Categories
Biography

Abe Katzman and the Kishinever Sick Benevolent Society of New York, Inc.

Connoisseurs of old New York klezmer may be familiar with the two 1927 discs on Brunswick Records by Abe Katzman’s Bessarabian Orchestra:  Ismaelover Bulgar/Simchas Torah in Kishenev and Erinerung From Kischenev/Kishenever Bulgar. Abraham Katzman (1868–1940) was a notable presence in the New York Jewish music scene in the 1910s and 1920s, appearing in dozens of advertisements and hiring such figures as Dave Tarras to play in his band. He also had plenty of relatives who went on to become famous, including his son the film producer Sam Katzman, his nephew the bandleader and arranger Louis Katzman, and his grand-nephew, Dallas showrunner Leonard Katzman.

In my research into landsmanshaft and relief society collections at YIVO this month, I’ve been looking for traces of klezmer musicians, or musicians of any kind, with ties to particular communities or organizations. I’m still in the early stages of it, but with so many to choose from, the first boxes I called up are ones from places which I can already tie to klezmer musicians I have researched. So, for example, Beresh Katz and the Glinianer association, or Abe Katzman and the Keshenever/Bessarabier ones. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Katzman was everywhere in YIVO’s collection of the Kishinever Sick Benevolent Society, as well as documents of the same organization in the AJHS’s Landsmanshaft collection. He cofounded the organization in 1903, was its first president and played music for its events into the 1930s. In this post I’ll go over some of those documents and try to put it in the context of his music career in New York.

Which Abe Katzman?

In cases like this, there’s always the possibility that I could be mixing up two people with the same name. Plenty of Jewish men in early 20th century New York were called Abraham Katzman, including another musician. But there are plenty of reasons to think that the landsmanshaft society president and the 1927 klezmer musician are the same person:

  • He fits the profile. Born in Chișinău in 1868, he arrived in New York in 1897 or 1898. The organization was founded in 1903.
  • In some of the anniversary journals of the organization, Abe Katzman appears in the front sections as a president or ex-president, and in the concert program section as bandleader for the anniversary banquet.
  • In the old New York Yiddish press, there are dozens of advertisements for concerts and balls with music by Professor A. Katzman; many of these were put on by the same Kishinever Society.
  • 3 of his 4 1927 discs mention Chișinău in their titles, and in some of the Yiddish press advertisements he is said to lead a Kishenever Orkester. More than a passing association!
  • The other Abe Katzman musician whose career overlapped with our Abe was born in Minsk Gubernia in the late 1890s. Too young, wrong birthplace.
  • In his 1940 obituary in Der Tog, he is identified as the beloved first president of the Kishinever society, and a mention in Motion Picture Daily identifies him as Sam Katzman’s father.

I think the evidence is pretty solid.

The Kishinever Sick Benevolent Society, Inc.

The organization Abe cofounded in December 1903 wasn’t the first Kishenever mutual aid society in New York; a 1903 issue of Der Idisher Zhurnal mentions a Yung Kishenever Untershtitsungs Farayn founded in 1891, which by then was still meeting regularly on Clinton Street. However, the aftermath of the violent Kishinev Pogrom in April 1903 spurred quite a lot of local organizing activity, including charities and support for immigrants. The desire to support Kishinevers fleeing the violence and to give them a comfortable welcome in New York was later explicitly acknowledged as a principal reason for the founding of the Kishinever Sick Benevolent Society.

a photo of the inside cover of an old, yellowed booklet with text in Yiddish (Konstitutshon fun Kishinever Kranken Untershtitsungs Farayn af Niu York (and so on).
The inside cover of the KSBS constitution, reprinted later, probably in the early 1930s. Source: YIVO collection.

I couldn’t find newspaper coverage of the December 29th, 1903 founding of the organization, but the group’s own materials acknowledge it as the date. Its original name was the Kishinever Mutual Immigrant Association. Per the various histories of the organization written for their anniversary journals, it was a very small organization at first, which offered limited services. Katzman, as first president, worked to establish a plot for members at Mt. Zion Cemetery, which was secured in 1904. It was not until 1907 that the organization was established enough to offer loan services to its members, which the histories later described as a key step towards creating stability for newly-arrived Kishinevers.

