During its heyday in the late 1930s, Yiddish movies covered a broad range of genres: comedies, soap operas, the supernatural, literary adaptations, musicals, and Lubitsch-style romances. Unified through language, gesture, and a common cultural sensibility, they captured the essence of the Jewish soul. Comprised of both the essential films (The Dybbuk, Tevya) and the lesser-known programmers (The Yiddish King Lear, Motel the Operator), this five-disc set captures the diversity of Yiddish film, and encourages a better appreciation of this most fascinating, but rarely-viewed genre.

The ten features in this collection were restored by Lobster Films, the result of an unprecedented collaboration between the Museum of Modern Art, the Deutsche Kinemathek and the Filmoteka Narodowa in Warsaw. Each film has been newly translated by noted Yiddish actor (the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man), playwright and translator Allen Lewis Rickman.

Special Features: -THE DYBBUK:

Audio commentary by J. Hoberman. Alternate 99-minute version

-AMERICAN MATCHMAKER: Audio commentary by Eve Sicular. Alternate version with 1940 subtitles. | OVERTURE TO GLORY: Audio commentary by Allen Lewis Rickman -TEVYA: Audio commentary by Allen Lewis Rickman

-HER SECOND MOTHER: Audio commentary by Allen Lewis Rickman. Alternate version with 1940 subtitles

-ELI ELI: Alternate version with 1940 subtitles

-Printed booklet including essays by journalist and historian Samuel Blumenfeld, film preservationist Serge Bromberg and Yiddish cultural historian Allen Lewis Rickman

-Theatrical trailer