VIDEO: A humorous Yom Kippur tale about a shtetl cantor (with English subtitles)
![Shane Baker](https://forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/shane-baker-close-up.jpg)
Shane Baker Image by Congress for Jewish Culture
In Sholem Aleichem’s short story, “The Yom Kippur Cantor – Someone to Envy,” a pauper known as Meylekh the Cantor dies immediately after neilah, the last prayer on Yom Kippur. According to Jewish tradition, only a tsadik, a truly righteous person, has the merit of achieving this. So what are the townspeople to make of this?
In this clip, Yiddish actor and cultural activist Shane Baker makes the story come alive. The video is subtitled, enabling those people who don’t understand Yiddish to get a taste of why Sholem Aleichem has been so popular with readers for over a hundred years.
A message from Forverts editor Rukhl Schaechter
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I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forverts' 127-year legacy — and its bright future.
In the past, the goal of the Forverts was to Americanize its readers, to encourage them to learn English well and to acculturate to American society. Today, our goal is the reverse: to acquaint readers — especially those with Eastern European roots — with their Jewish cultural heritage, through the Yiddish language, literature, recipes and songs.
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— Rukhl Schaechter, Yiddish Editor