking for a program to sponsor
in the 1940's, he came up with a show
which would feature the apparatus of Abraham Goldfaden
and his protege, Joseph Rumshinsky.
These programs are absolutely important, because in many ways,
they're our only opportunity to hear some
of these long lost operas in a condensed form.
And so, what we're going to listen to now is a brief excerpt from one
of the Chunky Yiddish Theater of the Air.
And we're going to-- it will be an excerpt of a Rumshinsky opera
which he wrote in 1922 called Tsubrokhene fidl, The Broken Fiddle
and we're going to hear the introduction.
What's so wonderful as you will hear the opening theme
of Chunky is actually a recycled version of an area
that Rumshinsky wrote in 1920.
But here, repurposed to hawking Chunky Chocolate.
We'll now bring you to Chunky Chocolate of the Air.
[Noise] And here, we--
>> With Joseph Rumshinsky, Betty Simenoff, Nathaniel Sprinzen
and the Chunky Milk Chocolate Orchestra.
[ Music ]
>> Here now is your host and narrator Mitchell Levitsky.
[ Music ]
>> Thank you Herb Sheldon [phonetic].
Hello everybody and welcome to another Chunky, the opera program.
[ Foreign Language ]
>> Yes, Chunky and the [foreign word] the best coco, milk,
coco butter, fresh roasted almonds, filberts, cashews,
and the best of California [foreign word].
[ Foreign Language ]   [ Music ]

[ Foreign Language ]   [ Music ]

>> Pete Sokolow, thank you very much.


[Applause] We'll move on to one of the most prolific
and perhaps the greatest Yiddish Radio dramatist,
his name is Nahum Stutchkoff, we're going to be hearing a lot more
about him tomorrow at Miriam-Khaye Seigel will be talking
about him in her paper.
But Stutchkoff was a brilliant writer,
an actor, a director, a linguist.
At the same time that he was writing series
of half hour Yiddish Radio dramas in his spare time
of writing commercials, was also writing a Yiddish Thesaurus,
and a Hebrew Thesaurus.
All his spare time, the man was indefatigable.
We're going to listen to one of his many dramas.
Unfortunately, one of the few-- many of them had not survived,
but we're going to listen to a brief excerpt of one
of his dramas called Bei Tate-mames Tish.
This display ad from WEVD, from the Forward, terrific piece
of art deco design which really-- Bei Tate-mames Tish,
much the same way that Rabbi Ruben's dramas gave a severity insight
into the life of American jewelry.
Bei Tate-mames Tish was a dramatic version of that.
And what we really see and what we will hear in this upcoming excerpt
of the Nahum Stutchkoff drama is this unhearing ear for dialect
and for language not only of the characters
in his place but for his listeners.
His use of English and Yiddish defies stereotypes.
And for example, in this particular drama which we're
about to hear the character who speaks Yiddish.
It's a story about a family that lives on the Upper West Side
of Manhattan and the wife is ashamed of her being Jewish,
and at one point in the show say, "I have"--
she submerges her Jewish identity and she says, "Oh, they--
the neighbors hear me speak Yiddish but luckily,
they think we're German."
And the fact that this is from 1939, really indicates a lot of issues
of Jewish cultural identity.
But what's really wonderful about this play as we will hear,
there's a few things which are really absolutely brilliant.
One again is he use his deft use of Yiddish and English
but he also defies stereotypes.
Example, this one woman who speaks Yiddish is not the heroin
of the play even though she speaks Yiddish.
Her son who only speaks Yiddish has the great Jewish heart
and has a great sympathy for his parents and his grandparents.
There's a beautiful moment at the end of the play
where Stutchkoff does something absolutely brilliant.
There is a scene where the grandfather--
a friend of the grandfather is lead into the grandfather's room
to listen to a Yiddish Radio show.   And when he turns on the radio,

he hears a Yiddish commercial by Stutchkoff.
It's-- to put into the dramatic narrative of the play and he is able
to actually make a pitch from Manischewitz's matzos as part
of the narrative trajectory.
This is a beautiful piece of great writing,
but it's also brilliant commercial.
We now take you to WEVD to hear Bei Tate-mames Tish.
[ Pause ]   [ Music ]

>> The B. Manischewitz Company,
world's largest matzo bakers present Bei Tate-mames Tish, written
and directed by Nahum Stutchkoff.   [ Music ]

[ Foreign Language ]   Half an hour Bei Tate-mames Tish.

