by dan pine
staff writer
“I’m 66,” says Yiddish folksinger Gerry Tenney, “and I want to be a rock ‘n’ roll star.”
Maybe that’s why he once wrote Yiddish versions of “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Yellow Submarine” (that’s “Shvereh Togidikeh Nacht” and “Gele Submarine” for you Jewish Beatlemaniacs out there).
Whether or not the MTV awards ever come calling, he’s long been a rock star in the Yiddish revival scene. Tenney will be bringing it all back home when he performs and leads a workshop at the Yiddish Folk Fest, a day of art, food, storytelling, dancing, children’s entertainment and klezmer music in Marin County.
Co-sponsored by Congregation Gan Halev and KlezCalifornia, the festival takes place Sept. 30 at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center. Also set to appear are local bands like the Red Hot Chachkas, the Jubilee Klezmer Ensemble and the Freilachmakers, as well as Yiddish dance maven Bruce Bierman and storyteller Andy Rader.
Although KlezCalifornia has been around for several years (Tenny sits on its board of directors), this year’s event is the first staged in the North Bay. That says something, according to Tenny.
“This was initiated by people in Marin,” he notes. “It shows that this interest in Yiddishkeit is still there, even in places you would think the Jews would be the most assimilated.”
Tenney says the first few hours of the daylong event consists of workshops like his. He will lead a singing workshop, teaching some of his favorite Yiddish folksongs. Later in the day, organizers will get the party started when the bands begin to play.
The Yiddish Folk Fest and KlezCalifornia are outgrowths of KlezCamp, a New York-based Yiddish festival that some credit with spurring the Yiddish revival of the last 20 years.
For Tenney, Yiddish never needed reviving. He grew up in the Bronx with parents and grandparents who spoke Yiddish. He remembers his folks speaking Yiddish when they didn’t want the kids to understand, but, Tenney says, “I was too smart for them.”
He went on to study Yiddish folk music and culture in earnest. Today he reads the Yiddish Forward and he can make his way through the stories of Sholem Aleichem in the original. “I’m not as fluent as some others,” he notes, “but I think they accept me as one of them.”
Though Tenney considers himself more of a cultural Jew than a religious one, he thinks events like the Yiddish Folk Fest elevate Jewish identity for all Jews, religious or secular.
“We provide a place for those people whose Jewish identity is cultural, and not a religious,” he says. “But we’re not anti-religious. To make someone literate about being Jewish, you at least have to know what the religious do. The people I learned from, the old lefty guys, knew the religious stuff cold.”
As for his rock star dreams, he may not be that far from it. Not long ago, an anonymous Internet prankster got a hold of Tenney’s Yiddish version of “A Hard Day’s Night” and overdubbed it onto the Fab Four performing it. That bit of digital magic wound up on YouTube.
So now Tenney is waiting for the call.
“My goal is to go on Letterman and sing this,” he says. “I’d even do Jay Leno.”
“Yiddish Folk Fest: An Interactive Day of Art, Food, Storytelling, Dancing and Outstanding Klezmer Music” takes place 3 p.m.-7 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 30, at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center, 6350 Sir Francis Drake Blvd., San Geronimo. Tickets: $5-$15. Information: (415) 488-8888 ext. 253,
or online at www.klezcalifornia.org.
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California