Word: yiddishe
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Actor Rod Steiger, 55, going from the Hasidic rabbi in The Chosen to Benito Mussolini in Lion of the Desert demanded a few changes. First, the Yiddish inflection was traded for an Italian accent. No problem there, since Steiger had played Pope John XXIII in And There Came a Man (1968) and, for that matter, the title role in Mussolini, the Last Act (1974). Next, the full, rabbinical beard had to go. Finally, Steiger's impressively shaggy head had to be shaved. But how closely? Over this hairy point, a heated argument arose between Steiger's makeup...
...whether the government should print driver's license tests, ballots, and even U.S. citizenship tests in both English and Spanish. Jewish residents, who had been among the most forward in welcoming the Cubans in 1961, point out with an edge in their voices that nobody printed the ballots in Yiddish for their ancestors when they came to America. The Jews in South Florida cast about 20 per cent of the area's votes, and there is widespread hostility toward the Cubans from this powerful group. That especially startles the Latins, who point out that it was not so long...
...tireless advocate of causes, a godfather to young talent, a lobbyist, a fund raiser and a supreme power broker in the music world, albeit a rather puckish, cherubic one. "I've never been able to live in a cocoon," he says. "I have a long buttinsky nose." In Yiddish-one of the six languages he either speaks or understands -the expression is a kochleffl (a stirrer-up of the pot). Even his relaxations are strenuous. Says Leonard Bernstein: "You should play tennis with him some time. My God, the force, the velocity of those balls...
...understandable crusade; for a Muscovite, it is an uncomfortable one. But Dancer Yuri Sherling, 35, seeks a renaissance of Yiddish culture, which, he laments, is "decaying all over the world and has been neglected by many Jews in this country." A graduate of three famed institutes-the Bolshoi Ballet School, the Moscow Conservatory Musical School and the Moscow School of Theatrical Arts-Sherling is director-founder of the two-year-old Jewish Chamber Musical Theater. He has written the music, choreographed the dancing and starred in two hits with his company of 25. One show was an olio of jazzed...
DIED. Ida Kaminska, 80, longtime star of the classic Yiddish theater and best known to a wider audience for her role in the Oscar-winning Czech film The Shop on Main Street (1965); in New York City. Born to actor parents who had their own company in Warsaw, Kaminska made her stage debut at four, began directing at 17, and, with her first husband, Zygmund Turkow, founded the Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater. She fled the Nazi invasion in 1939, but returned after the war to reorganize her theater. With Polish government support, her troupe gained international renown, but officially inspired...