Street scene in Port Said, Egypt, c.1920. Source: Wikimedia Commons/KITLV.
I’m still sorting through many of the unknown families and individuals buried in the two Progressive Musical Benevolent Society cemetery plots, and I came across several intermarried families who don’t fit the usual profile. Rather than coming directly from the Russian Empire to New York City, as did the majority of P.M.B.S. members, they were European Jews of Austrian/Romanian ancestry who were born or who lived extended periods in Egypt during the colonial era, and came to New York during or after the First World War. These were the families of three New York musicians and P.M.B.S. members, Charles Braun (1887–1947), Charles Isaac Rosenberg (1884–1929) and William Halmesco (1890–1952).
I don’t know enough about early 20th century Egypt to really give much context to their lives there. (Although I did take a memorable course in Modern Egyptian History with Paul Sedra at SFU 15 years ago.) I wouldn’t even know where to go looking for documentation of their lives over there. The French-language Cairo newspaper Israël is searchable on jpress from 1922 onwards, and while I did not find any of these family names in it, searches for “musique” and “musicien” brings up plenty of results. One gets the impression of a bustling cultural life between Europe, the long-resident local Jewish community, traveling musicians, and colonization projects in nearby Palestine.
Limited as my information is on these three families, I thought an examination of their lives would be an interesting demonstration of the different paths musicians took to end up as members of the P.M.B.S. in New York.
The families in Egypt
The parents of the Halm(esco) family, Solomon and Annette, may have been born in Romania or Bucovina in the second half of the 19th century, lived in Vienna for a time, and settled in Egypt by 1890. Their four known children are Sophia (b.1885), William (b.1890), Bertha (b.1891) and Alexander (b.1894). Sophia was born in Austria-Hungary and the three latter children were born in Egypt.
I don’t know if Solomon Halmesco, the father, was a musician. I don’t think he went by that family name later in life so there are no European Halmescos in any of the usual databases (Jewishgen, Gesher Galicia, even Yad Vashem). As for the children, Bertha and Sophia both married musicians, and William became one. Sophia married Charles Isaac (Yitzchok Chaim) Rosenberg, a violinist from Chernivtsi born in 1884, who was living and working in Egypt. Bertha married Charles (Chaim) Braun, a bassist born somewhere in Galicia in around 1887, who was likewise working in Egypt. William married Mathilda Meyer, daughter of a German Jewish family living in Egypt, and became a cornetist or trumpeter. The youngest sibling, who went by Alexander Halm, does not seem to have become a musician.
Life in New York
The earliest among these folks to arrive was Charles Isaac Rosenberg, his wife Sophia (née Halmesco) & family, who left Alexandria and sailed to New York in the spring of 1915. At some point he joined the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society and started to play as a theatre musician. I’m unsure how he got connected with the P.M.B.S.; perhaps he was related to one of the many other Rosenbergs who were members, or met another member on the job. On his WWI registration card he gave his employer as Loew’s Orpheum Theatre on 86th.
WWI registration card for (Charles) Isaac Rosenberg. Source: Ancestry.com.Westchester Avenue at Stebbins Avenue, around the corner from the Rosenbergs’ home in the Bronx, 1930s. Source: NYPL Digital Collections.
Charles and Sophia, along with daughters Bella and Victoria, settled on Hewitt Place in the Bronx for the first decade of their time in New York. By the time of the 1925 census they were living on 111th in Harlem, and brother-in-law Charles Braun had arrived from Egypt and moved in with them. Bella (Blanche) Rosenberg had turned 18 and was now working as a pianist.
Charles Braun’s wife Bertha arrived in October ’25 along with their children Lazare (Lester), Solomon and Leon. Charles joined the musician’s union and the P.M.B.S.; per the union directory, Charles Braun started off as a flautist, but soon switched to playing bass.
Ship manifest showing the arrival of Bertha Braun (Halmesco) and children from Cairo to Providence R.I. in October 1925. They gave their intended address as Bertha’s husband Chaim (Charles) on 111th. Source: Ancestry.com.
Brother William Halmesco was the next to arrive, leaving Cairo with his wife Mathilda and arriving in New York in March 1927. Before long they had settled on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx; William joined the P.M.B.S. and the musician’s union as a cornetist/trumpeter.
Ship manifest showing the Halmescos and some other Egyptian-Jewish musicians sailing from Alexandria in February 1927. Source: Ancestry.com.The Halmescos’ building at 362 Southern Boulevard in the Bronx, in 1940. Source: NYC Department of Records.
Aside from the membership of all three families in the P.M.B.S., William is the only one who left us evidence of specifically klezmer music activity. Dave Levitt, descendant of two generations of P.M.B.S. members, has an old manuscript from Halmesco which somehow ended up in his grandfather Jack’s possession. The book, written up in 1945, contains bulgars and other klezmer materials. Probably some of them were William’s own compositions, as he was described in a 2006 profile of his daughter in the Staten IslandAdvance as a “musician and composer.”
Cover of a handwritten klezmer tunebook by William Halmesco held by Dave Levitt, which he posted on Facebook a few years ago.A sample klezmer dance from the manuscript book in the previous photo. Source: Dave Levitt.
Charles Rosenberg was the first of the musicians to pass away, dying of a burst appendix in 1929. He was buried in the Society’s plot at Mount Hebron Cemetery. His wife Sophie—one of the Halmesco sisters, if you recall—died a few years later, in 1935.
Charles (Isaac) Rosenberg’s gravestone in the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society plot at Mount Hebron Cemetery. Photo by Joel Rubin/Pete Rushefsky.
William Halmesco’s family was also struck with misfortune, as his wife Mathilda died in 1931 giving birth to their first child. This daughter was named Mathilda (Matty) in honour of her mother, and was sent to live in the Jewish Infants Home of Brooklyn until age 5, when she came back to live with her father. According to a profile of her in the Staten IslandAdvance in 2006, her father tried for several years to have her learn the violin, but finally gave up when she did not take to it.
WWII registration card for William Halmesco, listing him as an unemployed cornetist. Source: Ancestry.com.
In this era Charles Braun and his sons continued to work as musicians; mostly as bassists, but occasionally as drummers, in night clubs, and in Lester’s case, for the radio station WNEW for some time in the 1940s. The family moved into this newly built building in Brighton Beach, seen below, where a number of musicians seemed to live, per the 1945 local 802 directory, including the klezmer bandleader and cornetist Max Ellenson (1878–19??).
Entries for three of the Brauns under the bassist section of the AFM local 802 directory, 1945. Brother Leo was listed in the Drummer section of the same volume. Source: NYU.Google Maps street view of 3091 Brighton 5th Street in 2011. The Braun family lived here in the 1940s, along with a number of other Jewish musicians and their families. Source: Google Maps. Bertha Braun (née Halmesco) in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn in the 1950s, from a cropped family photo. Source: Ancestry.com.