In 1913 it was legally incorporated under its longer-lasting name, the Kishinever Sick Benevolent Society of New York (hereafter KSBS). It was generally referred to by its English name, even in Yiddish transliteration, but its name was occasionally printed in Yiddish (as in the constitution shown above) as der Kishinever Kranken Untershtitsungs Farayn af New York. The amount of sick and death benefits offered by the Society grew through the 1910s as it gained members, and by 1920 they had acquired a building to hold meetings in. By then many of its members were no longer impoverished “green” immigrants but were affluent and well-established. The organization acquired a second and then a third cemetery plot (at Mt. Hebron and United Hebrew), and donated $10,000 towards a seniors home for its aged members.

black and white portrait of a man with a moustache which says Abe Katzman, First President underneath
A portrait of Katzman from the 20th anniversary journal of the KSBS. Source: YIVO collection.

In the 1928 25th anniversary journal, a two-page tribute to Katzman was published. Calling him “our George Washington,” (!) it touted some of his contributions over the years and noted that he was still active as head of the charity committee. He seems to have remained active in the early 1930s, at which point he was in his 60s. He left for Hollywood in the late 1930s and died in 1940.

Above we can see covers of some of the KSBS anniversary journals which were released at a celebratory banquet every five years. The Society remained quite active and robust at least into the 1960s. As with many such Mutual Aid societies established before World War I, by the 1970s and 1980s its function was mainly related to burial of its very elderly membership, as well as their families. It was dissolved in the early 1990s.

Abe Katzman’s Music Career

I wish I knew more about Abe Katzman’s family background and musical career back in Bessarabia. He emigrated when he was thirty years old, so he had more than a decade of activity in Europe. We have some information about the Katzman family’s musical background from a 2013 conference paper presented by Abe’s grandnephew:

Music was the Katzman family trade. Prior to emigrating to the U.S., Katzmans played in some of the major orchestras in the Russian Empire. Louis Katzman claimed to have been trained as both an artist and as a classical musician in Moscow and elsewhere during the first decade of the twentieth century. [… his] father, Philip, was an orchestra member of one of the Moscow Opera Companies and trained his eldest son on the violin and his own instrument, the cornet, both in Kishinev (Louis’ birthplace) and in Moscow. Louis also claimed to have studied at an Odessa conservatory. At the same time Louis attended an art school near Moscow, and was trained in oils and other media – a background he found useful after immigrating to New York. He recounted that, at the age of 13, in 1903-1904, he was sent out to work with a traveling band master.
The family emigrated from Kishinev to New York. The first members came in the 1890s (including Louis’ uncle Abe Katzman) followed by most of the others in period 1906 to 1908, after the Kishinev Pogroms of 1903 and 1907 – Philip Katzman emigrated in 1905 and Louis arrived in 1907. Louis was naturalized as an American citizen in March 1916.

– Michael M. Katzman, “Louis Katzman: His Musical Life and Times.” ARSC Journal 45.2 (2014), p.180–1.

An endnote in the same piece also mentions that Louis may have played in Abe’s orchestra in the years after he arrived in 1907:

In taped interviews in 2003-2005, Berdie Katzman, Louis’ daughter-in-law, recalled being told that Louis played cornet on occasion for his uncle Abraham’s klezmer band (later Abe Katzman’s Bessarabian Orchestra) in Brooklyn during this period.

“Louis Katzman” p.198.

If the family was so active in Russia, there are probable mentions of them in old newspapers. A deep dive for another time. A short biography in the New York listings of the 1921-22 Musical Blue Book of America gives a clue to Abe’s training:

Katzman, Abraham, Conductor. Violinist. 1437 Madison Ave.

Studied, Russia, under Prof. Gilla. Conductor of A. Katzman’s Orchestra, furnishing music for all occasions.

I don’t doubt that Abe was active as a musician as soon as he arrived in New York c.1898. But the earliest actual evidence I have found is from 1912. An ad in Die Wahrheit promises a Full Dress and Civic Ball put on by the Independent Kishinever Ladies’ Farein with music by Prof. Katzman’s union orchestra.

Advertisement, Die Wahrheit, January 1912. Source: jpress.

From there I found a few dozen advertisements on jpress, the latest of which was in 1929. You can see a sampling here:

Most are for Kishenever or Bessarabian organizations in New York, although a few are for south Ukrainian ones (e.g. Podolian). Quite often he is only referred to as Prof. Katzman.