[ Music ]   [ Foreign Language ]

They're talking about, "That soon, Passover will be coming
into Jewish homes around the country."
[Foreign Language] "And make your Passover orders now."
[Foreign Language] It should only be the best.
[ Foreign Language ]   [ Music ]

[ Foreign Language ]
It's a new series from Bei Tate-mames Tish.
[Foreign Language] This came before to New York
but it could have happened anywhere.
[Foreign Language] Wherever Jews live.
[Foreign Language] The character's names are fictitious
and do not reflect anyone how actually is alive.
[Foreign Language] The scene takes place, a Jewish house and one
of the better neighborhoods of New York.
The lady of the house is celebrating with her friend.
[ Laughter & Foreign Language ]   >> No, I'm telling you, we laughed

so much 'cause they have no imagination.
And her manners, and her English?   >> Well, let me tell you something.

[ Foreign Language ]   [Inaudible Remark]

>> Why should you say that?   [Foreign Language] Is that so?

>> So what?
[Inaudible Remark] You won't believe it.
The abolition about-- [Foreign Language]
>> Is that so?   >>I should let so.

They may [foreign word] in German.   [Foreign Language]

>>Certainly.   >> Mama, I'm almost finished.

>> Sid, why don't you say hello to Mrs. Tom.
>> Oh, how do you do?   >> How do you do?

[Phone Ringing]   >> You'll excuse me, won't you?

>> Certainly.   >> Hello. Yes.

Oh, it must be for me.   He is not in.

I don't know.   >> Who is it for?

>> For your grandpa.   >> But should you ask who and why?

>> Please Sidney.   Will you stop teaching me?

>> I'm not teaching you.
I only said because it's only expected to call.
>> Go and do your work, please.   >> All right.

>> Look at that.   You have Jewish papers.

>> It must be the old man's, huh?
I didn't see a Jewish paper for years.
>> I'm telling you.   [Foreign language]

>> Well, I don't know.   [ Foreign Language ]

>> Oh, don't talk like that.   >> As you keep on tracking the--

[ Foreign Language ]   -- high class people.

>> Certainly, it's not classy.   >> I won't say it's not classy.

[ Foreign Language ]   >> Oh my God.

[ Foreign Language ]   >>Yes.

>>Yeah, I guessed.   [ Foreign Language ]

I'm telling you, sheriffs pretend, that's all.
>> I don't know how you stand it.   I should leave so.

[ Foreign Language ]   Well, I think I'll go.

>> Well, thanks for calling and give my regards to your husband.
>> I certainly will and don't aggravate yourself.
[ Foreign Language ]   >> Goodbye.

>> I just wish we have other time [inaudible].
Hello. What did I tell you?   What do you want?

>> Hey, excuse me.   [Foreign Language].

>>What?   [ Foreign Language ]

So what?   [ Foreign Language ]

[Laughter]
>> Goodbye Mrs. Brown, so I'll see you next week.
>> Goodbye Tom, goodbye.   >>Goodbye dear.

[ Foreign Language ]   [Phone Ringing]

[ Foreign Language ]   >> Please son, please.

The business out here is so down, I think I'm in a nervous breakdown.
>> All right.   [Foreign Word] Listen--

>> Don't talk to me please.   Please don't talk to me.

[ Foreign Language ]   >> Yeah, that's all right.

[Inaudible Remark] Yes, translate into [inaudible].
[ Foreign Language ]   >> Hello pa.

>> Hello sonny.   Hello.

[ Foreign Language ]   >> Okay. [Foreign Language]

>> Yeah All right, all right.   [Foreign Language].

>> Come on.   [ Foreign Language ]

>> All right, all right.   [Foreign Language]

>> Well, how do you like grandpa's room?
[ Foreign Language ]   I'll put in on if you like.

[Foreign Language] I'll see if there's a Jewish Hour on now.
>> [Inaudible] You could do the Jewish Hours?
>> Of course, why not?   [Foreign Language]

[ Music ]   There it is.

