Cabaret Yiddish - Story

The Yiddish language, music and culture, that elusive mixture of German, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, Ukranian and Rumanian, the universal condition of the Wandering Jew, his always being without a homeland, these are the themes at the heart of "Cabaret Yiddish", a chamber piece from which the better known Oylem Goylem is derived.

One could say the show has the form of the classic cabaret as we all know it. In fact, it alternates songs and instrumental pieces with stories, anecdotes and jokes. What makes it particularly interesting is the fact that it's completely dedicated to that part of Jewish culture of which Yiddish is the tongue and Klezmer the music.

A show with the flavor of "steppes and shop back-rooms, streets and synagogues". All this is what Moni Ovadia calls "the sound of exile, the music of dispersal": in one word, the diaspora. The term Klezmer derives from the Hebrew words Kley Zemer, which refer to the musical instruments (generally violin and other stringed instruments, and clarinet) with which the traditional music of the Eastern European Jews was played from the 16th century approximately.