Immigrant Songs: Yiddish Theater and the American Jewish Experience

Film Screening Co-sponsored by the Milken Archive of Jewish Music Admission: $15 YIVO members and students: $10 Get tickets

Join us for the New York premiere of Immigrant Songs: Yiddish Theater and the American Jewish Experience, directed by Jeff Janeczko. This documentary traces the arc of Yiddish theater from its origins in Eastern Europe under pioneering figures like Avrom Goldfaden and Boris Thomashefsky, through its golden age in the 1920s and 1930s on Manhattan’s Second Avenue, to its mid-century decline and remarkable modern revival—culminating in the celebrated 2018 production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish (Fidler afn Dakh). Through archival footage, original music by Frank London, and testimony from more than 20 leading scholars and performers, the film illuminates a world that was at once deeply rooted in Eastern European Jewish culture and transformative in its encounter with American life.