When Charles Braun died in 1947, Bertha’s brother Alexander, who had moved from Egypt, moved in with them, as did Matty Halmesco, as we can see below in the 1950 census. William Halmesco, meanwhile, continued to live in the Bronx as he had since arriving in New York decades earlier. He died in 1952, and was buried in the P.M.B.S. plot at Mount Hebron cemetery alongside fellow cornetist Samuel Blank.
Braun family residence in the 1950 census at 3091 Brighton 5th Street. Source: Ancestry.com.Grave of William Halmesco in the Mount Hebron Cemetery. Source: Joel Rubin/Pete Rushefsky.
With William gone, Matty got married to her cousin Bernard Halm (1920–1985), Alexander’s son who had arrived from Egypt, in Brooklyn in 1954. Born in Vienna, Bernard doesn’t seem to have ever worked as a musician. According to the 2006 profile of Matty, Bernard spoke nine languages and worked as an interpreter in a Manhattan hotel.
Detail of US Customs ship manifest showing the arrival of Bernard and Mina Halm, children of Alexander Halm, from Port Said in August 1951. Note that they are listed as stateless people. Source: Ancestry.com.
I’m not sure if any of the grandchildren of the three musicians Rosenberg, Halmesco and Braun continued in the music business. If you’re related to them and have more info about these families, please feel free to get in touch.
Some kind of undated mutual aid society concept art from the YIVO collection RG 951 Radziviller-Woliner Benevolent Association Records.
The Progressive Musical Benevolent Society was a mutual aid and burial society for New York City klezmer musicians and their families. It was founded in the early 1910s, hit its peak in the interwar and postwar years, and declined by the 1970s. It was formally dissolved in around 2010, but by then the remaining members hadn’t officially met in decades. While I was doing research at YIVO back in the spring, I took many photographs of the two collections they have about the P.M.B.S. These are RG 2110 Records of Progressive Musical Benevolent Society and RG 2330 Progressive Musical Benevolent Society Records. The first collection dates to the late 1970s and 1980s from the era when the organization was winding down its activities under the leadership of Jack Yablokoff, and was mainly about deaths, burials and payments. The second collection is mostly legal documents about dissolution of the organization in the early 2000s, but also contains a cemetery map.
The organization was founded in around 1911, following the model of the many landsmanshaftn and trades-based mutual aid societies in the immigrant Jewish world of New York’s Lower East Side. (The exact date is inconsistent; some say 1911, 1913 or 1914, or even 1921. I tend to believe 1911.) As with other such organizations, the P.M.B.S.’s function was to offer stability to its members by way of sick pay, burial rights in the organization’s cemetery plots, and other forms of support. And over time it seems to have taken on an important social role for New York’s klezmer musicians, in addition to some kind of professional function as a known source of said musicians.
Given that the YIVO records start in the mid-1970s, it means that there is a six-decade gap in documentation about the activities of the organization. I can’t find it at the moment, but I recall reading a facebook comment that Jack Yablokoff, when he took over as head of the P.M.B.S. in that era, wasn’t given any of the meeting minutes or documentation from before his time. If true, that is quite a loss as we know very little about the inner workings of the organization during its prime years. Bits and pieces of oral history from descendants of members are very helpful, but cannot replace the detailed, contemporaneous procedural information of the type YIVO has collected about many other mutual aid societies.
Portrait of Jack Yablokoff from the late 1960s. Originally appeared in the Forverts, posted to Facebook by Steve Lasky.
Because of the family backgrounds & professional activities of many of its members, I see my research into the P.M.B.S.’s activities as a window into the social, family & economic world of New York’s historical klezmer musicians outside the limited scope of the recording industry. Among its members were not only famous soloists like Naftule Brandwein and Shlumke Beckerman, but dozens of lesser known and forgotten musicians. Since getting back from NYC in May, I’ve been gradually working through YIVO’s materials on the P.M.B.S. and building up my understanding of the organization’s membership. This month I’ve been trying to sort through some of the fruits of this research in preparation to give a talk about it at KlezKanada’s Yiddish Culture Jam in Montreal at the end of February. Here’s where I’m at with my research at so far.
Membership of the P.M.B.S.
The total list of names I have associated with the P.M.B.S. comes to about 550 people. This is based on the cemetery maps at YIVO, 1970s ledgers and funeral slips at YIVO, names of donors inscribed on the two cemetery gates,* and a list of members from the 1970s held by Henry Sapoznik. Of those 550, I have identified roughly 125 as being members of the musician’s union A.F.M. local 802 during the period of 1922–1945. That number will probably continue to grow as I identify more of the members, but generally the wives of musicians were not union musicians and many of their children were not, either.
40 of the members I have identified as being ‘klezmer musicians’ in other sources, but the real proportion is probably much higher. Being a working musician for the Jewish community is not something that was well documented in memoirs or newspaper coverage, and rarely anyone but the bandleader got mentioned in advertisements! Plenty of others worked in other parts of the music business: vaudeville, restaurants, theatre and classical orchestras, and so on.
Part a map of the P.M.B.S.’s plot at Mount Hebron Cemetery. Source: YIVO, RG 2230 collection.
The oldest members were born in Europe in the 1850s and 1860s, but the majority of the musicians were born in the 1880s and 1890s. That makes sense for an organization of working people founded in 1911. The youngest musicians in my list were born in the 1910s, but many of the grandchildren of the original members were born throughout the 20th century and are still alive—for example, Dave Levitt, who has been very helpful to me in my research. The earliest deaths I could find were of Samuel Klotzman in 1919—the infant son of Łódź-born drummer Abraham Klotzman—and the musician Joseph Machnowetsky, who died in 1920 and about whom I know almost nothing so far.
Even if I eventually work my way through all the names in the cemetery maps and other lists, it’ll still be missing some names. This is because P.M.B.S. was a dues-paying organization which could expel delinquent members, as did all mutual aid societies of the time. Members could also pay dues for a time, but move back to Europe, or to Florida or California or elsewhere in the United States, and drop out of the organization and be buried locally. For example, Abraham Klotzman, who I mentioned above, seems to have left the organization by the 1930s when he died and was buried elsewhere.
Unless by some miracle the meeting minutes and ledgers from earlier eras resurface one day, I’ll have to make do. But the cemetery lists are still invaluable, as the people buried there show the trajectory of klezmer families over the course of the 20th century.
*The names on the two cemetery gates, erected in 1923 and 1939, contain a subset of names who were NY musicians who were not buried in either P.M.B.S. plot, but were definitely buried somewhere else with a landsmanshaft or some other society, such as Klotzman. Hard to say if all of these were members who left later on, or simply well-wishers who wanted to make a financial gesture to their fellow klezmorim.