The earliest KSBS anniversary journal YIVO has in their collection is the one from 1923. In that issue Katzman’s dance set is listed in the programme:

A Concert Programme from a booklet listing various operatic works and foxtrots.
Concert Program page from the Kishenever Sick Benevolent Society 20th anniversary journal, 1923. Source: YIVO collection.

There isn’t much Bessarabian about this setlist, although I can assume “Selection–Jewish.” is teasing us with more. It does show that Katzman, then in his 50s, was versatile and by necessity kept up with modern American music.

The 1927 Brunswick recordings

And now to the two 1927 discs. DAHR lists some basic information about where and when they were made: at the Brunswick Records office on 7th Avenue in New York, with a 9-man orchestra. Joel Rubin suggests in his recent book that Dave Tarras may have been the clarinetist on the recording (see New York Klezmer in the Early Twentieth Century: The Music of Naftule Brandwein and Dave Tarras, Boydell & Brewer, 2020, p.323).

a disc label from a 78rpm record for Abe Katzman from Brunswick records
The disc label for Erinerung fun Kishenev. Source: Mayrent Collection.

The Mayrent Collection has both discs available for streaming: Ismaelover Bulgar (a great snappy major-key piece), Simchas Torah in Keshenev (the first part of which most klezmer musicians know as “Oi Tate”), Erinerung fun Kishenev, and my favourite, Kishenever Bulgar. (The Ismaelover and Keshenever Bulgars appears in Susan Watts’ recent book of family repertoire, The Hoffman Book, on pages 119–20.)

Although the discs got decent reviews in trade journals–The Gramophone called it “lively and brimming over with local colour” in October 1928–less and less klezmer discs were being made, and he was not invited back to record more. So, those two discs are our only taste of his decades of Bessarabian klezmer performances in New York.

Categories
Research Summary

The Start of my Research Fellowship at YIVO in New York

I’m currently in New York where I’ve come to do some research at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research about old NY immigrant klezmers, their life trajectories, families and professional connections. I received the Fellowship in East European Arts, Music, and Theater with the general topic of “Immigrant Klezmer Musicians during the Golden Age of Commercial Recording,” which leaves me plenty of wiggle room to figure out what I can from their archival collections.

Needless to say it’s not a great time to arrive in the US. I even boarded my plane on the day of the supposed impositions of tariffs against Canada, although Trump backed off of it, or maybe deferred it for a month.

I’ve been here a week so far, but the research space at the Center for Jewish History has only been open for 3 days of it, so I’m definitely still at the start of my work and trying to make sense of which collections I can use. I started with some obvious klezmer collections, like the papers of Dave Tarras and of the Al Glaser Recording Orchestra (more on those in a later post). But those aren’t the real reason for my visit, as they are made up of musical scores with minimal contextual or biographical information.

I’ll probably spend most of my time looking at landsmanshaft and mutual aid and cultural society papers, of which YIVO has a rich collection. The first I requested was the Glinianer Young Men’s Benevolent Association (a mutual aid society for immigrants from Glina/Hlyniany); I already knew that klezmer violinist Beresh Katz was active in it around WWII, as was rather briefly the ex-klezmer Jeremiah Hescheles. It was full of dates and receipts about musical events put on by the Association and I even found the meeting minutes when Katz vouched for the newly-arrived Hescheles to become a member.

advertisement for a musician Ben Katz with a portrait of a bald, glasses wearing man
Klezmer violinist and Association vice president Beresh “Ben” Katz from a 40th anniversary booklet for the Glinianer Young Men’s Benevolent Association

That was an easy one, but I know much less about the ties of klezmers or old Jewish musicians to the many other mutual aid societies of old New York. For the rest it’s a matter of ordering boxes one by one and looking through their contents to see what connections I can make. I started with cities and towns that known NY klezmers came from; for example, Israel J. Hochman (see this old post about him) was from Kamianets-Podilskyi and his father was from nearby Zhvanets, so I looked at landsman or relief organizations associated with those places.

cover of Der Zvanitzer pamphlet with muscle-men art on the cover and text in Yiddish
Cover of “Der Zvanitser,” annual journal of the Zwanitz Podolier Progressive Branch 277 circa 1939. This muscle-man art appeared in different colour schemes on several of these annual journals.

