![Kristin Gornstein as Shtumer Alef, Kelly Guerra as Pasekh Alef and Kate Maroney as Komets Alef — Photo Credit Brian Hatton [0173].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5c26374a372b968c8169c9b7/25aee34a-25b5-4b6c-bf9e-9efaed77aa6b/Kristin+Gornstein+as+Shtumer+Alef%2C+Kelly+Guerra+as+Pasekh+Alef+and+Kate+Maroney+as+Komets+Alef+%E2%80%94+Photo+Credit+Brian+Hatton+%5B0173%5D.jpg)
the great dictionary of the yiddish language
the great dictionary of the yiddish language
Composed by alex weiser
libretto by ben kaplan
The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language tells the tragi-comic story of Yiddish linguist Yudel Mark’s unfinished effort to create the first comprehensive Yiddish dictionary. The Great Dictionary invites audiences to contemplate the surprisingly grand ambition of Yiddish culture after its decimation during the Holocaust and to consider the power of language to transform and shape us.
With a runtime of 60 minutes, the concert is performed by an ensemble of five singers, combining characters based on historical figures with those inspired by Jewish mystical themes; the character of Yudel Mark is haunted by three ‘alefs,’ divine emanations of the Yiddish language—played by three mezzo-sopranos—who compel him to breathe new life into Yiddish as he struggles to complete the dictionary.
Full video from September 18, 2025 world premiere at YIVO: World Premiere
CREATORS
Born and raised in New York City, Alex Weiser creates acutely cosmopolitan music combining a deeply felt historical perspective with a vibrant forward-looking creativity hailed as “personal, expressive, and bold” (I Care If You Listen). Weiser’s debut album and all the days were purple, was named a 2020 Pulitzer Prize Finalist and cited as “a meditative and deeply spiritual work whose unexpected musical language is arresting and directly emotional.” Released by Cantaloupe Music in April 2019, the album includes songs in Yiddish and English.
Active as an opera composer, Weiser is currently working on two operas. Tevye’s Daughters, written with librettist Stephanie Fleischmann, is a commission from American Lyric Theater. Based on Sholem Aleichem’s iconic Yiddish stories, it explores the tragic death of Tevye’s lesser-known daughter, Shprintse. The opera also traces the lasting impact of Shprintse’s fate on her sisters who are now elderly and living in New York. The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language with librettist Ben Kaplan is set in 1950s post-war New York and follows linguist Yudel Mark as he sets out to write the world’s first fully comprehensive Yiddish dictionary — an effort of linguistic preservation, and a memorial to the dead.
Alex Weiser
Composer
Born in Brooklyn, NY, librettist Ben Kaplan studied literature and theater at Williams College. He currently serves as Director of Education at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where he directs programs that teach Jewish history and culture to a broad and diverse audience. These programs include the Uriel Weinreich Summer Program in Yiddish Language, Literature, and Culture and the YIVO-Bard Winter Program on Ashkenazi Civilization. As a librettist, he creates historically informed dramatic works that chronicle turning points in history lost to contemporary cultural discourse.
Ben Kaplan
Librettist
partners
BANG ON A CAN’S LONG PLAY FESTIVAL
Bang on a Can presents the 3rd annual Long Play, a three-day destination music festival, Friday, May 3 through Sunday, May 5, 2024! Featuring 50+ concerts (including Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith, Jeff Mills's Tomorrow Comes the Harvest, Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, Deerhoof, BlankFor.ms + Jason Moran, Ligeti Quartet, Raw Poetic and Damu the Fudgemunk, Bang on a Can All-Stars performing Ryuichi Sakamoto's 1996, ), Long Play also showcases a dense network of inventive music venues in Brooklyn – with performances at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), Roulette, Public Records, BRIC, Irondale Center for the Arts, The Center for Fiction, plus outdoor events and more.
the neighborhood: an urban center for jewish life
The Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Life is an inclusive and welcoming community. We aim to nurture Brooklyn’s role as a hub for Jewish art and culture, locally and from around the world. We produce programs that raise up underrepresented perspectives, and welcome the thousands of Brooklynites that have not yet found their Jewish home. We are creating a welcoming space that reflects the spirit of Brooklyn -- future-thinking and deeply historical, iconoclastic, and sacred.
PRESS
“...both meaningful and funny.” — Rob Tannenbaum, The New York Times
“The score, free of Klezmer clichés, features tuneful, Sondheim-esque arias interspersed with striking, harmonically pungent sections for the Alefs... It’s a taut, impactful chamber opera and I hope it’s performed again.” — Vivien Schweitzer, former New York Times music critic, Vivien’s Substack
“...an unlikely but passionate opera.” — Joanne Palmer, The Jewish Standard
“No lover of Yiddish should miss this one-of-a-kind theatrical experience” — Jennifer Stern, The Forward
“...an ambitious, larger-than-life spectacle befitting the dazzling ambitions of the creators of the Yiddish dictionary…Composer Alex Weiser and librettist Ben Kaplan endow enchantment and glamor… In recreating the Yiddishist polemics on stage, Kaplan and Weiser excel at capturing the paradoxical nature of postwar Yiddishism, which was simultaneously petty and visionary, cosmopolitan and parochial, messianic, but also highly pragmatic, lachrymose and uplifting, tragic and comic, and everything in between.” — Ofer Dynes, In Geveb
Press Links
Vivien’s Substack | Words, Visions and Tunes
The New York Times | Ardent Bickering That Defined A Yiddish Dictionary
Jewish Standard | Words and music about words
JTA/NY Jewish Week | At YIVO, an unfinished Yiddish dictionary gets the last word — as opera
Forward | An unprecedented, and unfinished, work of Yiddish scholarship is now an opera
Congress for Jewish Culture | Remembering Yudel Mark
Forward | Opera about a unique Yiddish dictionary to have its world premiere
Opera Wire | The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language Set for World Premiere at NYC’s YIVO Institute
In Geveb | In The Great Dictionary of Yiddish Language, the dictionary dazzles
Pakn-treger | “Every Word Deserves to Be Remembered": How an Unfinished Dictionary Inspired an Opera
The Shmooze | The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language
Forward | Opera brings to life the poignant fate of the Great Yiddish Dictionary
פֿאָרװערטס | אָפּערע אַנטפּלעקט די ווייניק־באַקאַנטע געשיכטע פֿון גרויסן ייִדישן ווערטערבוך (Yiddish)
Information
Duration 60' / no intermission
Commission The Great Dictionary of the Yiddish Language is currently in development with American Opera Projects (AOP), in collboration with The Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Youth. A December 2022 developmental workshop was supported by the 14th Street Y and LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture, with additional support from Asylum Arts. Excerpts of the opera have also been performed live on the radio at Toronto 96.3FM as part of Jewish Music Week in June 2023.
Premiere September 18, 2025 at YIVO
Roles 5 singers (3 mezzo-sopranos, 1 tenor,1 baritone)
Instrumentation clarinet, string quintet, piano
Publisher Bang on a Can’s Long Play; The Neighborhood: An Urban Center for Jewish Life. Staged performances of this work require licensing through the creators.