Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business

9. “Gvald, Yidn, Buena Gente”: Jevel Katz, Yiddish Bard of the Río de la Plata

During a visit to Buenos Aires in May 1996, I was among those present in the “live studio audience” for the 100th broadcast of the weekly Yiddish program on the Jewish community station Radio Jai. José Judkovski, the host of another of the station’s regular programs, “Buenos Aires: Fervor y Tango,” put in a guest appearance to mark that special occasion. In the course of his remarks, Judkovski commented that both his show and the Yiddish program endeavored to preserve important aspects of their community’s cultural heritage. For Argentine Jews of a certain age and background, the coupling of Yiddish and tango seemed to be only natural. A few years later, two books devoted to Jews and the tango were published in Buenos Aires: El tango: una historia con judíos (The tango: A history with Jews), by Judkovski, and Tango judío (Jewish tango), by Julio Nudler. Both authors stressed the notable contributions that Jewish performers and impresarios once made toward defining—and elaborating upon—a central element of Argentine cultural identity. However, they treated the tango’s influence upon the Yiddish-speaking immigrant milieu in Argentina only en passant: “In the absence of tango lyrics reflecting themselves,” wrote Nudler, “the Jews in the Thirties had their own troubadour , Jevel Katz—nicknamed for that reason El Gardel Judío” (a reference to the Argentine performer Carlos Gardel).1 (Katz’s name did not figure at all within the pages of Judkovski’s book.2 ) Any discussion of a once-beloved performer of Yiddish tangos was deemed to be at best marginal to these books’ main topic. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to overlook the impact that Jevel Katz—and by extension, the cohort of Yiddish performers to which he belonged—had on the Jewish immigrant communities of Argentina and Uruguay. As an index of this entertainer’s popularity one need only mention his funeral, which was one of the most extraordinary public gatherings in the history of Jewish Buenos Aires. It took CHAPTER 9 “Gvald, Yidn, Buena Gente”: Jevel Katz, Yiddish Bard of the Río de la Plata Zachary M. Baker “Gvald, Yidn, Buena Gente” 203 place on a sultry Sunday morning in March of 1940. Between 25,000 and 40,000 mourners packed the streets of the city’s Jewish district as the motorized procession passed, en route to Liniers cemetery on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. It was probably the most well-attended Jewish funeral in Argentina’s history—all the more amazing for the fact that the outpouring was on behalf of a thirty-seven yearold Jewish immigrant who had resided in that country for only ten years. Before emigrating, Jevel Katz was an impoverished young typographer in Vilna, employed by the famous Brothers and Widow Romm printing house. He sang his earliest compositions to guitar accompaniment, before gatherings of his fellow members of the Vilna Jewish Printers’ Union. Beyond that he does not appear to have made a deep impression on his native city (which, however, did not prevent Katz from making Vilna the subject of a nostalgic ballad, after he settled in Buenos Aires). Katz departed for Argentina in May 1930, during that brief interval between the imposition of strict immigration quotas in the United States and a similar tightening up by an increasingly nationalistic Argentine regime. North America’s loss was South America’s gain. Jevel Katz in the early 1930s. (From the archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York.) 204 Zachary M. Baker Within a very short time he managed to transform himself into the most popular Yiddish performer in Argentina. Katz toured widely, entertaining his audiences with a medley of monologues, humoresques, couplets, parodies, nostalgic songs, and satires, in which he provided his own accompaniment on guitar, mandolin, harmonica, and accordion. Katz performed upwards of 650 original compositions (some of which, starting in 1939, were published in the daily Yiddish press). He also acted in Yiddish plays and was featured on radio programs. Katz’s themes of nostalgia, privation, and struggle tugged at his audiences’ heartstrings, though he also leavened his lyrics with copious doses of comic relief. It was this combination of nostalgic repertory and versatile performance style that caused the Yiddish journalist and theatre critic Samuel Rollansky (Shmuel Rozhanski, 1902–1995) to compare Katz with the Russian émigré composer and actor Alexander Vertinsky (1889–1957).3 In...