Some of the boxes aren’t of much use for music history research if they only contain non-specific invoices, cemetery documents, or cover a much later period than I’m looking at. So far I’ve found that the anniversary booklets, souvenir journals, etc. from the 1930s and 1940s to be the most interesting source because they usually contain at least one advertisement for a musician or orchestra. In the various Kamianets and Zhvanets books I’ve looked at so far, I didn’t find any Hochmans yet but I did find George C. Brandman, a Hochman relative and cornetist who I mentioned in my Hochman post, in a publication of the Kamenetz-Podolier Relief Organization.

advertisement for a George C Brandman orchestra with a photo of a band on stage
Advertisement for George C. Brandman’s orchestra in a 1949 publication of the Kamenetz-Podolier Relief Organization, a charity organization which united the various local Kamanetzer landsmanshaftn to send aid back home.

Most interesting to me is if the musician is demonstrably a member of the association, as in the case of a member of the Radziviller-Woliner Benevolent Association, Harry Tepper, who appears in membership lists and personal greetings alongside his dentist brother(?) over a period of several years.

an ad for Harry Tepper's Novelty Orchestra in an old publication
Advertisement for Harry Tepper’s Novelty Orchestra in Radziviller-Woliner Benevolent Association souvenir journal, 1931?

Other musicians who advertised in the Radziviler journals were definitely not members, like Naftule “Nat” Brandwein, or apparently not members, like Joe Magaziner.

an ad in an old publication for Joe Magaziner's Columbia Orchestra
Advertisement for Joe Magaziner’s Columbia Orchestra in Radziviller-Woliner Benevolent Association souvenir journal, 1936?

My current plan is to continue going through YIVO’s collections of these mutual aid associations for traces of old musicians, and to start linking them to old genealogy-type records, musician’s union records and old newspaper coverage. We’ll see where the research takes me after that.

a selfie of two people standing in the aisle of an archive with various archival boxes on shelving on either side.
Myself and YIVO sound archivist Eléonore Biezunski on my first day in the building, Monday Februarty 3, 2025.
Categories
Research Summary Specific Compositions

Jacob Gegna’s composition “A Tfileh fun Mendel Beilis”

This past week I was finally writing a Wikipedia biography for violinist Jacob “Jascha” Gegna (1879–1944), and in the process I came across a few old newspaper articles that gave more context to his well-known 1921 recording אַ תפלה פון מענדעל בייליס=A Tfileh fun Mendel Beilis. I had heard this piece many times over the years, but these articles clarified the context of the title and its significance to Gegna. It turns out that this was his own composition inspired, he said, by his own attendance at Beilis’ trial in Kiev in 1913. It became his signature piece in New York between 1914 when he arrived, and 1921 when he recorded it for Columbia Records. The recording can be streamed here on the Mayrent Collection, or here in Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archive.

Mendel Beilis’ trial

Menachem Mendel Beilis (1874–1934) was a Russian Jewish man at the centre of an infamous antisemitic blood libel case in Kiev which took place from 1911–13. The YIVO Encyclopedia gives an excellent summary of it. Although Beilis was eventually acquitted of the accusation that he had ritually killed a 12-year-old boy, he spent several years in prison awaiting trial and was vilified by antisemitic right-wing Russian nationalists and opportunists.

Jacob Gegna, on the other hand, was a classically-trained violinist from a klezmer family who had until shortly before 1913 lived and worked in Poltava as a violin instructor and orchestral musician. He was living in Kiev at the time of the Beilis trial, or at least during its final weeks. He later claimed to have attended it himself and to have been moved by Beilis’ pleas for justice, or as some papers put it, his “prayers.” After he composed an instrumental violin piece in Beilis’ honour, mention of his personal connection to the trial accompanied notices about his earliest performances of the piece in New York:

דעם װעלט-בעריהמטען שפּיעלער יעקב געגנא. מר. געגנא איז אַ קיעװער. ער האָט בײגעװאָהנט בײליס׳עס פּראָצעס און ער האָט פערפֿאַסט אַ ״תפֿילה לבײליס״. ער װעט דאָס שפּיעלען בײ דיעזען קאָנצערט.

“[…] the world-famous player Jacob Gegna. Mr. Gegna is from Kiev. He witnessed Beilis’ trial and he composed a ‘Tfileh L’Beylis.’ He will play it in this concert.”

from Forverts, December 24, 1914.

The claim continued to appear occasionally when he toured or performed. This short curiosity piece from Charles D. Isaacson’s “Weekly Music Chats” in a February 1920 issue of the Atlanta Journal sums it up:

From the Atlanta Journal, February 15, 1920. Source: Newspapers.com

If it’s hard to read in the folded scan, here is what the paragraph says:

When the Beylis trial was progressing in Russia, Jacob Gegna, the violinist, attended some of the last sessions. He heard the prayer made by the accused man to the judges just before the jury retired. Inspired by the scene, Gegna went home and wrote down his “Beylis’s Prayer,” one of the saddest violin sobs ever sounded.

