Press Releases
Immigrant Songs: Yiddish Theater and the American Jewish Experience Now Streaming April 17 — Public Premiere April 21 at UCLA
New documentary from the Milken Archive of Jewish Music recovers a formative — and little-known — chapter in American Jewish history
March 31, 2026
“The Milken Archive has always been committed to preserving and celebrating the music that defines the American Jewish experience. Immigrant Songs is a natural extension of that mission — a film that not only educates, but also moves audiences to rediscover a world of music and culture that helped build America.”
— Lowell Milken, Founder, Milken Archive of Jewish Music, and Executive Producer
LOS ANGELES — The Milken Archive of Jewish Music, an initiative of the Milken Family Foundation, announces the release of Immigrant Songs: Yiddish Theater and the American Jewish Experience, a landmark 46-minute documentary now available to stream beginning April 17, 2026, on Amazon Prime Video, Hoopla, and the Naxos Video Library. The film’s public premiere will follow on Tuesday, April 21 at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall in Los Angeles.
Immigrant Songs traces the arc of Yiddish theater from its origins in Eastern Europe under pioneering figures like Avrom Goldfaden and Boris Thomashefsky, through its golden age in the 1920s and 1930s on Manhattan’s Second Avenue, to its mid-century decline and remarkable modern revival — culminating in the celebrated 2018 production of Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish (Fidler afn Dakh). Through archival footage, original music by Frank London, and testimony from more than 20 leading scholars and performers, the film illuminates a world that was at once deeply rooted in Eastern European Jewish culture and transformative in its encounter with American life.
The film was directed by Jeff Janeczko (Ph.D., Ethnomusicology, UCLA), curator and COO of the Milken Archive, and written by Jeff Janeczko and Barak Goldman. It was produced by Mark Kligman (Mickey Katz Endowed Chair in Jewish Music; Director Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience, UCLA), Barak Goldman (writer/producer, Milken Family Foundation), and Nikki Parker Hayes (vice president of postproduction, Milken Family Foundation), with Lowell Milken serving as executive producer.
The film features an extraordinary cast of historians, ethnomusicologists, theater critics, and performing artists — including actor and director Joel Grey; Zalmen Mlotek, artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene; Mark Slobin, professor emeritus of Music at Wesleyan University; Hankus Netsky, instructor, musician and scholar of Jewish American music at the New England Conservatory; actor Avi Hoffman; Hasia Diner, professor emerita at NYU; Debra Caplan (Baruch College, CUNY); and Edna Nahshon (Jewish Theological Seminary), among others.
“By far the best documentary I’ve seen on the subject.”
— Mark Slobin, Professor Emeritus of Music, Wesleyan University
Immigrant Songs is available to stream on Amazon Prime Video, Hoopla, and the Naxos Video Library beginning April 17, 2026. Educational resources for classroom and community use will be available at milkenarchive.org.
The public premiere takes place Tuesday, April 21, 2026, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. at UCLA’s Schoenberg Hall, 445 Charles E. Young Dr. E, Los Angeles, CA 90095. RSVP using this link.
About the Milken Archive of Jewish Music
Founded in 1990 by Lowell Milken, the Milken Archive of Jewish Music: The American Experience is an initiative of the Milken Family Foundation dedicated to preserving, disseminating, and deepening public understanding of music in the American Jewish experience. The Milken Archive has recorded more than 600 musical works and maintains a vast collection of educational resources — including extended essays, biographies, short documentary films, and oral histories — available at milkenarchive.org. For more information, visit www.mff.org.