Cover of the published score for A Brivele dem Taten, 1911. Source: Library of Congress.
The P.M.B.S. didn’t leave much of a public trace
Many Jewish immigrant mutual aid societies founded at around the same time advertised their social events in the Yiddish press and their activities were occasionally covered in short articles. The purpose of this was to invite in landsleit from nearby areas who were also in New York, and to attract new members, etc. They also sought to attract donors for their charitable projects, such as the construction of a hospital, study house or factory back home. But so far I haven’t been able to find any trace of the P.M.B.S. in Yiddish or English press archives, or being mentioned in old memoirs or music history books (except very recent ones). It doesn’t help that the name of the organization is made up of such common words; it’s much easier to do a targeted keyword search for Chotiner or Podolier than it is for Musical or Progressive.
Some of the other historical mutual aid societies didn’t leave much of a trace either. It isn’t unique to the P.M.B.S. While some sought to recruit strangers or to fraternize with their landsleit, others don’t seem to have advertised or left much of a trace beyond their cemetery plots. This is true, for example, of the society Abe Elenkrig, his family, and Meyer Kanewsky were members of, the Zolotonosher Friends. The cemetery section is there, and some paper ephemera were kept and digitized by descendants, but almost nothing has been printed publicly about it.
The dance hall of the Wolkowisker Young Men’s Benevolent Association building on the Lower East Side, from their 1927 anniversary journal. Source: New York Public Library.
Not all NY klezmorim were members
There seems to have been a natural upper limit to the size of immigrant Jewish mutual aid societies in New York. This is why we see a long list of landsmanshaftn for immigrants from large cities or populous regions (such as Warsaw or Bessarabia). The existence of several ‘competing’ mutual aid societies was not always because of ideological or personal schisms, although that also happened. In fact, many of the landsmanshaftn from the same place got along well and would band together for charitable projects or to throw a big party. It’s just that the management of services by an elected board probably became too complicated once it involved hundreds of members. This is why I doubt the P.M.B.S. was trying to expand to gain some kind of monopoly over immigrant Jewish musicians in New York. There were simply far too many of them, and many already belonged to landsmanshaftn or other societies.
I will preface this list with a caveat that I’m only guessing these people were not members, because they weren’t buried in the P.M.B.S.’s plot and didn’t show up on any lists. Maybe they were at some point during its history.
Dave Tarras, the celebrity clarinetist, was the most famous NY klezmer to have not been a member. Many other recording artists of klezmer’s golden age weren’t either: Abe Schwartz, Max Yankowitz, Max Leibowitz, and Joseph Moskowitz, Israel J. Hochman, Abe Katzman, Beresh Katz, Joseph Frankel, Abe Elenkrig, Jacob Gegna, and so on. Same goes for many of the bandleaders I’ve been researching who were playing for the Jewish community back then: Joe Magaziner (1886–1971), Max Ausfresser (1880–1941), Max Ellenson (1878–19??), Aaron Greenspan (1881–1938), etc. The big Yiddish Theatre bandleaders and arrangers, who sometimes had one foot in the klezmer world, weren’t either: Abe Ellstein, Joseph Cherniavsky, Alexander Olshanetsky, Joseph Rumshinsky, and so on. With some large musician families like the Brandweins, Radermans, Beckermans and Fiedels, some of them were members and others weren’t.
Photo of Max Leibowitz’s band from a Pathé Records Jewish market catalogue, 1920. Source: New York Public Library.
As I said above, its most famous member to klezmer fans was surely Naftule Brandwein, as was his contemporary Shlumke Beckerman. Abraham Constantine (1891–1953), a cornetist who played on some classic recordings, was a member, as was trombonist Isidor Drutin (1884–1954). Probably all of the Epstein Brothers were, as were several of the Fiedel family, although I’m not sure about cornetist Alex Fiedel (1886–1957) who we know from old recordings. Some of the Rapfogel brothers, Galician-born musicians who seem to have worked with Israel J. Hochman, were members, as well as Jack and Marty Levitt. Harry Raderman (1897–1947), a drummer and not the famous jazz trombone player, was a member, as was Hyman Millrad (1882–1971), a composer and bassist who appears on many old recordings. Several members of the Grupp family, who were related to Alter Chudnover back home, were members as well. And from there we can add a long list of other musicians and their families, musicians who were small-time klezmer bandleaders, or sidemen, or played in all kinds of other parts of the music industry over time.
I’ve found it interesting to explore; in filling out the family tree of P.M.B.S. members, I realize that someone is related to a non-member I know from my klezmer research. For example, bandleaders & klezmers Leopold Zimbler (1853–1939), Sigmund Goldring (1888–1947) and Samuel Frankfort (1870–1956) all had children who were buried in P.M.B.S. cemetery sections, even if the fathers were buried elsewhere. Frankfort’s daughter Dora married into the aforementioned Fiedel family, so that both sides were connected to the P.M.B.S./klezmer circles.
Romanians were poorly represented in the P.M.B.S.
Romanian Jewish immigrants to New York City were far fewer in number than those from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. But they were over-represented among golden age klezmer recording artists: Joseph Moskowitz, Max Leibowitz, Abe Schwartz and Max Yankowitz were all Romanians, as were some notable klezmer bandleaders who didn’t record, such as Jacob Manishor (1865–1950). None of those musicians were members of the P.M.B.S., as far as I know. While I will probably find some eventually, I have yet to identify any Romanian-born musician members of the Society! Although there are some Bessarabians, who in cultural terms are of course closely connected to Romania.
Application for membership of musician Jacob Manishor to a Bucharester landsmanshaft, c.1905. Source: YIVO, RG 826 Independent Bukarester Sick Aid Association Records collection.
So far, I would say two thirds of the musicians were from all parts of the Pale of Settlement (that is, the western Russian Empire), one sixth from Austria-Hungary, and one sixth American-born. Maybe the proportions will shift as I continue to investigate members on the list, but probably not by much.
Links between the P.M.B.S. and musicians’ unions are interesting
Finally, there are some interesting and notable connections between the P.M.B.S. and the music unions operating in New York. The earliest Jewish music union was founded in 1889 as part of an expansion of the United Hebrew Trades-affiliated locals; the Rusishe Progresiv Muzikal Yunyon No.1 fun Amerike, which James Loeffler wrote about in the linked article. It mainly represented Yiddish-speaking klezmer musicians. Loeffler suggests that the remnants of that union were incorporated into the P.M.B.S. in 1921 after A.F.M. local 802 to gained a monopoly over union musicians in New York. I’m unclear on the relationship between the functions and memberships of the Russian Progressive Musical Union and the P.M.B.S., but hopefully I will sort some of that out in my future research.
Ad for the aforementioned union from the Folksadvocat, 15 March 1889. Source: Jpress.
