I had the wonderful opportunity of recording the Oral History of Betty Perlov ( See video of oral history below and a partial transcript of the interview at the bottom of this page).

Betty is the author of “Rifke Takes a Bow,” a children’s book which tell the story of her life as a child growing up in the Yiddish theater. Her mother, Vera Rosanko,  was a famous yiddish actress in the Yiddish Rialto, and her father, Israel Rosenberg was a producer and actor as well. As Betty explains, it was common practice for families to form their own Yiddish groups.

In “Rifke Takes a Bow” Betty recalls what the neighborhood of the Jewish Rialto,  filled with various Yiddish theaters,  felt like to a small child.

Betty was born in Toronto and grew up in Brooklyn, yet Yiddish was her only language as a child. (In the interview she recalls how the language barrier affected her social life in school, and how going to school in general was a struggle after having the theater serve as her classroom for so long.)

Betty Rosenberg Perlov joined in the family business, performing with her parents in “Mentshn an Oygn” (Men Without Eyes), one of Yiddish radio’s most successful melodramas. It was  first performed live in 1941 as a 12-part serial.

In 2002, Betty worked with yiddish scholar, Henrt Sapoznik to revive the broadcast of “Mentshn an Oygn.” Sapoznik digitally restored the original tapes Rosenberg Perlov had saved. On September 1st 2013, she published “Rifke Takes a Bow.”

Betty struggled for along time to get her book published, because nobody seemed interested in telling the story of a child who grew up in the Yiddish theater. This is very telling of the evolution of theater in New York City since the turn the century. Back then, Yiddish theaters lined 2nd avenue, and some of the most important papers in the city published reviews of Yiddish theater performances. Today, Yiddish theaters are far harder to find, and many do not get the same respect or attention they once received.

Sources:

Perlov, Betty Rosenberg., and Cosei Kawa. Rifka Takes a Bow. Minneapolis: Kar-Ben, 2013. Print.

It’s in the books: At 96, Betty Rosenberg Perlov is a published author

 

Partial Transcription of Oral History with Betty Perlov Rosenberg

(Interviewer: Marla Goller)

Interviewer: So just to begin and um for the sake of having it recorded, could you

um share your name and your family history.

Betty: It’s very interesting about the Yiddish theater, they started in Europe:

Romania, Poland and so on and of couse Abraham Goldfarb was the father of the

Yiddish theater so to speak. But really what was interesting was families formed a

group of actors. There were the Zilberts,. Rosie Zilbert, she was beautiful girl, Lisa

Zilbert was the mother, the father I don’t know his first name, Teddy Zilbert was the

cashier in the theatern and he was just wonderful with lovely cheeks and dimples

and so on. Now you have the bernsteins, so we have Pesacha Geberstein you have

Liliy, was his wife, and his son and daughter were both in the theater, and I think

the daughter was a ventriloquist, but I’m questioning, there’s an actor on Broadway

called Daniel Bernstien I don’t know if its his family, it sounds as though he were.

Susana (betty’s daughter): Can you talk about your family

Betty: Wait I’ll get to it. I’ll get to a good spot. Um my father came from Poland he

was studying to become a Rabbi because his father Yehuda (Yudl) Rosenberg was

a very famous Rabbi who translated the Zohar from Am…Am..Ar..what was that?

Arm…Arma…that’s not…anyway he translated it into Hebrew

-five big books of them. Whereever it said Zohar it said Zowere and I said, “why

were they sour about anything?” So my father was studying to be a Rabbi and the

night before he was to get Smichas he next day he ran away and joined a theatrical

group. The theatrical group was…they had a director called…I forgot his name…he

had one thing he would say to the actors, before they went on stage “brek a fis”

which means “break a leg” like they do. And so its an old admonission for the actors.

Now they weren’t there were companies that would go from town to town to town

some of them the eh people who lived there, the Polish or Romanian or German

they would banish the Yiddish theater actors, they didn’t want Jews performing.

So the Jews did perform for the Jews who lived in the little towns and they had

somebody who would watch outdoors in case a policeman came from the town. So,

and they had one signal (singing) “oh du lieber Augustin Augustin Augustin” That was

a warning that there were police outside, and because they were speaking German it

was okay to perform. I thought that was pretty interesting.

My father met my mother in a small town called Kaunatava in the Ukraine and she

joined the company also. She was very pretty and delightfully vivacious and so fitted

in perfectly with Israel and her name was Fera. It became Vera, but her name was

Fera. And they, my grandfather was so well known as a Rabbi that the people in

Toronto, Canada wanted him to leave, he was in Poland, and come to there town

here in Toronto., and become the Rabbi there. So they sent him what was called a

“inaudible” a ticket from the boat and he came to Toronto and he became the Rabbi

there, and my fa– he sent my father tickets and my mother to come to Tonronto

and live with them. It’s very interesting how they sent money. Y’know postcards

were very thick, they might be an eighth on an inch thick. So my grandfather took a

razor blade, separated the two parts of the card, inserted money in between, bills,

pasted it up together and he sent it so y’know. And Israel, so my father opened it

up took out the money and he could get ships uhh tickets to come to Toronto. Of

course when they came to Toronto he just wasn’t interested in becoming a Rabbi, he

wanted to become a theater manager, a director, and so on. So they bought…they,

they rented the Queens Theater , (I’ll show you a poster from there), in Toronto and

that was Israel Rosenberg and her name was nor Rosako at that time, Vera Weiner,

that was her maiden name. And I was born in Toronto in 1917.

So it was very interesting where the people in Toronto they came down to the

United States, to Minnesota and so on and they performed in various cities along

that border. And it became they could come to New York and Philadelphia and that

was called the Pravince, I think it’s called Province right now. I was born and of

course I was a toddler and we would rent a room from a misses, quotation marks,

and the three of us would sleep in one bed. Many times when I couldn’t control

myself my father would say, “she’s keeping me warm, what do you want?” So that’s

how we lived for a while, with toilets down the hall and so on and so forth. Listen we

were in Toronto, we were in Winnipeg, Minneapolis, and we finally we came down

we made it to New York…..

Interviewer: I have one question that I am curious about. You were saying before

that you that the Yiddish theater that you experienced had a taste, is the word

that you used, s specific taste, that you don’t think can really be replicated today.

What’s the best way that you can describe that “taste” in maybe some adjectives,

or a metaphor. How, whatever way you can express it to people who haven’t

experienced it.

Betty: The Yiddish theater reached each person who came, whether he came from

South America, from Poland, from Romania. But the key to that is the language. You

can meet somebody from France, you can meet somebody from Russia, you can

meet somebody from East New York (laughs), but he knew the language. “auh Kid?”

“Yuh bein a yid.” And they could converse with each other. It’s the understanding of

the language that draws the people, to hear the words that are said in Yiddish.