TORONTO — Theodore Bikel’s widow said her late husband had every intention of performing at the Annual Summer Yiddish Concert at Toronto’s Temple Sinai next week.
“Theo never missed a gig and he was planning to be there,” Aimee Ginsburg Bikel said on the telephone from Los Angeles. “I am full of sorrow that we couldn’t make it. He was really looking forward to it.”
An actor, singer and Broadway star, Bikel played the milkman Teyve in the stage version of the beloved Fiddler on the Roof more than 2,000 times and he introduced many people to Yiddish music. He died July 20 at the age of 91.
The Annual Summer Yiddish Concert, presented by Ashkenaz and the Committee for Yiddish, is now headlined by the Dutch Yiddish singer Shura Lipovsky. During her performance, Lipovsky will embody the role of the Magid, a moral preacher who first appeared in chassidism in 18th-century eastern Europe, telling stories to help unravel the design and meaning of life. As well, the concert features a tribute to Bikel by Lipovsky and local artists who collaborated with him.
In an email from London, England, where she’s performing and teaching, Lipovsky wrote that she and Bikel “loved to work together and we played Yiddish, Sephardi and Bosnian material.”
Reflecting on her husband’s legacy, Ginsburg Bikel said that “Theo wanted to be remembered as a singer of his people. Those are his very specific words.”
Bikel was born in Vienna in 1924, and fled with his family to Mandatory Palestine after the Anschluss, Germany’s union with Austria in 1938. “He lived through those times” and he showed us that “Jewish life in Europe was more than the Holocaust. He kept that alive for us,” Ginsburg Bikel said. Whole families experienced joy in their heritage when they listened to his recordings of Yiddish songs, she added.
Bikel never saw the contradiction between Zionism and keeping the Yiddish language alive and was heartbroken at the prospect of Yiddish falling into obscurity, Ginsburg Bikel said. The revival of Yiddish music and the new interest in the language “eased his mind and soothed his fears in a real way.”
She said that Bikel, a political activist who believed that being a good Jew meant caring for all people, mentored many other artists, sharing stages with them, pulling strings and making phone calls. “He always supported young artists to move forward with their art and to use their art to express their ideals.”
Eric Stein, the artistic director of Ashkenaz, said that for “so many people,” including some contemporary Yiddish singers, their first exposure to Yiddish music came from listening to Bikel’s records. As a singer, Bikel’s values were about multiculturalism and peace, Stein said, adding that his body of work, comprising not just Jewish music but world music recorded in different languages, is an original resource for today’s artists.
“As the years go by, we’ll continue to hear his legacy resonate,” Stein said. Recognizing Bikel’s influence, the Ashkenaz Foundation established the Theodore Bikel Legacy Fund last May. This endowment fund will allow for the creation of the Theodore Bikel Artist-in-Residence position, open to contemporary and emerging artists, at future Ashkenaz Festivals. Contributions made in 2015 will be submitted to Canadian Heritage’s endowment incentives program for matching.
Bikel “thought about how his legacy would be preserved” and Ashkenaz is grateful the legacy fund was created with his blessing, Stein said.
For information and tickets for the 7:30 p.m. concert at Temple Sinai on August 25, and for information about the Theodore Bikel Legacy Fund, visit www.ashkenaz.ca.
