A Yiddish revival

Today’s cover story about Shane Bertram Baker, a non-Jewish native of the Kansas City area who is now starring in a Yiddish-theater revue in New York, is at once joyful and shameful to report.

Baker’s one-man show, “The Big Bupkis,” emphasizes the humorous aspects of Yiddish theater. The clips on YouTube are quite funny. Baker is clearly a product of what he called “the new secular Yiddish culture,” sustained by institutions like YIVO and the Yiddish Book Center. The New Yiddish Repertory Theatre’s use of supertitles and its appeals to young people are all to the good.

The twinge of shame comes from the fact that Baker is a goy, a non-Jew, who loves and knows the Yiddish language better than 99.9 percent of American Jews today. In the words of Psalm 118, “the stone that the builder refused has become the cornerstone” of Baker’s act.

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Write comment