In the first decades of the 20th century, the A.F.M. affiliated union local 310 gained members and tried to pressure the U.H.T. affiliated music union to cease operating. I’m also unclear on the exact nature of that dispute, but it shows up in some A.F.M. conference discussions. Over the course of the 1910s, plenty of P.M.B.S. members joined local 310, whether after leaving the U.H.T. union or from being non-union. Each newly joined member was announced in International Musician magazine, so it’s easy enough to track.
Others probably worked as non-union musicians for very niche landsleit gigs; in his oral history with Henry Sapoznik, P.M.B.S. member Louis Grupp said that it sometimes took a few years of performing for weddings and simchas among their landsleit before musicians even joined a union. By the time local 310 was refounded as local 802 in around 1922, most of the P.M.B.S. members who were out regularly working in public should probably have been members of it. There were exceptions here and there, but it was frowned upon and would probably get someone in trouble eventually.
A few P.M.B.S. members were elected to notable roles in local 802 as well. (See The History of Local 802 on the union’s own website.) The best known among these was Max L. Arons (1904–1984). After rising through the ranks of elected roles starting in the 1930s, he became president of the union in 1965, a title he held until 1982. During the same time period, P.M.B.S. member Al Knopf also rose as high as Vice President of the union. Others worked in more humble roles; vaudeville drummer Jack Zimbler (1891–1965) and his sister, the cellist Mathilda Zimbler (1897–1990), children of Leopold Zimbler who I mentioned above, worked as clerks for local 802 in the 1940s–50s.
Conclusion
I’m still working through the materials I have about the Progressive Musical Benevolent Society, and hoping to find new angles into the history of this organization in 2026. Perhaps some printed materials about it are sitting somewhere in a box of a family member. But if I can’t find anything else, seeing the family and professional connections between the members of this fascinating organization has been leading me down all kinds of interesting research paths. Most likely, my talk in February will focus on the basic function of the organization and a who’s-who of some interesting members and what they got up to.
Part of a setting of Viglid (lullaby), from the Arbeter Ring choir materials.
This past spring, I stopped by Montreal for a few days on my way back to Vancouver. Josh Dolgin, better known as Socalled, invited me to his office at McGill University to look over some Yiddish choral scores he inherited when the former Montreal Arbeter Ring (Workers Circle) building was being emptied out. The boxes of loose and tattered scores were a relic of the Workers Circle choir which operated in Montreal from around the 1930s to the 1990s.Lately I called him up and asked him some questions about it.
D. Tell me how you came into possession of all these scores.
J. A friend named Avi said to me, “hey, you know, there’s this building that’s closing, a Yiddish cultural building.” And I kept running into people who were saying, “oh yeah, I’ve been to this building that’s closing.” I had a party and they showed up with stamps from the building, cards, and books. They were taking stuff from this Yiddish building that was closing. I had never heard of it. It was the Workman’s Circle!
Um… Actually, now that I think of it, I realize that about 25 years ago, I did a concert there. But anyway, it wasn’t really on my radar. And it wasn’t on the radar of the Yiddish scene, as far as I knew. Like, the so-called New Yiddish scene. KlezKanada had never done anything there. The Yiddish Theatre had never done anything there. It seems like it was its own little world of the Worker’s Circle.
Now I know a lot more about the building and about the history of that organization, but … it was not on my radar of being involved in Yiddish in Montreal for 20 or 30 years. So, eventually, Avi’s like, “people are going to this building. There’s certain times when you can go and check it out. They’re trying to empty it out. They’re closing the building.” Okay, great. So I go one day.
Rivka Augenfeld with Seb Shulman, Avi, Shlomo and other zamlers outside the former Workers Circle building at 5165 Isabella Avenue in Montreal. Photo by Josh Dolgin.Avi holding a display of Bundist art in the Workers Circle building. Photo by Josh Dolgin.
D. And what year was this? Like, 2 years ago or something, or…?
J. Last year. Rivka Augenfeld was kind of in charge, and she’s in the scene, she’s a well-respected Yiddishist and translator and activist. Really awesome, interesting lady. And she’s at the building, and there’s this sort of chaotic emptying of this building that’s been there since the 50s. (Before that, it was in another location, it’s been around since about 1907.)
And so I show up, and there’s people going through books, and taking the shelves, and taking desks, and chairs, and it’s just like… this building that’s full of Yiddishkeit. Full of books, full of accounts of the burial organization, and a library of Yiddish literature and, like, all sorts of texts. And people are like, “oh, you gotta go upstairs and check out the closet. I think you’ll be interested in something in the closet.” So I go upstairs, and open the closet, and sure enough it’s full of Yiddish choral sheet music. From the Yiddish Worker’s Circle Choir. And all their papers are in total disarray. Basically stuffed into this closet.
And it’s in this room that was cool, it was named after these heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising [Erlich and Alter]. There’s portraits of them on the walls, and there’s a microphone, and a lectern, and a piano. And it’s like, they would have concerts there. And in the closet is this… this insane pile of papers, which you’ve seen. And basically, it was like, “oh, you want them? Okay, take them.” So, thanks to Rivka and Avi.
Remnants of the Elrich and Alter Auditorium in the Workers Circle building. Photo by Josh Dolgin.State of the former Arbeter Ring choir music as the building was being emptied out. Photo by Josh Dolgin.
I bundled up the papers and took them home for a while, and then I realized, hey, this could be an amazing project for the students at McGill who I was planning to teach a class about archiving, Yiddish archives, and being a zamler. And about collections, going back to YIVO and the Strashun Library in Vilna. I thought, oh, wow, I could work it into this class, I’ll get the students’ hands dirty, actually, with an unorganized new archive of an incredible repertoire of Yiddish song based in Montreal.
D. And how does Maia enter into it? Because I tried asking her about it, and she said, “oh yeah I was there too!”
J. Maia from the Jewish Public Library?
D. What’s that? No, this is Maia from Brivele [a Yiddish music duo from Seattle].
J. Oh, right! Yeah, so… she knew about it before I did. Like, a bunch of people that weren’t even from Montreal at all were like, “oh yeah, I’ve been to this building that’s closing.”
Josh and I discussed various people who had come in and looked at the things in the Workmen’s Circle building, including people who happened to be in town for KlezKanada in August 2024, and local Yiddishists.
Saul Edelstein standing outside the former Workers Circle building at 5165 Isabella Avenue in Montreal. Photo by Josh Dolgin.Rivka Augenfeld with Saul Edelstein, Seb Shulman, Dina Malka (Botwinik), and Sam Bick in the background. In the Arbeter Ring building as it was being emptied out. Photo by Josh Dolgin.
J. They were in contact with the Jewish Public Library. So the Jewish Public Library came in and did a pass, and took probably the coolest stuff.
