From left: Steve Sterner, Yelena Shmulenson and Allen L. Rickman in “The Essence: A Yiddish Dim Sum,” playing for four days in January Courtesy of the Congress for Jewish Culture

By Forverts Staff December 19, 2024

For four days in January 2025, you’ll be able to see a revival of the deliciously wacky show, The Essence: A Yiddish Theatre Dim Sum, in Manhattan.

Created and starring Allen Lewis Rickman and Yelena Shmulenson and presented by the Congress for Jewish Culture, The Essence is billed as an irreverent crash-course in Yiddish language and culture for people who don’t know or care much about it, taking audiences on an upbeat, slapstick chronological journey through the 150 year-old history of the Yiddish theater.

Together with Broadway veteran Steve Sterner, Shmulenson and Rickman perform songs, comic sketches and vaudeville. Along the 84-minute rollercoaster ride, the trio makes several detours into the Yiddish translation of the New Testament, Yiddish synonyms and, of course, the very imaginative list of Yiddish curses.

Yiddish Brief

A bissel of all things Yiddish: music, cooking, books and more.

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Audience members need no knowledge of Yiddish to appreciate the humor in “The Essence,” since all Yiddish lines are accompanied by English supertitles.

The Essence will perform for the following four nights only at the West Village’s Theater, 154 Christopher Street, in NYC.

Reserve tickets here.

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