[Background Music] Well, now, sit down and make yourself comfortable
and then-- and when Zedda [phonetic] comes, I'll send them up.
>> All right, all right.   [ Foreign Language ]

[ Pause ]
>> We had several technical difficulties but luckily,
we transcended them just like old time radio.
[Laughter] But first, now, a word from our sponsor.
[ Music ]
I wanted to show you that you heard some of the sound effects,
the telephone ringing, the door bell.
I just wanted to share an image with you
which will be coming up any moment.
This particular box which was use by Nahum Stutchkoff for all
of his radio shows, it has a screen door, it has doorbells, it has--
this box was recently found in the Forward office in New York.
And the Jewish Daily Forward has very generously donated the Nahum
Stutchkoff Sound Effects Box to the Library of Congress
for the Yiddish Radio Collection.
[Applause] So we are very grateful for that generous offer
from the Jewish Daily Forward.   [ Music ]

Some of you may remember that melody, Bei Mir Bist Du Shein.
That song started a great craze in the 1930's
for Jewish themed popular music.
And we're going to listen to one of the great programs
which were inspired by this song.
It was a show called Yiddish Melodies in Swing which broadcast
on station WHN in New York.
Here, we have a ticket for the show which was recently donated
by David Reign [phonetic] to the collection.
We're going to listen now to this particular show.
It was incredibly popular and we're going
to hear a very rare air check, not an actual broadcast.
This is taken directly off the air so we're going
to hear the station identification,
maybe even a commercial if we're lucky.
And then, we're going to really hear the big opening of the show
and we're going to turn it over to Pete Sokolow to play a piece
that really reflect the dynamic of Yiddish Melodies in Swing
which as they say on the show, takes old Yiddish folk songs
and reinterprets them with the modern melody of Yiddish Swing.
We now take you to station WHN in New York.
>> Program transcribed came to you from the studios of WHN.
1 o'clock postal telegraph time.
Have your congratulations to send, do it appropriately,
inexpensively with postal telegraph ready written messages sent
for 20 cents locally and slightly more nationally.
WHN New York, the following is transcribed.
[ Music ]
>> Now, we move from the station where the broadcast originates
to the low state theater building
where the broadcast is just about to begin.
We now are going to switch.
>> I'm on top of the [inaudible] building your American Jewish Hour.
[ Music & Applause ]   >> The B. Manischewitz Company,

world's largest matzo bakers happily present Yiddish Melodies in Swing.
[ Music ]
>> [Background music] They do it to Eli Meylakh.
>> They do it [inaudible]
>> They even do it to Yidl Mitn Fidl.
[Inaudible Remark]
>> Yiddish Swing takes all beautiful songs and finds the group
for them in merry modern rhythms.   The B. Manischewitz Company,

bakers of fine matzo products proudly presents the Daughters
of the Downbeat [inaudible], your romantic tenor, Jan Bart
and Sam Medoff with the Yiddish Swing Orchestra.
[ Music ]   [Applause]

>> Pete Sokolow.   [ Applause ]

At the time that Yiddish Melodies in Swing was on the air,
a dark moment in Jewish history was happening across the ocean in1939.
And Yiddish Radio reflected this but never so much as after the war.
Tomorrow, we're going to be hearing a lot more of this from Robin Newman
where she'll be talking about Holocaust Radio.
But after the war, certain Jewish agencies came on the air in attempt
to raise the consciousness of the American people to the plight
of the survivors of the Holocaust.
One agency in particular, United Service
for New Americans created unbelievably innovative programming
in order to raise the confidence of American Jews.
One of their show is called Reunion under the guides
of a program were people who said, "Oh, I served in a particular unit
with people I'd like to be reunited," would always talk a way
in this program Holocaust survivors who were reunited live on the air
with their members of their family.
It was an unbelievably powerful moment.
Well, here is another program from United Service for New Americans,
one of the series of dramas really exploring the plight
of Holocaust survivors.
It's a show called "Escape From a Dream."
It's a drama about a concentration camp survivor, here portrayed
by actor Richard Widmark.
He-- this is in 1947, this is the same year right after the production
of this show, Widmark who was a very well-known radio performer was
about to go out to Hollywood and to start his first film called "Kiss
of Death" where he plays a psychotic killer
and was nominated for an Academy Award.
We're going to listen unfortunately to a small section of "Escape
From a Dream," the rest of the program is-- has not been found.
So from 1947, Richard Widmark in "Escape From a Dream."
>> It always begins the same way.   First is the drum.


