Leba Sedaka and son Marc |
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld and
Zalman Mlotek |
Jeffrey Wiesenfeld and
Jack Lebewohl |
Jay Parker of Ben’s Deli in Rego Park,
Queens; Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, and
Jack Lebewohl of Second Ave. Deli
on Lower
East Side
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FOLKSBIENE
YIDDISH THEATER
Pop Star Neil
Sedaka Makes
Yiddish Debut At Carnegie Hall
 EW
YORK Mayor Michael Bloomberg credits Second Ave. Deli owner
Jack Lebewohl with assuring a permanent home for the only
professional Yiddish theater still remaining from the 14 that
thrived in the heyday of the Lower East Side.
At Carnegie Hall, where Neil
Sedaka was making his Yiddish debut in a benefit for the
Folksbiene Yiddish Theater, the mayor announced that in three
years New York’s only Yiddish theater would move into a
permanent home “right in the heart of what used to be the
Broadway of the Yiddish theater.”
World Trade Center
architect Daniel Libeskind, the mayor affirmed, “will
donate his time and talent to design a state-of-the-art theater”
for the Folksbiene.
Jack later told me how it
all came about. He met with the concert’s music director, Zalmen
Mlotek, and Bernstein Co. financial adviser Jeffrey
Wiesenfeld at the deli, of course, and offered to make the
Community Synagogue Center on 6th Street, between 1st
and 2nd Avenues, available to the Folksbiene.
It helped in no small
measure that Jack is the shul’s board chairman.
“The integrity of the
shul will remain on Shabbat and yom tov,” Jack said.
During the concert Sedaka
revealed that he’s the product of a mixed marriage: his
mother’s parents were Ashkenazim from Russia and his father’s
parents were Sephardim from Turkey.
Although he’s assured a
place in rock ‘n roll royalty as songwriter and singer – with
such hits as Breaking Up Is Hard To Do and Happy
Birthday Sweet Sixteen – he never forgot his Brighton Beach
roots. He sat down at the Steinway and sang Vee ahin zol ich
gehn and My Yiddish Mama.
In a duet with Claire
Barry he sang Ayshes Chayil, and with Joanne Borts,
Bei Mir Bistu Sheyn.
Sedaka started out from
Brooklyn’s Lincoln High School where he formed a rock group
called The Tokens. When they arrived at Esther Manor Hotel in
Monticello, Esther confronted them: “All the waiter and
busboy jobs are filled.”
No problem. Not only did
the group perform, but Sedaka ended up marrying Leba and
“Esther became my mother-in-law.”
They’ve been married 41
years and have a daughter Dara, 40, and son Marc,
37.
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