Volume 31
Fall-Winter
2005 |
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On June 15, 2005, the National
Endowment for the Arts announced the 2005 recipients of the nation’s highest
honor in the folk and traditional arts.
Among the twelve winners was Beyle
Schaechter-Gottesman, Yiddish singer,
songwriter, and poet. This is the first time
that a Yiddish writer or singer has received
the prestigious National Heritage Award.
The fellowship includes an award of
$20,000, a ceremony on Capitol Hill in
Washington, D.C., and a concert
performance showcasing the artists and their
work. Culturally active in the New York area
for over fifty years, Beyle Schaechter-
Gottesman has been a key figure in
maintaining Yiddish traditions in America
and has played a central role in reviving and
inspiring interest in Yiddish song and
poetry among a new generation.
Poet Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman. Photo: Martha Cooper, courtesy of City Lore
| Beyle was born in 1920 in Vienna, Austria,
but was raised in Chernovitz (Cernauti), Romania. |
Her mother Lifshe Schaechter-
Widman was a businesswoman and an
admired traditional Yiddish singer with a
prodigious repertoire; her father Benyumin,
an intellectual active in the Yiddish cultural
world of the city. Beyle studied art in Vienna
from 1936 to 1938, and married Dr. Jonas
Gottesman in 1941.
Before the war, Chernovitz was one of
the centers of Yiddish culture in Romania:
the capital of the Bukovina, a region whose
Jews were sensitive both to the older
traditional Jewish folklore and to the coterritorial
folklore of Ukrainian, Romanian,
and German speakers. At the same time,
the Jews of Chernovitz forged a modern
Yiddish culture using those folk materials;
local Yiddish poets Itzik Manger and Eliezer
Shteynbarg are prime examples of this
cultural complex. This synthesis of tradition
and innovation informed Beyle’s
performance of folksongs and her songwriting craft in the post-war period.
Beyle survived the war in the ghetto in
Chernovitz and then lived in Bucharest and
Vienna, before arriving in the United States
in 1951. She settled in the Bronx, New York,
where she lives to this day. Beyle worked as
a teacher in the 1950s and 1960s in the
Yiddish shuln (afternoon secular Jewish
schools) in the Bronx and also wrote a
number of musical plays. Several of her
children’s songs from this period became
popular in the Yiddish schools in America;
three of these were recorded on the CD Di
grine katshke (“The Green Duck,” 1997).
In the mid-1960s she began to write
Yiddish poetry and soon established herself
as one of America’s premier Yiddish poets.
She cofounded the Shraybkrayz (writing
circle) of the Yiddish student organization,
Yugntruf, where she served for many years
as the elder mentor for the participants.
Beyle’s original Yiddish songs that she began
to write in the early 1970s introduced
compelling new material for the next
generation of performers, which included
singers who were eager to express
themselves with songs outside of the usual
canon. These poetic works reflected themes
that had rarely appeared in Yiddish songs: a
contemporary woman’s perspective on life
and nature, daily life in the big city, and the
distressed position of Yiddish culture after
the Holocaust.
When the now twenty-five–year-old
renaissance in Jewish klezmer music and
Yiddish song began to take root and branch
out among American Jews and non-Jews
alike, Beyle’s large repertoire of older
traditional Yiddish songs that she had
learned from her mother, her modern
Yiddish urban songs that she learned in Chernovitz, and the performance of her own
songs drew many leading singers to her door
in the Bronx. As new singers performed her
songs and she herself taught and
performed, Beyle made her mark on the
Yiddish repertory through such popular
festivals and cultural workshops as the
Yiddish Folk Arts Program (“Klezkamp”)
and Buffalo on the Roof in New York,
“Klezkanada” in Montreal, Canada, and the
Ashkenaz Festival in Toronto, which have
become the new centers of Yiddish cultural
creativity.
Perhaps more importantly, she has served
as an important link between the Old World
and the New World, so that new performers
and students of Yiddish song can
understand the past of this tradition and
see a living inspiration for new creations in
the present and future. In 1998 City Lore
inducted her into its People’s Hall of Fame,
saying, “Her compositions have helped spur
a revival of Yiddish song.” After the release
of the songbook and recording Zumertegk
(“Summer Days,” 1991), and Af di gasn fun
der shtot (“On the Streets of the City,” 2003),
acclaimed Yiddish singers such as Theodore
Bikel, Michael Alpert, Adrienne Cooper, and
Lorin Sklamberg began to perform her
songs. Today, singers and klezmer groups
all over the United States, Canada, Europe,
and Eastern Europe have recorded her
songs.
Beyle’s contribution to her community
and to the wider public has indeed enriched
all our lives, and we offer her our heartfelt
and enthusiastic congratulations.
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|
Perhaps more importantly, she has served
as an important link between the Old World
and the New World, so that new performers
and students of Yiddish song can
understand the past of this tradition and
see a living inspiration for new creations in
the present and future.
This article appeared in Voices Vol. 31, Fall-Winter 2005. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society today.
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