It begins low and mute and then it gets louder and louder.
[Background Sounds] Then I know it isn't the drum anymore but my heart.
Then I suddenly look around and I'm walking on a long avenue
and the buildings lean down as if they were about to fall on me.
People are walking nearby but they don't seem to see me.
And then, there's the laughter.
[Laughter] And suddenly, I see a house at the end of the avenue
and I know that if I can get there, I'll be saved.
I begin to walk faster, my heart begins to beat faster
and the people, the people begin to chase me.
They want to stop me and they laugh.
[Laughter] But I'm running now and they can't stop me.
I get to the house and I jumped into the doorway and suddenly,
I fall, I'm falling down, down.
And then, I'm awake, and I know it's just a dream.
[ Music ]
>> On behalf of the United Service for New Americans,
Station WMCA presents an original drama Just a Dream written Milton
Robertson, produced and directed by Mitchell Grayson,
and starring Richard Widmark.   [ Music ]

>> You've probably had dreams that are very similar.
A falling dream seems to be very universal.
There's a page in Freud that gives a comprehensive analysis
and any competent psychiatrist could give you a
satisfactory interpretation.
But I decided that the usual analysis wasn't enough for me
so I analyzed the dream myself.
If you don't mind, you're invited to meet my subconscious.
[ Music ]
[Background Sounds] First, the drums, why drums?
Why not symbols or family?   Why drums?

At first, I thought of parades or concerts or military functions,
but none of them seemed to fit.
And then as if a movie flashed through my mind, I saw the answer.
[ Drum Rolling ]
[Background Sounds] I was marching a long a hot dusty road
with many other men, we just come from our work.
I won't make this complicated, we were slaves.
Jewish slaves engaged on a project
on the outskirts of a city called Lublin.
You've heard of Lublin of course.
I won't repeat its bloodstained history,
I'll just mention the furnaces and the gas chambers briefly
to set the locale for you.
That day, we've been working for 16 hours.
We had little to eat for years.   We had little rest for years.

Most of us were ill.
I've seen someone's leg snap back on the road, the bone literally broke
by itself, too weak to bear the burden of the man's weight.
We heard the crack almost as sharp as the sound
of the riffle shot that followed.
The march continued but somehow, we couldn't keep steady [inaudible].
>> Hermia [phonetic], step out.   >> I stepped out.

>> We are not marching in step Hermia.
The rule say there must be a marching step.
I'm glad that you do not argue this rule, that shows,
you have some intelligence.
That is why I'm selecting you as leader.
You will go to the head of this detail.
You will take this little box with you and you will beat out a rhythm.
And so, we will all march in step, it will be a fast rhythm
and if anybody falls out of step, we will remove him
from the group, do you understand?   >> I understand.

>> And proceed to the head of the canoe Hermia and proceed
to march and take the box.
>> I went to the head of the group and I began
to march beating as I walked.   I beat slowly.

>> A little faster Hermia.
>> I beat a little be faster, we walked a little faster.
>> Someone fell out of step, unfortunate.
It would be better to keep in time.   >> I kept up the beat.

I had the box with my open hand and I kept up the beat.
I forgot that I was tired, I forgot that my legs ache,
that my heart hurt, that a sickness was sitting in my throat.
I forgot to think and I forgot to hear.
I kept up the beat until we arrived in camp.
We were four short at roll call.   We were four short in our barracks.

And for a long time, the beat stayed in my mind.

Those my friends, those beats,
those beats have become the drums of my trait.
[ Drum Rolling ]
>> This is one of the microphones from WMCA of the program.
The postwar world saw a combination of the continued rise
of assimilation, the destruction of native Yiddish homelands
and the rise of Israel and Hebrew, not to mention the decline of radio
in the phase of television.
All spelled the end for Yiddish Radio
in its original vibrant dynamic form.
While its glory days were behind it, we are in fact fortunate that thanks
to all the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress,
these sounds will continue to live forever and continue
to bring the fruits and joys of Yiddish Radio and American history
to the future generations.
Tomorrow, we will continue our conference with papers from some
of the great scholars to put Yiddish culture in its proper context.
But before then, a final word from our sponsor.
[ Music ]   [ Foreign Language ]

[ Music ]   This concludes tonight's broadcast.

We invite you back tomorrow morning,
9 a.m. when we continue the Yiddish Radio program.
Good night.   [ Applause & Music ]

>> This has been a presentation of the Library