{"id":2269,"date":"2015-05-12T22:10:53","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T22:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wyvern.ctl.columbia.edu\/?p=273"},"modified":"2021-07-14T10:12:21","modified_gmt":"2021-07-14T10:12:21","slug":"chana-mlotek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/arts\/chana-mlotek\/","title":{"rendered":"Chana Mlotek"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Rachel Field<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u00a0amateur actor who taught his children songs of the Yiddish theatre, and her sister was a\u00a0pianist. Chana, too, was an accomplished pianist, studying with\u00a0Jacob Helman, a student of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt.\u00a0Mlotek attended the Yiddish High School of the Sholem Aleichem Folk Institute, and later, Hunter College, where she\u00a0studied French and music. Referred to by Isaac Bashevis Singer as\u00a0“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.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> For Mlotek, the collection of Yiddish folk songs provided a means of understanding Jewish practice and tradition.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1944, Chana Mlotek began working at YIVO and in 1946, became the assistant to YIVO’s\u00a0founder\u00a0Max Weinreich.\u00a0Below is a photograph of Mlotek with Max Weinreich.<\/p>\n

\"Mlotek<\/a>
Figure 1. Chana Mlotek with Max Weinreich in 1951.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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\u201d (1977).<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0began to write a bi-weekly column for the Yiddish newspaper, The Forverts,<\/em>\u00a0entitled “Perl fun der Yidisher poezie”\u00a0(“Pearl\u00a0of 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\u00a0contintued the column until her death in 2011.\u00a0Below is one of the\u00a0responses that Mlotek and her husband wrote. The article reads: “Clara Krasner sent a recording with several songs\u00a0that she remembers from her hometown of Sharograd.” The column goes on to state where and when\u00a0Krasner\u00a0heard 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.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Figure 2. Mloteks’ column in Forverts<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Together, Mlotek and her husband published three anthologies of Yiddish folk songs: Mir Trogn a Gezang<\/em> (1972), Perl fun der yidisher poezie <\/em>(1974), and Songs of Generations <\/em>(1996). Mlotek also published two collections of Holocaust songs with\u00a0Malke Gottlieb–25 Getto Lider<\/em>\u00a0(1968) \u00a0and Mir zaynen do<\/em>\u00a0(1983).<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n