Yiddish "Fiddler" Actors Form New Sexy Yiddish Singing Group Called "Mameles"

A trio of actors who met while members of the cast of the Yiddish version of Fiddler on the Roof have created a new singing group that brings back memories of The Barry Sisters.

As Julia Gergely wrote in the New York Jewish Week,

The women who make up the trio, Maya Jacobson, Raquel Nobile and Jodi Snyder, had gotten together for a night of fun and to reminisce about the 2018 production of “Fiddler on the Roof” (“Fidler afn Dakh”) at the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene, where they met as members of the cast.

Jacobson had been listening to The Barry Sisters — a duo whose Yiddish covers were wildly popular in the mid-20th century —  and realized it was time for the next generation to carry on the tradition.

“I heard The Barry Sisters’ version of ‘Abi Gezunt’ and I knew I wanted to record this with these two, my favorite people and some of the best performers I know, and make a trio,” Jacobson, 25, told the New York Jewish Week. “I knew people in the Jewish community would be really into this. Yiddish is such huge part of Jewish culture stomped on by the Holocaust that is really being found again.”

Despite acting in Yiddish productions and singing Yiddish covers, none of the women speaks Yiddish fluently, though Jacobson bragged that she had a continuous 71-day streak in Yiddish on the language-learning app Duolingo.

The name of the group, The Mamales, is an homage to the 1938 Polish Yiddish film “Mamele.” It starred Molly Picon, “Second Avenue’s longest-reigning queen and the best-known Yiddish actress/singer later on Broadway,” according to the Milken Archive of Jewish Music. Picon wrote the lyrics for Abraham Ellstein’s melody and performed "Abi Gezunt” in the film, where it became an instant hit.

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