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Newsletter : 9fax0222.txt
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>JN Feb. 22, 1999, Vol. 7, No 36
King Abdullah Says He's Israel's Brother
By IsraelWire
Jordan's King Abdullah told visiting leaders of US Jewish groups he considered himself a brother of Israel and expected bilateral ties to grow stronger.
Melvin Salberg, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major
American Jewish Organizations, and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive
vice-chairman, told a Jerusalem news conference they met the king
privately for about 20 minutes in Jordan earlier this month.
"He did say that he looked forward to working with Prime Minister
Netanyahu (and) said that he wanted to be considered a brother.
He spoke very warmly of ties to Israel and of the US-Israel
relationship and we indicated that we were prepared to support and
to continue our advocacy for (US) aid to Jordan."
The king said he was dedicated to pursuing peace in the Middle
East, Salberg said. "He made it very clear that the relationship
with Israel was a very strong one and would get stronger."
Mandy Patinkin's "Mamaloshen"
By Robin Rupli (VOA-Washington)
One of America's most versatile entertainers, Mandy Patinkin
appeared earlier this month at the John F. Kennedy Center for the
Performing Arts in a concert of Yiddish music. It's the first stop
of the national tour of his critically acclaimed off-Broadway
concert, Mamaloshen, which means "mother tongue." Winner of
numerous awards, both on Broadway and television, Patinkin is
perhaps best known to American audiences for his role as a doctor
in the television drama, Chicago Hope.
Patinkin's latest recording, Mamaloshen, is, like his concert, an
eclectic mix of ballads, dances and folk tunes dating to the turn
of the century. His singing is distinctive -- with a vocal range
that reaches from a rich baritone to high falsetto -- Patinkin has
never been easy to categorize. But he says singing in Yiddish is
a natural progression of performing music of the great American
songwriters, many of whom were Jewish immigrants.
"Guys like Leonard Bernstein, Paul Simon, Steve Sondheim, Irving Berlin -- Irving Berlin, whose first language was Yiddish, one of our most prolific songwriters -- never wrote a single Yiddish song. I found that astounding, and yet when I listened to this music of Bernstein and all these others, I started to realize that the Yiddishkites were the teachers of the guys of Tin Pan Alley that when you listen to the music, the music is the same. And when you listen to the words you realize that nobody was a better storyteller than these Yiddish guys.
"And what these guys like Sondheim and Bernstein and Berlin took
on, Harold Arlen, they all became great storytellers and they
learned from their teachers who were the Yiddishkites."
Patinkin made his Broadway debut in 1980, in the musical Evita, for
which he won a Tony award and was again nominated in 1985 for his
starring role in the Pulitzer Prize winning musical, Sunday in the
Park.
"The main lesson I learned from working on the piece is that it's not so much about being a Jew at all. It just so happens that I am a Jew and that's the story I told, but what came out of the whole piece was that it's a story about being an American. It's a story of an immigrant. And it could have been any language. It could have been in Irish, Polish, German, Hispanic, it could have been anything."
Patinkin's Mamaloshen premiered last summer off-Broadway in New
York to a sold-out engagement. Although most of the songs he sings
are in Yiddish, he also includes some popular songs in English.
Patinkin is currently on tour with Mamaloshen to other cities.
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