D. Yeah.
J. The most beautiful books. The most beautiful portraits from the walls, I hope. But they had a pile for the Jewish Public Library, so that’s good that it went to them.
There was another group of… uh, do you know Shlomo? There’s this person named Shlomo who is really awesome, a kind of religious Yiddishist. Who, I think just graduated from translation program at McGill, a young person, but super dedicated. So Shlomo was sort of collecting a ton of stuff that would stay in Montreal.
I saw what was going on, and I saw that it was a bit haphazard. And that there was more material than any one person could take. Even if, with the best of intentions, they wanted to keep this stuff. So I got on the phone with Aaron Lansky down to the Yiddish Book Center, and I said, yo, there’s this Worker’s Circle place closing, and it’s packed to the rafters with Yiddish books. Uh, can you help out? And he said, oh, sure. And so he paid for the rental of a van, and Avi and I drove about 600 books down to the Yiddish Book Center. So at least that’s together in one place down there.
More Yiddish books being sorted as the building was being emptied out. Photo by Josh Dolgin.With Aaron Lansky, Avi and Yiddish Book Center fellows outside their building in Amherst, Massachusetts. Photo by Josh Dolgin.
And then, after I sort of saw that there was a collection here, at least in the choir department. It would be cool if it was all kept together. If at least there was one copy of everything … I put out a call saying, hey, everybody who was there taking [music] stuff, could you just send it to me so I have a copy of everything, and I’ll send everything back to you. There’s copies of everything, so probably I have another copy, but there are also handwritten things.
D. Yeah.
J. So I just wanted to have the handwritten, original copy of each piece of paper. And frankly, I mean, I guess we’ll get into this, it’s a kind of a huge job that I’ve only scratched the surface of with this one term with my students, and just working by myself. To try to establish just what is in the thing. Like, that’s sort of the… to me, the first step is to just get a copy of everything, put it in alphabetical order. And then know what we’ve got.
One of the boxes of unsorted scores in Josh’s office at McGill. Photo by me.
D. All right, so… You got it, and then you brought it to McGill, basically, and then… who have you talked to? Because I think you mentioned a while ago that you talked to different people after you had it, and you wanted to make sense of it. People who were maybe around back then, or who knew about it?
J. Right. Well, looking through the collection, I pretty quickly realized that there were basically two main choral directors over the course of the choir’s existence. A guy named Louis Burko, and a guy named Eli Rubinstein. Or Rubinshtayn. So, I tried to track down any information about either of those two people.
Eli Rubinstein was a very prominent voice in Montreal Yiddish music. Like, professional Yiddish music, or even kind of amateur Yiddish music. Whenever there was a choir, he was involved. And he was the main composer, the sort of in-house composer for the Montreal Yiddish Theatre. So there’s pictures of him, there’s his works, there’s a bit of a trail from him. Especially at the Montreal Yiddish Theatre archive. They’ve got a whole Eli Rubinstein collection there, photographs of him. Unfortunately he passed away. His wife is still alive. I’ve tried to track her down.
Portrait of Eli Rubinstein in the Montreal Gazette, 1973. Source: Newspapers.com.
Through this whole process of me being not from Montreal and being interested in Yiddish music. It’s just been kind of amazing how compartmentalized every little subset of the scene is, and how nobody talks to each other, and how everybody kind of protects their little world. I mean, just the Workers’ Circle building, like… There was this whole building that none of us knew about, and that we could have been doing concerts at. We could have been working with older people, working with survivors, and working with members of the Bund and stuff. We would have been very interested to do that. And keep the building, you know, and keep it going. There’s a revival of the interest in this. In this culture, the poetry, the philosophy, the literature, the music.
D. Yeah.
J. Actually, we could use—Montreal could use—a place like that.
Um, okay, so… Rubinstein. He’s a very interesting character. You can look him up. From Romania, went to Israel for a few years. Almost 10 years, maybe, where he had big success. Like, with a radio orchestra, and writing hit tunes and stuff, he wrote this hit tune called, uh… Lach Yerushalaim. Which is an awesome, like. Camp… kind of campy, kitschy, early 60s Israeli pop song. It was a big hit. It’s been recorded by a million artists in Israel. Like, people really know that song.
And then, somehow, and I don’t know why, because I didn’t get to speak to him or read any of his papers or anything: for some reason, he moved to Montreal, where he right away met the Yiddish Theatre lady here, Dora Wasserman. The famous Dora Wasserman. And they hit it off, and he was a very professional musician and composer, so it makes sense that he met her.
He was looking for work in the Yiddish world, the Jewish world, and so he right away started composing for Yiddish Theatre. Wrote a ton of songs and a ton of shows for them. The apex of that was a show called A Shtetl Wedding, which is a full musical. You might have the vinyl of it, because I find that record everywhere.
Ad for A Shtetl Wedding in the Montreal Star, 1979. Source: Newspapers.com.
D. No, I don’t have that, but I found newspaper advertisements for it when I was searching his name, it’s just, wall-to-wall. Big advertisements, so you can tell it was a big deal. And ads for him leading concerts, for the Worker’s Circle Choir, for this choir, and for that choir.
J. So yeah, that’s Eli Rubinstein. And, till recently, I guess, probably till the 80s, at least, and the 90s he was still working at it. Uh, he eventually got trained as, a… I think a dental technician or something? He got some real job, finally, and so he started being less active, you see him, sort of, being less active in the choir world.
Um, so that’s… that’s one of the handwritings that I see a lot of [in the choral scores].
Part of Tzum Bund (the song In Zaltsikn Yam) arranged or written out by Eli Rubinstein for the choir. Photo by me.
But before Rubinstein was a guy named Lou Burko. And his handwriting is beautiful. It’s really juicy, and just assured and clear. And he was a super trained musician from…
D. Yeah, I found a bit about Burko, he studied music somewhere, in Canada or the US, right? Like, in the 50s or something, right?
J. Yeah, I think at McGill. Right. In the 50s, but even before that, I think he was born in Poland. But yeah, came to Montreal pretty soon, and studied.
(We consulted the notes from Burko’s son, and it seems he was born in Poland in 1931 and was brought to Montreal as an infant.)
J. He really was kind of a frustrated conductor. And composer. He would have been happy to be Leonard Bernstein. I think he studied with Bernstein, at Tanglewood. He was a young conductor there, I think studied under Bernstein for a second.
Louis Burko and other Canadian music students in the Montreal Star, 1954. Source: Newspapers.com.
So, I managed to track down his son Benji Burko. He was happy to talk to me about Lou Burko. I did a whole big interview with him. In fact, I could send you that, if you want.
D. Sure. Yeah.
J. Very nice guy, also musical. So, Lou Burko was the conductor before Rubinstein. Probably the height of his tenure there was during Expo 67, when the Worker’s Circle choir performed at the Israeli or Jewish pavilion, I’m not sure what it was called.