The assertion that he was at the trial, in articles about his performance of the piece, continued to appear as late as 1923 as in this Yidishes Tageblatt article.

I’m assuming, but not certain, that he was actually in the room at the trial and didn’t just read about it in the Kiev newspaper. But he was far from the only person to create art based on the Beilis trial, as numerous novels, plays, songs and films have been made in the century since. Songs and compositions dedicated to disasters, pogroms and antisemitic trials were also common in that era; a quick search of published scores in the Library of Congress brings up Dreyfus march, two step by Russotto (1900), Kishineff Massacre by Shapiro (1904), The Sufferers, descriptive melody by Adler and Centner (1906), Hot rachmunes, der pogrom in Russland: In Remembrance of the Heroes, Self Defenders in Russia by Frug and Spector (1906), Der Pogrom by Lipschutz and Krone (1908), The victim, or Mendel bailes by Perlmutter and Wohl (1913), and many more.

The composition in New York performance

After arriving in New York in the summer of 1914 with his brother Max, a cellist, Jacob started to establish himself as a violinist and violin teacher. I don’t know if he composed the piece back in Kiev, as the newspaper claimed, but by that autumn it had become one of his signature pieces on the New York stage, and mentioned in a few dozen newspaper articles or advertisements between then and the early 1920s. He débuted it in the fall of 1914, including at a Sholem Aleichem evening where it reportedly made a big impression (per this and several other Forverts articles in early 1915).

Here is a typical example of an advertisement using the piece as part of the promotion:

Advertisement for Gegna’s recital at the Forverts Hall, from the November 21, 1914 issue of Forverts.

Although the newspaper mentions of this piece were generally repetitive, the exact title of the piece varied. At times it was “Beilis’es Gebet” (בײליס׳עס געבעט) in the November 1914 Forverts ad pictured above, “Tfilah L’Beilis” (תפילה לבײליס) in the Forverts, December 1914 and in the February 1915 Varhayt ad picured below, “Mendel Beilis’es Gebet” (מענדעל בײליס׳עס געבעט, Mendel Beilis’ plea) in the Forverts in January 1915, “Mendel Beilis” in the Yidishes Togblat in May 1915, or “Elegy (The Prayer of Beilis)” (in The Violin World, June 1915). An advertisement in the Forverts in April 1915 mentions it alongside another piece (or type of piece) he had recorded back in Europe: “his own awe-inspiring compositions ‘Tfileh L’Mendel Beilis,’ Chtsos, and classical numbers” (אײגענע פּרעכטיגע קאָמפּאָזיציע ״תפלה למענדעל בײליס״, חצות און קלאַסישע נומערען). Take a look at the Wiktionary entries for Tfileh and Gebet for the basics on their connotations.

Here is another ad from 1915 which mentions the piece in the fine print under Gegna’s name.

An advertisement featuring Gegna as a performer at a ball alongside Chazzan Meisels, Joseph Rumshinsky, and others. From Di Varhayt, 28 February 1915.

A piece in the Morgen Zhurnal in November 1915 (pictured below) gives a bit more context to how Gegna, his brother and this composition were seen at the time:

Excerpt from the column In the Music World (אין דער מוזיק װעלט), from the Morgen Zhurnal, New York, November 16, 1915.

The musical family in New York was enlarged with a young Jewish artist, a cellist. Max Gegna, a brother of the well-known violinist Jacob Gegna, who last year made his début on the East Side at the Sholem Aleichem reception in Cooper Union, and soon became a favourite of the Jewish public.

Jacob Gegna studied in Kiev and in Petrograd and in one year became director in the Imperial Society of Music [Keyzerlikher Muzik Gezelshaft]. Unlike most Jewish artists, Jacob Gegna was also interested in the situation of his unhappy brothers and in his first composition embodies the Jewish groans [ferkerpert der idisher krekhts]. Many will recall his “Mendel Beilis’ Tfileh.”

-translated by me from the above article.

