Sam Kestin describes 50 years in the Yiddish Theater
Preface
This website is an active work in progress. Please follow along, and please also excuse any typos!
Like many other well-known names in the American Yiddish theater, Sam Kasten (written in Yiddish as “Kestin”), my great-great grandfather, published his memoirs as serialized articles in Forverts (The Forward, aka The Jewish Daily Forward), likely ghost written by Mendel Osherowitch. Two articles per week, from September 1946 - February 1947, were published, for a total of 45 articles.
Sam Kestin describes of 50 years of Yiddish Theater
The famous comedian, who for 50 years has been dancing and singing on the Yiddish stage, tells his memories for Forverts. Dramatic, romantic, funny, and comical tales that occurred in and around the Yiddish theater in the last half century.
Start reading Sam Kestin’s articles in Forverts Saturday, September 7th. The articles will appear twice a week, Thursday and Saturday.
This e-book contains my translation of these memoirs, with some important caveats:
This is an “alpha” version of the translation.
I am only beginning to learn Yiddish. For my first pass at translating, I typed up all 45 articles into Google Translate and got some “good enough to get the gist” translations.
This e-book represents my second pass at translation, using my new beginner Yiddish skills and with lots of help from an English-Yiddish dictionary, posting on this website as I go. Throughout, I indicate spots where I’m very unsure of my translation. Most of this is a highly verbatim translation, but in certain areas I do shift towards a more natural translation rephrased for the English ear. As I continue learning Yiddish, I plan to update this translation over time as part of a long-term, living project dedicated to Sam’s life and legacy, along with new translations of other articles he wrote and/or were written about him.
Where possible, I have cross-referenced items Sam discusses, as detailed in footnotes and inserted images.
I obtained all memoirs articles from The National Library of Israel and, for those newspaper editions that were not available online, from the New York Public Library’s microfiche archives.
Many thanks to librarians at NYPL’s Dorot Division for support finding the “missing” articles! Thanks also to Steve Lasky and other volunteers who have contributed to the Museum of the Family History for making many translations from Zalmen Zylbercweig’s Leksikon fun Yidishn Teater available! They have been invaluable for cross-referencing.
In memory of Sol Glassman ז׳׳ל, whose untimely death sent me down an ancestry rabbit hole wherein I accidentally ended up at Sam (who is wholly unrelated to Sol), and discovered a treasure trove of Yiddish writings. Uniting the two sides of my family through Yiddish Theater is, simply put, beshert.