Burko, you’ll hear from the interview, was slightly frustrated by the Worker’s Circle choir, because it was an amateur choir, and he was a serious cat, and he wanted to be a real conductor. So, working with these amateurs was a little bit annoying for him, but he worked it with a bunch of choirs, and it was handy also because he could get 100 voices together if he needed to. He’d get these enormous choirs together, putting together the Worker’s Circle choir with the other community choirs and stuff like that. And then eventually, he got a job at a synagogue. [Shaare Zion. -D.]
Part of Hinter Warshe by Mikhl Gelbart, arranged by Lou Burko for the Montreal Arbeter Ring choir.
He worked there for 40 years, and that was sort of his main bag. He wrote a ton of music, they published a book of his songs.
D. So what kind of songs are these?
J. He was absolutely a beloved choir director there. Uh, so those are settings of cantorial pieces and synagogue music. Um, but here, for this [Worker’s Circle] choir, he’s writing charts for Yiddish songs. Four-part harmony charts.
One step that I’m getting to is putting a paperclip when I get four parts, when I get all 4 parts … but until then, it’s just a sea of papers. And really, it’s like somebody shuffled the papers, you don’t find things that go together. But then as you’re going, it’s like, oh, hooray, here’s a soprano part for Arum dem Fayer… and then finally, you get all four parts, it’s very exciting.
So those are the two main conductors and arrangers, but I do know that there were other ones. Which I managed to piece together, based on programs. I think you probably took pictures of the programs?
D. Uh, just one or two of them, actually.
Flyer for a Workers Circle choir concert with Sidor Belarsky, 1959. Source: Josh Dolgin.
J. Yeah. And… those only really start in the sort of late 60s. But I’m pretty sure the choir, and maybe we could go more into this, I’m pretty sure the choir started at least in 1937. That could be when the choir really started.
The Arbeter Ring started in Montreal in 1907. And there’s a program saying the 20th anniversary of the choir, I think that’s 1957. So I think it started in 1937. And then I think that history is sort of tied into the history of the buildings, which I am also trying to piece together. Basically, the first building was on St. Laurent, where the Sala Rossa is now. The Sala Rossa… became a Spanish cultural center, but before that, it was the Worker’s Circle Building.
D. Yeah.
J. And it was a whole… like, it was a universe of activity. There were schools there, there was a gym. There were choirs, there were classes for adults and kids, and a kindergarten, and offices for the Bund and offices for this and that, I still cannot wrap my head around all the sort of competing forces of Jewish socialism. Were they communists? That were Zionists? Were they Zionists that were anti-Stalinists? Were they… like, there’s just all these great gradations.
Eventually, it sort of, I think, gets… like, simplified. And the Worker’s Circle building that I went to that was closing had such a vast spectrum of books from, the most Zionist books to the most anti-Zionist books. From the most, secular Yiddishist books to absolutely religious books. So I think people just sort of… As the population shrank, and as people left Montreal, I think it did consolidate a lot of those competing interests.
Advertisement for the Montreal Workmens Circle choir in the Montreal Gazette, 1982. Source: Newspapers.com
But I’m still just trying to wrap my head around that. And the camps, there’s a camp for this, and a camp for that, and a camp for not this, and not that, and they all… they broke up. They broke up at a certain point. Like, the Camp Kinder Ring, or whatever. I don’t know.
The best book about [secular Yiddish choirs]. Marion Jacobson. I don’t know if you know that name. Wrote the book on labor choirs, like, the labour, Worker’s Circle, Bund choir movement.
D. Did she write a thesis about it or something, right? Is that her?
J. It’s … it’s a thesis, it’s not a book, unfortunately, but it’s a thesis.
D. Yeah.
After talking about getting me a copy of the thesis, Josh turned to talking about his impression about how this choir fit into other Yiddish art choirs, especially more famous ones in New York City.
J. Like… what’s the word? I’m looking for? Uh, when you’re a snob. Like, there’s… there’s this, snobbery in the discourse of Yiddish song, like what’s serious Yiddish song? What’s a real choir, you know?
D. I see.
J. Like, you know… what’s his name? Like, Vladimir Heifetz, and Maurice Rauch, and all these sort of serious musicians.
D. Yeah.
Cover of a 1933 program for the Kultur Gezelshaft Khor (the Jewish Culture Society Chorus) from New York. Source: YIVO, photo by me.
J. And serious professional choirs, they sort of poo-pooed and looked down on these Worker’s Circle community choirs. By today’s standards, I bet these community choirs were amazing. Like… you know, they would have had a very professional accompanist playing the charts, they would have really practiced… everybody would have known Yiddish, they would have had these incredible conductors, Rubinstein and Burko. For example in Montreal were these incredibly trained, you know, top-notch professional musicians, probably in the choir there were a ton of trained singers.
So it’s just funny to see what’s considered serious music as we go along. Now we have these sort of… really ragtag choirs, where we put them together the best we can. People rehearse twice a month, if you’re lucky, or something. But just in the discourse, in the literature, there’s barely a mention of any of these choirs. Um, but this repertoire is interesting. So, sorry, what’s your next question?
Advertisement for a 30th anniversary event commemorating Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, in the Montreal Star, 1973. Source: Newspapers.com.
D. Yeah, before you get into that, so, did you meet anybody who knew Rubinstein, who’s around, who’s not yet passed away?
J. Sure. I mean, do you know, Bronna Levy?
D. Not personally, but I know who that is, yeah.
J. Okay, so Bronna is a Yiddish singer from town, who I’ve known for 30 years. Like, when I first started getting into it, I met her, we had a band together. So, I’ve known her for 30 years. And she’s been in the industry. Since she was a kid. Her mother was in it. Her mother is on the Shtetl Wedding record. So they absolutely knew Rubinstein. I mean, all the old-school Yiddish Theatre people knew and can talk about Rubinstein.
Yeah, we used to sing one of his, a couple of his tunes. Because he writes really catchy tunes. A cool Rubinstein thing that I just happened upon by accident is that he sort of arranged and conducted this record by a guy named David Carey. Have you heard of him?
D. No.
J. Um. Who… I’m actually in touch with his brother, who is [Henry] Carey. And their mother was a woman named Layke Post, who was sort of tapped by Isa Kremer, of all people. To carry on Isa Kremer’s legacy, before she moved to Argentina. So, Layke Post is this incredible, trained opera singer who sang Yiddish songs. Really fucking awesome. I have a bunch of recordings of her.
Montreal Arbeter Ring choir poster, 1970, featuring guest artists Maida Feingold and David Carey. Source: Josh Dolgin.
