The Yiddish in our Tunes

After the jump, a wonderful three-minute BBC audio slideshow on the influence of the Yiddish language in American culture.

Link to the slideshow:

Yiddish - a language once spoken by more than 10 million Jews - had a profound effect on American culture in the first half of the 20th Century.

It originated in central and eastern Europe - and spread to the United States when thousand of immigrants arrived in New York.

Zalmen Mlotek is the Artistic Director of the city's last surviving professional Yiddish theatre - the Folksbiene.

With the help of his piano, he has been telling Radio 3's Dennis Marks how the language influenced jazz music - and the likes of George and Ira Gershwin.