Yiddish has made some unexpected appearances on Hollywood’s zilbernem ekran (silver screen) over the years. Dos ershte film (the first film) ever produced with sound, The Jazz Singer, had some words in Yiddish (shikse for instance) and a performance of a traditional Kol Nidre.
Just five years later in 1932 the James Cagney film Taxi featured a scene in Yiddish which was improvised on set in order to show Cagney’s fluency in the language which the gentile actor learned as a child growing up on the Lower East Side. One of the amazing aspects of the scene is that it can be perfectly followed without understanding a word (although there are vitsn (jokes) and kneytshn (nuances) which only reveal themselves when the Yiddish dialogue is carefully listened to).
The film rezhisor (director) and komiker (comedian) Mel Brooks, along with his contemporary Woody Allen, used lots of Yiddish words in his movies but shot few scenes entirely in Yiddish. One such famous scene appears in his comedy Blazing Saddles in which a group of inexplicably Yiddish speaking American Indians encounters a black family migrating west. One of the Indians has a hekele (hatchet) with which he threatens the family but his chief commands him to let them pass. As the family leaves they are told “zay gezunt” (be well).
The 1975 film Hester Street highlights Jewish immigration to the USA and the cultural conflicts between greenhorns(slang: recently arrived immigrants) and their atsimilirte landslayt (assimilated countrymen). Much of the dialogue is shot in Yiddish and the movie’s English carries the telltale cadences of Yiddish as well.
The recent Cohen Brother’s Film A Serious Man has a great introductory scene which is shot entirely in beautiful Yiddish. The clip starring Fyvush Finkel , Yelena Shmulenson, and Allen Lewis Rickman, gave the whole Yiddishist world a sakh nakhes (lots of pride in the accomplishments of others). Unfortunately the shtifers (brats) over at NBC Universal just ordered the film clip to be removed from Youtube due to copyright violations. Instead of the clip I’ve decided to post an interview with Fyvush Finkel about his role in the film. It’s a great film and worth purchasing just for the short scene in Yiddish.
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