And her sons also sang Yiddish songs. David Carey became a famous Yiddish singer in the 70s. Uh, which was a weird time to be a Yiddish singer, but he put out a record then, like this LP that is arranged and conducted by Eli Rubinstein. So he must have [known him]. I don’t know how they met, or how that happened. David Carey, you should look him up, died of AIDS early on, he was a victim of the AIDS epidemic. He’s really… exactly in that moment. In New York City, gay… died very young. Amazing singer. You’ll find his record, I guess, up on YouTube and stuff.
But yeah, there you go, and he’s on the back cover, Eli Rubinstein. So I sort of see him popping up here and there. I know Bronna Levy, she grew up hanging out with Eli Rubinstein.
D. And did you meet anybody who was in the choir?
J. That’s a good question. Um, no.
D. No? Okay.
J. I’ve asked people… Actually, just lately, somebody said, oh yeah, my grandfather was in a Yiddish choir, I’m pretty sure it must have been this choir. But no, haven’t spoken to anybody. Yeah. I mean, somebody that I would interview. There’s Anna. I don’t know if I really did a proper interview with her. This was her office, actually, at McGill. The Yiddish teacher at McGill. Anna Gonshor. Um, I’m sure Rivka Augenfeld, she might have even sung in the choir. And this guy named Saul [who was involved with the Worker’s Circle].
D. Yeah. So, when I was looking in the newspaper, like, on newspapers.com. All mention of the choir kind of disappears, in the 90s at some point. It’s like, there’s less and less notices—”oh, we’re playing this event,” and then it’s just, nothing. So is that how it comes across to you, that it just kind of fizzled out in the 90s? Do you know what I mean?
J. That’s about it. I found a CBC interview. Actually, at the Jewish Public Library. Um, I might have it. Let me see here… Okay, so anyway, it was basically the late… I think it might have been 91 or something. And it was a piece about the choir, and I guess Rubinstein was still conducting it. Um, yeah, and that’s it. I mean, it just kind of fizzled out in the 90s. Uh, I don’t have an account of that, of the demise of the choir. Really from anyone. I haven’t really done that kind of research for it, so I hope you find some shit out about what happened to the choir.
D. Yeah, I mean, that’s pretty recent, so you gotta figure there’s people around who were there, you know?
J. Right. Pretty recent, but even 35 years, there’s a lot of damage to people that are 70. In the 90s.
D. Yeah, but it’s not to say they’re necessarily that old at that time. They could have been in their 40s or 50s, you know?
J. Right. Eh. I think that’s why it went down, because they didn’t have younger people. They only had people from the real generation of the 50s and 60s, those are the people in the choir. You know what I mean? But don’t quote me on that.
Poster for the 1971 concert of the Montreal Workmen’s Circle choir with guest artist Bina Landau. Source: Josh Dolgin.
D. Alright. Uh, what else? So, getting into the scores. What’s your overall view? If you were trying to explain what’s in the scores to somebody who hadn’t seen it yet how would you describe it? Because it’s quite a mess. But obviously you’re starting to notice stuff, right?
J. Yeah. I mean… Um, what makes this a unique collection. Are the original arrangements by the in-house people, by Burkow and Rubinstein. So that’s what makes it interesting, because, frankly, the repertoire looks pretty standard. It’s a lot of the Yiddish songs that you’ve heard of. I can’t say that definitively, because I’m just scratching the surface of the collection.
But from what I’ve seen so far, it seems to be a collection of popular Yiddish folk songs. Like, composers, songwriters that are important in the repertoire, like Gebirtig. Uh, or Warshawsky. But then there’s also settings of poetry that are probably original songs by Rubinstein. And Burko. More Rubinstein than Burko, I think. Burko had less…
D. Yeah.
He was less interested in being a composer. He was more about arranging and conducting. So there’s original music by Rubinstein, for sure, arranged for four parts. There is not one piano chart. There’s no accompanying parts. I haven’t found them yet. There’s still a huge box that I haven’t gone through, so maybe that’s in there, but maybe it was just that Rubinstein knew the parts and could play the chords and accompanied it, just like that.
Setting of The Garden, with words by Franta Bass and music by Eli Rubinstein. Photo by me.
And maybe the same is true of Burko, but that’s… That seems weird, because in fact, that’s not the case. Because in the programs, it says accompanist so-and-so, it lists them off. A pianist who would have been playing along. So I’m not sure where those parts are, and I’m not sure how that you would recreate that, other than listening to the four-part Harmony, and then coming up with a new piano part. Which kind of makes the collection a little bit inaccessible, other than if you’re gonna sing everything a cappella. Which could be great, but I know from these, you know, from the programs that there were piano parts.
And I know from, the sort of commercial arrangements, the Octavos, or whatever they’re called, what are those things called? Octavos. Anyway, there’s a whole bunch of those, I think you took some of those commercially printed choral parts, which are sort of standard.
D. Yeah. Like, the ones from New York.
J. Yeah, so everybody’s got those, so… so that’s not particularly interesting about the collection.
A commercially-published choral score for Shleser by Michl Gelbart, from the Montreal Arbeter Ring Choir’s papers. Photo by me.
Um, so we’ve got folk songs. Definitely, there’s a lot of Holocaust repertoire. Definitely there’s a lot of worker’s songs, like, Worker’s Circle kind of repertoire? And Bund songs. This other name that keeps coming up is [David] Botwinik. He’s another very cool story. His son [Alexander] is a musician and a choir director who just released a triple album of his father’s music. And he was also a synagogue conductor, this guy, Botwinik.
D. In Montreal, or…?
J. In Montreal. Really interesting guy, published a book of Holocaust songs, original Holocaust songs that he wrote. A very nice, very well put together book, because the son has been putting out stuff of his father’s. He just put out these records of children’s music. And so there’s a bunch of Botwinik stuff in here.
Um, there’s… I’m just, opening it and seeing, like, here’s a setting of Rokhl Korn, who’s a Montreal poet.
D. Yeah.
J. So that’s pretty cool, like, there’s original songs that have never been heard since, you know? And of our repertoire of, Montreal repertoire, Montreal poets, Montreal arrangers, Montreal choir.
But then there’s just standard repertoire. Rozhinke mit Mandlen, and you know, A Freylekhs. A Gneyve, but maybe a different melody, because it’s arranged by Eli Rubinstein. A Gleyzele Yash, Arum dem Fayer.
Um, this is what I’ve got so far. I think you saw this.
Josh gestures to a stack of scores clipped together in sets.
D. Yeah.
J. This is the songs, like… A to B, or aleph to whatever.
Josh then turns the camera to several large boxes of papers in the corner of the room.
J. And… and what I have in the corner there is unopened. Well, it’s not unopened, it is unsorted, or whatever. And I haven’t even really counted. I think I did start a chart, a chart of just the names of every song. I think I was up to, like. 110 or something so far.
D. Yeah. That’s good to know.
J. Yeah.
Eli Rubinstein soprano part for Dos Licht fun Unzere Menoires. Photo by me.
