The Jewish Soul: Classics of Yiddish Cinema

During its heyday in the late 1930s, Yiddish movies covered a broad range of genres: comedies, soap operas, the supernatural, literary adaptations, musicals, and Lubitsch-style romances. Unified through language, gesture, and a common cultural sensibility, they captured the essence of the Jewish soul. Comprised of both the essential films (The Dybbuk, Tevya) and the lesser-known programmers (The Yiddish King Lear, Motel the Operator), this five-disc set captures the diversity of Yiddish film, and encourages a better appreciation of this most fascinating, but rarely-viewed genre. The ten features in this collection were restored by Lobster Films, the result of an unprecedented collaboration between the Museum of Modern Art, the Deutsche Kinemathek and the Filmoteka Narodowa in Warsaw. Each film has been newly translated by noted Yiddish actor (the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man), playwright and translator Allen Lewis Rickman.