<p class="text"><span style="color: #464646; font-family: verdana; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> <p class="text" style="outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 100%; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 0px; margin: 0px;">Link to the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7739968.stm" target="_blank">slideshow</a>:</p> <p class="text" style="outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 100%; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 60px; margin: 0px;">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.</p> <p class="text" style="outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 100%; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 60px; margin: 0px;">It originated in central and eastern Europe - and spread to the United States when thousand of immigrants arrived in New York.</p> <p class="text" style="outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 100%; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 60px; margin: 0px;">Zalmen Mlotek is the Artistic Director of the city's last surviving professional Yiddish theatre - the Folksbiene.</p> <p class="text" style="outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-size: 100%; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-left: 60px; margin: 0px;">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.</p> </span></p> yiddish pop culture influence, jewish jazz hip hop multimedia 0 2008-12-01T13:14:16-05:00 <p>After the jump, a wonderful three-minute BBC audio slideshow on the influence of the Yiddish language in American culture.</p> 1 2916 the-yiddish-in-our-tunes 2008-12-01T13:16:56-05:00 true false true false false #<Image:0x2b87cde88908> 2008-12-01T13:16:56-05:00 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7739968.stm 371 0