Pack your picnic, practise your heckles and come with us to the Yiddish theatre. This episode looks at Yiddish theatre and music hall from its early days in the late nineteenth century, from the popular theatre with its cheap songs and audience misbehaviour to highbrow performances of Shakespeare and opera in Yiddish. Nadia and Vivi bring you a short story about audience antics, and ‘Gevalt polis!’ (Help Police!), a comic song about East End crime. We are joined by the actor and writer David Schneider whose family had a leading role in London’s Yiddish theatre. David performs his grandfather’s translation of Shylock’s ‘Hath not a Jew’ speech in Yiddish, and historian David Mazower describes the doomed attempt to set up a London Yiddish art theatre.

The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is written and presented by Nadia Valman and Vivi Lachs

Produced by Natalie Steed at Rhubarb Rhubarb for Queen Mary University of London

Funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council

Guests: David Schneider and David Mazower

Reader: David Schneider

Featured story: A. M. Kaizer ‘When You Go to a Yiddish Theatre’, translated by Vivi Lachs. From London Yiddishtown: East End Jewish Life in Yiddish Sketch and Story, 1930-1950 (Wayne State University Press, 2021)

Featured song: Katsha’nes, ‘Gevalt Police’ (Lyrics and music: Anon). From the CD Don’t Ask Silly Questions (Katshanes, 2017)

Theme music: Klezmer Klub, ‘Vaytshepl mayn vaytshepl’ (trad) and ‘Yiddisher Honga’ (trad). From the CD Whitechapel mayn Vaytshepl (Klub Records, 2009)

Podcast image: © Jeremy Richardson

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