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Neil Jacobs is a Professor in the Yiddish and Ashkenazic Studies Program, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures,
The Ohio State University

This talk focuses on the use of language in Ashkenazic Jewish cabaret. At a time when large segments of European Jewry were renegotiating their identities-breaking with traditional culture and creating new cultural patterns in line with the promises of the Enlightenment for opportunities of inclusion in general society-cabaret was an especially attractive medium for modernizing Jews. Jewish participation-both as performers and as audience-was particularly strong in the "general" cabarets emerging in centers such as Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, and Amsterdam. These "general" cabarets, however, frequently avoided Jewish themes or topics-at least overtly. Rather, one must look to the subtexts and the covert signaling; here, a clear set of performance structures may be discerned which distinguish "Jewish" cabaret from "general" cabaret.

The present talk identifies three main distinctive features of Jewish cabaret: (1) "name rap"; (2) use of other "Others" as ersatz-Jews; (3) a special type of performative code-switching. Examples are provided from a number of performers, from several countries, and representing a span of approximately one hundred years of recordings. Particular focus will be on pieces in English, German, Yiddish, Dutch, and "fake Russian", as well as on mixed-language pieces. While cabaret is seen as an artifact of modernity, the examination of Jewish cabaret reveals the continuation of traditional Jewish cultural and linguistic templates, reconfigured for the new contexts of modernity. As part of the acculturation process, the traditional templates had to go underground, emerging as covert signals. Yet these covert signals were clear, poignant, and painful, both to the performers and to the audience paying the price of admission for a promise of better days to come. Collectively, the body of works found in Jewish cabaret provides us with an invaluable window into Jewish life in a time of change.