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A Yiddish circus in a suitcase

JL;DR SUMMARY Tsirk Dobranotch, Germany's first Yiddish circus company, blends klezmer music and circus artistry to revive the rich, if nearly forgotten, heritage of Jewish circus traditions in Europe. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Jewish HistoryKlezmer MusicYiddish CultureMigrationGerman JewsJewish CircusTsirk DobranotchSiegmund Zishe BreitbartEliana Pliskin JacobsSam Gurwitt

Places mentioned

Berlin, Germany
"Jacobs, an aerialist and singer, has been dreaming of creating a klezmer circus ever since she entered the Yiddish scene in Berlin and other cities in Germany around 2018."
Dresden, Saxony, Germany
"Tsirk Dobranotchs first show, Das Fliegende Balagan, (Yiddishized German for flying bedlam) premiered in Dresden in 2023."
St. Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation
"Dobranotch members Mitia Khramtsov, Germina Gordienko, Ilya Gindin, and Evgenii Lizin are from St. Petersburg and fled to Germany after Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022."
Ukraine
"They were joined by Paul Milmeister, who was born in Ukraine and migrated to Germany as a teenager."
Turkey
"Some of the Tshemodan shows feature Bertan Canbeldek, an acrobat who was born in Germany to Turkish parents, as a guest artist."
Lodz, Łódź, Poland
"Born in 1897 and raised in the Yiddish-speaking community of Lodz (at that time part of the Russian Empire), Breitbart overtly expressed his Jewishness on stage."

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Retrieved 2025-11-11 05:30:54 UTC
Curated 2025-11-11 08:31:36 UTC