I think they’re right that Gegna was fairly socially engaged, not only with regards to the Jews of Russia but labour and social solidarity too. His views in the 1910s and 1920s can be guessed at from the charities and benefits he donated his time to. I found mentions of him playing benefits for Jewish sanitoriums, for the Jewish Press Committee of the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon, for war sufferers and for displaced or stateless Russian Jews.

His composition received less and less mention in the press after 1915, perhaps because its novelty had worn out. I don’t think he played it in his Aeolian Hall show of March 1918, which was considered by many to be his arrival on the (non-Jewish) New York scene. At a glance, none of the reviews mention it.

Advertisement promoting his successful show at the Aeolian Hall. From Musical America, March 23, 1918. Source: HathiTrust.

But another round of mentions appears when Gegna toured the Eastern U.S. with one of his students, the child prodigy Sammy Kramar, in 1920. By all accounts, this six-and-a-half year old impressed audiences with his technique. The Mendel Beilis piece became a part of each performance, alongside duets with Gegna and classical repertoire.

Sammy Kramar, child prodigy and student of Gegna’s. From the Boston Post Sunday Magazine, 1920.

A 1920 article from Musical America calls it “an elegie, ‘The Prayer of Beilis’, composed by [Kramar’s] teacher.” In Musical Courier that same year says “The child then presented an ‘Elegie,’ by Gegna, in an inspiring manner, that proved the composition a worthy addition to musical literature.”

Sammy Kramar’s repertoire from The Republican, May 8, 1920. Source: Newspapers.com

I can’t say for sure, because there is so much content out there, but I think the 1920 Kramar tour was the last round of mentions of this piece in performance, with a few exceptions. I’m curious if the success of the piece on that tour inspired Gegna to record it himself, or if it had already been his intention.

Their relationship continued into 1921, as Gegna helped Kramar (then 8) submit a piece “Hebrew Air and Dance” for copyright in January (see it here in my Google Drive; I paid to have it scanned by the LOC).

The 1921 recording

In 1921 we arrive at the main reason most of us in the klezmer world know this piece and Gegna’s name: his recording of A Tfileh fun Mendel Beilis.

The label of A Tfileh fun Mendel Beilis, Columbia Records. Source: Mayrent Collection of Yiddish Recordings.

Actually, to rewind a bit to November 1920, per Spottswood, Gegna went into the studios at Victor Records and made a test recording of a Taxim (an archaic kind of klezmer violin composition for listening), accompanied by composer Lazar Weiner on piano. The recording was not released, but Gegna was invited into the Columbia Records studio in New York a few months later and recorded his Mendel Beilis piece, as well as a Taxim. (He recorded the same basic piece a decade earlier in Poltava as “Fantasy on Jewish Melody”, you can listen to it on YouTube or on the Chekhov’s Band CD). The Discography of American Historical Recordings has a listing for A Tfileh fun Mendel Beilis, although it does not specify who the piano accompanist was. As I said above, the recording can be streamed here on the Mayrent Collection, or here in Florida Atlantic University’s Recorded Sound Archive.

Closeup of Gegna’s disc listed in the 1924 Columbia Records catalogue. Source: Internet Archive.

I’m not a violinist, but I feel confident in making some general statements about this piece.

Like Gegna himself, it sits partly in the world of the klezmer or East European Jewish style of violin playing, and partly in the popular or classical style. I would characterize it as a sentimental or meditative violin piece which does use klezmer techniques and musical elements, but in a very restrained way. I think many “Jewish” pieces recorded for a broader market in his time fit this description.

One need only listen to the other side of the disc, Taxim, to hear some of those klezmer musical elements: the quick runs of notes, the heavy use of the “krekhts” ornament and slides, etc., and the fact that it is followed by a lively klezmer dance. On A Tfileh fun Mendel Beilis, he uses a lot more vibrato than a village klezmer might, and appoggiaturas rather than krekhts. But I think some of the other elements sound very ‘klezmer,’ both modally and as a general matter of style. At time the melody sounds more generically sentimental to my ears, that is to say not specifically Jewish, but at other times (as in the “C section”) it sounds more like a nign.

Thanks to those who talked over this piece with me on Facebook while I was thinking of writing this piece, including Eléonore Biezunski and Christina Crowder. As far as I can tell, while the Taxim has been recorded a number of times by klezmer revivalists (most famously by The Klezmorim on their 1973 album Streets of Gold), the Mendel Beilis piece has received significantly less attention. The only re-recording of it I could find was on a 2001 album by the Klezmers Techter, a German group, but I couldn’t find anywhere to stream it.