D. So you said, you sort of tried, shopping them around to see if anybody’s interested in taking it as an archive, and so far nobody’s super jumping at it?
J. I didn’t really… I haven’t yet done that at all. But one thing that I was curious about was the Jewish Public Library. They already took a bunch of stuff. But they’re always trying to not take stuff, because they don’t have room. But then when I showed them the choir materials and what it would look like once I’ve organized it into one sheet of each… like, just one page…
Josh gestures again to the stack of organized scores clipped together.
J. I think this is very doable for them. Once I get like, 3 times this, they can just put that in a corner of the Jewish Public Library, because they already do have quite a collection of the Worker’s Circle papers and stuff. But I’m also tempted to see about giving it to the McGill Music Library.
D. Right.
J. The Schulich [School of Music] at McGill, just because now I’m at McGill, and it’s at McGill, and the students are… will be going through it again next semester.
D. Yeah.
J. Real scholars could do some cool work on this collection. And if it’s in the Jewish Public Library, it’ll just be a little bit less accessible to anybody other than somebody looking at the Jewish community. But this could actually be useful for the Montreal music community, somehow.
And I’m sure some of these are kind of written-out versions of… Those commercial charts?
D. Yeah, I think you showed me a bit of that when I was there. So it’s like… it’s pretty close, it’s just, one line from it or something.
J. They’re just sort of written out. Yeah. So that’s also not that interesting, but…
Yeah, I’m curious about the state of, like, the Head Office Worker’s Circle choir, you know? Like, in New York City. Do they have all the original Maurice Rauch papers? I bet they do.
D. Good question.
Josh and I spent some time discussing the little we know about the interactions between the New York and Montreal Workers Circle organizations and how they seem to have been very isolated from one another.
D. Yeah. So I asked you what you would do with the papers, but also, what would you like to do with the musical content? You know, to restage it, or to put it out there. Do you know what I mean?
J. There’s been a lot of interest. Just whenever I talk to people about this, about starting a choir. So that would be kind of the easiest thing.
D. Yeah.
J. It wouldn’t be easy, but that would be a way to put this music to work. Whether it’s with McGill. Or if it’s just something in my apartment. And I’ve had a ton of people, old and young, be very interested in it: “oh, I’d love to join a Yiddish choir, sure.” And my students. This year, I’ve got twice as many students as last year. Somehow, it’s like, people are interested in this. And they’re telling each other…
Otherwise, what I’d really like to do, once I get to the bottom of the box, and I have a copy of each page. Then I will begin the next stage of… Of, like, turning this into an archive. Which will be digitizing. And making it available to the world. I guess, a website or affiliated with some other website?
Louis Burko bass part for Shalom Chaverim. Photo by me.
Josh and I discussed various different organizations and institutions who were hosting content in the Yiddish music world.
D: It doesn’t hurt to have a Canadian organization doing it, too?
J. Or, it doesn’t have to. Yeah. Sure, if I could. I’m totally open… I have not yet explored or shopped around or seen who’s interested or not.
D. So, is there any type of Yiddish organization in Montreal now… what is there that is kinda equivalent to the Worker’s Circle?
J. I think there isn’t. There’s this… you know, have you met Eli [Benedict], the Israeli Hasidic Yiddish dance guy, he taught at Weimar this year?
D. No, I don’t think so.
J. Anyway, he’s this Hasidic guy. Funny dude, very passionate. He basically runs the Yung Yidish in Tel Aviv. You know that place with Mendy Cahan that is, like, in a bus station? It’s a kind of chaotic, but amazing space. So he runs that, and then he’s also doing one like that in Vienna. But now he has family in Montreal, so he just kind of started… He just basically took a bunch of stuff, I think, from the Worker’s Circle and from another place and put it all in a loft. That is looking like it’ll turn out to be a centre for this stuff. A lot of the books from the Worker’s Circle went there. Um… Shlomo and that crew are bringing stuff there. So at least it’s, like, young people that are interested and rocking it, but they have absolutely no resources at all. Like, it’s just… a piece of gum, like, sticking it all together.
D. Yeah.
J. Rocking it. But … they have meetings every week, and there’s stuff going on, and sing-alongs, and it’s like, it’s a new kind of scene. That’s not exactly the right place for this.
This could be anywhere, but also, once it’s digitized, it could be everywhere, so…
D. Let me just look up my questions from a while ago to see what else I haven’t asked you.
J. Okay. Okay.
Advertisement for Workmen’s Circle Choir with guest singer Louis Danto in the Montreal Gazette, 1978. Source: Newspapers.com.
D. I think I’ve pretty much covered my questions that I wrote months ago. How about: you talked about the themes, it’s a lot of folk songs and Holocaust and worker’s songs. So, I sort of remember there’s some Israeli stuff in the programs, at least. I don’t remember, but in the music. So when does it start having more Israeli stuff? Or was that always just a small part of it?
J. Um. Good question, and maybe we could… you could analyze the programs, I’ll send you… But also that would have been, probably, an influence by Rubinstein, who’d just come from Israel.
D. Yeah.
J. Yeah… you could also ask, maybe if you talk to Augenfeld. Kind of ask her about the evolution of the politics of the choir and the space. And just, what they were interested in, and how it became less about this, and more about that, sort of. Jewish identity in general, and that would include Israeli repertoire.
Also, maybe it reflected the guests they had. They always had guests. For each concert, they would have a soloist come in. Most of them were Yiddish-y early on… I mean, it’s total Yiddish stuff in the 50s and 60s. But then it gets to be more, probably, Israeli soloists and stuff. They would sing a Yiddish tune or two, maybe less Yiddish tunes.
But it’s definitely… yeah, no, I guess it’s mostly Yiddish, even up to the end. And not that much… Not that much Hebrew rep, to be honest.
D. Yeah…
J. Really mostly Yiddish rep. Mm-mm. It’s too bad about the piano… parts, though. I wonder where the hell that is. Now I have to track down the… accompanists, and then find their children, and then see if they have the papers of their parents who… kept all the papers of accompanying the Yiddish choir in 1952. I doubt it.
Montreal Arbeter Ring choir photo, probably at Expo ’67. Source: Josh Dolgin.
D. And it’s not in the Rubinstein archive in the [Jewish Public] library?
J. No, no. There’s, like, a folder of pictures of him at the theatre. And then a ton of his papers, but not really together, like, they just sort of go show by show. So, like, if he was the director of the show, okay, then you’ll get his score. But where are his papers? Where are his original songs? Where is… Great question.
J. Um, cool. Okay, I’m gonna… I gotta get to… Whew!
D. Yeah, I think we covered everything, yeah.
Photo of me looking through the choral materials in Josh’s office in April 2025. Photo by Josh Dolgin.
