By Rachel Field

Legendary folklorist Chana Mlotek grew up in the Bronx in a Yiddish-speaking home. Born on April 9, 1922 in the East New York section of Brooklyn, she was immersed in Yiddish culture from childhood. Her father was an amateur actor who taught his children songs of the Yiddish theatre, and her sister was a pianist. Chana, too, was an accomplished pianist, studying with Jacob Helman, a student of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt. Mlotek attended the Yiddish High School of the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute, and later, Hunter College, where she studied French and music. Referred to by Isaac Bashevis Singer as “The Sherlock Holmes of Yiddish Folklore,” Chana Mlotek tirelessly collected and wrote about thousands of Yiddish folk songs and, along with Ruth Rubin, is credited with reviving interest in Yiddish folklore.¹ For Mlotek, the collection of Yiddish folk songs provided a means of understanding Jewish practice and tradition.²

In 1944, Chana Mlotek began working at YIVO and in 1946, became the assistant to YIVO’s founder Max Weinreich. Below is a photograph of Mlotek with Max Weinreich.

While working at YIVO, Mlotek founded the Y. L. Cahan Folklore Club. Members of the club included Max Weinreich’s son and daugher-in-law–Uriel and Bina Weinreich. The club published a magazine, “Yidisher Folklor,” which contained songs and information about composers and lyricists. Mlotek’s engagement with Cahan’s work can be seen in many of her writings, including “Traces of Ballad Motifs in Yiddish Folk Song” (1954), “America in East European Yiddish Folksongs” (1965), and “Soviet-Yiddish Folklore Scholarship” (1977).³

In 1948, Mlotek was awarded one of twelve scholarships to study in the new folklore and linguistics program, headed by Weinreich, at UCLA. There, she met Joseph Mlotek, whom she would marry in 1949. In 1970, Mlotek and her husband began to write a bi-weekly column for the Yiddish newspaper, The Forverts, entitled “Perl fun der Yidisher poezie” (“Pearl of Yiddish Poetry”). Readers would submit songs or even fragments of songs that they remembered from their childhoods. Mlotek and her husband would research and identify the songs and publish articles on them. Mlotek contintued the column until her death in 2011. Below is one of the responses that Mlotek and her husband wrote. The article reads: “Clara Krasner sent a recording with several songs that she remembers from her hometown of Sharograd.” The column goes on to state where and when Krasner heard one of the songs, provides the lyrics, explains that the song is a variant of two songs, and lists where the original songs can be found.

Together, Mlotek and her husband published three anthologies of Yiddish folk songs: Mir Trogn a Gezang (1972), Perl fun der yidisher poezie (1974), and Songs of Generations (1996). Mlotek also published two collections of Holocaust songs with Malke Gottlieb–25 Getto Lider (1968)  and Mir zaynen do (1983).

Mlotek was a music teacher at the Arbeter Ring, the Sholem Aleichem Folk Schools, and Camp Boiberik, a Yiddish camp in Rhinebeck, New York. In addition to collecting and cataloguing folk songs, Mlotek composed her own music. Here is a video made at YIVO of Chana Mlotek singing a Rosh Hashana song that she wrote:

Mlotek also organized shows and plays through her children’s Yiddish School mother’s clubs. For Mlotek, such activities played a central role in her commitment to preserving “Yiddishkeit.”⁴ A photograph of Mlotek with a Yiddish-speaking mothers’ group affiliated with the Workmen’s Circle can be found below.

In 1978, after a hiatus as a result of illness, Mlotek resumed work at YIVO under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and became YIVO’s music archivist in 1984. In her later years, her extensive knowledge of folk songs was frequently enlisted for projects such as Mandy Patinkin’s Yiddish performance series as well as Michael Tilson Thomas’ work commemorating his grandparents, the well-known stars of the Yiddish theatre–the Thomashefskys.

In 2007, Mlotek published an anthology of Yiddish folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive with Mark Slobin. Mlotek died on November 4, 2013. Here is her obituary in the Yiddish Daily Forward.

Image Sources

Figure 1. https://www.yivo.org/chana-mlotek-april-9-1922-november-4-2013 Accessed June 28, 2021.
Figure 2. https://yiddishsong.wordpress.com/tag/chana-mlotek/ Accessed May 12, 2015.
Figure 3. http://forward.com/sisterhood/187055/recalling-chana-mlotek-mother-of-yiddish-music/ Accessed May 12, 2015.

Works Cited

Berger, Joseph. “A Yiddishe Momme of Music, Chana Mlotek, Dies at 91.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 04 Nov. 2013. Accessed May 12, 2015.

“Chana Mlotek: April 9, 1922-November 4, 2013.” News from YIVO. YIVO, 6 Nov. 2013. Accessed July 14, 2021.

“Chana Mlotek’s Oral History.” Interview. Yiddish Book Center. Yiddish Book Center, n.d. Accessed July 14, 2021. <http://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/oral-history/chana-mlotek>.

“Chana Mlotek” Interview by Hankus Netsky. “15 Aug. 2011 Yiddish Book Center: Yiddish Book Center (Benno): Free Download & Streaming: Internet Archive.” Internet Archive. Yiddish Book Center, n.d. Accessed July 14, 2021.

Gottesman, Itzik. “Chana Mlotek, Yiddish Folksong Scholar, Dies at 91.” The Forward. The Forward Association, 4 Nov. 2013. Accessed July 14, 2021.

“In Memoriam: Chana Mlotek.” In Memoriam: Chana Mlotek. The Hebrew Institute of Jerusalem Jewish Music Research Center, n.d. Accessed July 14, 2021.

“Yiddish Song of the Week.” Yiddish Song of the Week. An-sky Jewish Folklore Research Project, n.d. Accessed July 14, 2021.

Footnotes

1. Berger, Joseph. “A Yiddishe Momme of Music, Chana Mlotek, Dies at 91,” The New York Times. 4 Nov. 2013.
2. Chana Mlotek, Interview, 4 Nov. 2011.
3. “In Memoriam: Chana Mlotek.” Jewish Research Music Center, 11 May 2015. <http://www.jewish-music.huji.ac.il/content/memoriam-chana-mlotek>.
4. Chana Mlotek, Interview, 4 Nov. 2011.