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Remembering the Comedians

Walking into Lillian Lux\'s Lower East Side home in New York is like entering a museum of Yiddish theater. The apartment holds a photo of Lux and her husband -- the late Yiddish actor Pesach\'ke Burstein -- from an appearance in Argentina in the late 1930s. There also is a picture of Lux, Burstein and their actor-son, Mike, who now lives in Los Angeles, at a benefit for wounded Israeli soldiers.
[additional-authors]
February 6, 2003

Walking into Lillian Lux’s Lower East Side home in New York
is like entering a museum of Yiddish theater. The apartment holds a photo of
Lux and her husband — the late Yiddish actor Pesach’ke Burstein — from an
appearance in Argentina in the late 1930s. There also is a picture of Lux,
Burstein and their actor-son, Mike, who now lives in Los Angeles, at a benefit
for wounded Israeli soldiers.

Awards are strewn all over.

“Everything is a something,” Lux said. Something similar
could be said about Lux’s family: Everyone is a someone, as far as Yiddish theater
goes.

The patriarch of the family, Pesach’ke — he was both born
and died during Passover — was a Polish-born actor who became a matinee idol
during the Golden Era of Yiddish theater.

Along with Lux, whom Pesach’ke married after moving to America,
he traveled the world — Europe, Argentina, Israel — as one of the ambassadors
of Yiddish theater.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the two often performed together
with their two children, Mike and Susan — or Motele and Zisele, as they were
billed.

The story of the family, and of the history of 20th century
Yiddish theater, is told in a new documentary, “The Komediant,” that is being
released in theaters in the United States.

For Israeli director Arnon Goldfinger and screenwriter Oshra
Schwartz, the film served as a sort of therapy. In 1995, both were recently
separated from their spouses and needed a new project. Schwartz showed
Goldfinger an article about the son, who uses the name Mike Burstyn.

Goldfinger was skeptical, but agreed to meet Burstyn. The
director was won over, but it took Burstyn some time to be convinced that the
two Israelis were sincere in making a serious movie about his family and the
Yiddish theater.

In Israel, Yiddish, which lost out to Hebrew as the
country’s primary language, was denigrated as the language of Diaspora Jewry,
the language of the vanquished past. Goldfinger admits that he shared this
attitude until he made the film.

“It took time until we succeeded in gaining his trust,”
Goldfinger said of Burstyn. “We made it clear to him that we were not investing
so much time in order to ridicule Yiddish.”

But “The Komediant” — the name comes from one of Pesach’ke’s
best-known plays — goes to great lengths to show the often-tough reality of
life in the Yiddish theater. The backbiting among the actors as they competed
to join the Yiddish actors association is made clear.

“I went in with only one no. And I know who gave me the no,”
Lux said.

The fear of plays being stolen was so great that performers
were sometimes only given their own lines, not the lines of their fellow
actors.

“Back then, you never knew what your partner was going to
say,” Burstyn said.

Burstyn, in fact, eventually became an international actor,
known in Israel for his role in “The Two Kuni Lemls” and in America for his
role in “Barnum.”

Burstyn’s sister, Susan, despite her early success as a
ventriloquist, said she resents having had an unusual childhood. She left the
stage at an early age, married and retired from performing.

Director Goldfinger was nervous that the sister would not
agree to appear in the film. But she did, and offers a more critical view of
the family’s life on the road.

Similar to old-time actors on the Yiddish stage, the family
members did not know what the others were going to say.

“We ended up with a mosaic of stories — a number of
perspectives on the same events that at times unite and at times contradict one
another,” he said. “I think the film is loaded with layers.”

“The Komediant” will be screening
Friday, Feb. 21 at 1 p.m. at Tarbut V’Torah, 5200 Bonita Canyon Drive, Irvine.
For more information, call (714) 755-0340, ext. 134, or visit www.pjff.org .

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