Leyke Post Carrey, Boston's Yiddish Diva

We immediately began to rehearse – and I quickly learned that with Leyke you didn’t just run through a song, you worked it out until it was a show unto itself. Also a gifted actress and storyteller, she would launch into a nineteenth-century Yiddish folk song and, within seconds, would have her late twentieth-century audience in stitches.

Born in Zhitomir, Ukraine in 1907, into a family who loved to entertain, she and her mother Freydl, also a Yiddish folksinger with a prodigious repertoire, joined her father Shloyme in Boston’s West End when she was 5 years old. She made her stage debut at a young age with a Yiddish touring company featuring the likes of the great matinee idol Michal Michalesko, performing Goldfaden’s “Heyse bapkelekh” ("Hot Babkas") while dressed as a boy. Soon she became a regular at Boston’s Grand Opera House, Shawmut Theater and Franklin Park Theater, and toured all over New England and in the Catskills, performing Yiddish folk, art and theater songs, often accompanied be the gifted pianist and composer, Reubin Osofsky.

She became a regular on Boston Jewish radio for over 25 years, using her maiden name, Leyke Post, and collaborating closely with legendary hosts Isadore Katz, Samuel Fisher, and Ben Gailing. Choosing to stay in Boston rather than pursue a career in New York, she became a regular entertainer at local events and a featured performer at the Workmen’s Circle Camp in Framingham, Massachusetts, where she had the opportunity to collaborate with the world’s top Yiddish singers and entertainers including Menashe Oppenheim, Sholem Tanyen of the Vilner Trupe, and the aforementioned Isa Kremer.

Her sons David and Henry both followed in her footsteps, learning and performing Yiddish repertoire, and David became a major star in New York’s Yiddish Theatre revival of the 1970s and 1980s (until his untimely death in 1985). Leye moved to New York in 1978, immediately gaining recognition in her own right, performing with David, on WEVD radio, in numerous off-Broadway productions, and as Woody Allen’s grandmother in the film “Radio Days.” In her later years, her son Henry kept her in the loop, regularly bringing her to Circle Lodge and Klezkamp, where she charmed a new generation with her rich and imaginative performances of obscure and forgotten repertoire. She died in 2004 at the age of 97.

When I met Leye, she was in her early eighties, not exactly the prime age for a trained singer. It was only more recently that I became aware that some of her radio performances had survived, thanks to the efforts of her son Henry and pioneering Yiddish music activist Hank Sapoznik. I am delighted to have the opportunity to share these recordings with all of you so that you can experience the joy of Yiddish folksong – as it’s meant to be sung.