Eleanor Chana Mlotek (née Gordon; April 9, 1922 – November 4, 2013) was a musicologist, specializing in

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

folklore.

Isaac Bashevis Singer Isaac Bashevis Singer ( yi, יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער; November 11, 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born American Jewish writer who wrote and published first in Yiddish and later translated himself into English with the help ...

, the Yiddish writer and Nobel laureate, once called Mlotek and her husband, Joseph, “the Sherlock Holmeses of Yiddish folk songs.” She was also inducted in

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

's Hall of Fame.

WorldCat WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...

lists her as author of 70 works in 112 editions, in 6 languages. They include both collections of music and exhibition catalogs of Yiddish authors. She held the position of Music Archivist at the

YIVO Institute for Jewish Research YIVO (Yiddish: , ) is an organization that preserves, studies, and teaches the cultural history of Jewish life throughout Eastern Europe, Germany, and Russia as well as orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to Yiddish. (The word '' ...

, and was also a columnist at the '' Yiddish Forward'' for over forty years. She was born in Brooklyn and is the mother of Zalmen Mlotek, the artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre -

Folksbiene The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, commonly known as NYTF, is a professional theater company in New York City which produces both Yiddish plays and plays translated into Yiddish, in a theater equipped with simultaneous superscript translati ...

, and Mark Mlotek, an attorney and current treasurer of The Forward. She died November 4, 2013 at home in the Bronx at the age of 91.

Publications

Books

*Mlotek, Eleanor G. ''

S. Ansky Shloyme Zanvl Rappoport (1863 – November 8, 1920), known by his pseudonym S. Ansky (or An-sky), was a Jewish author, playwright, researcher of Jewish folklore, polemicist, and cultural and political activist. He is best known for his play ' ...

: (Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport) 1863-1920 : His Life and Works : Catalog of an Exhibition.'' ew York YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 1980. *Mlotek, Eleanor G., Malke Gottlieb, and Roslyn Bresnick-Perry. ''מיר זיינען דא : לידער פון די געטאס און לאגערן '' / ''Mir Zaynen Do: Lider Fun Di Geṭos Un Lagern.'' (We are here: songs of the Holocaust) New York, N.Y.: Aroysgegebn fun Bildungs ḳomiṭeṭ fun Arbeṭer-ring, 1983."Music of the Holocaust: Highlights from the Collection" United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. *Mlotek, Eleanor and Joseph Mlotek. ''Songs of Generations: New Pearls of Yiddish Song.'' New York, NY: Workmen's Circle. *Mlotek, Eleanor and Joseph Mlotek. ''Pearls of Yiddish Song: Favorite Folk, Art and Theater Songs.'' New York, NY: Workmen's Circle, 1988. *Mlotek, Eleanor G. ''Mir Trogn A Gezang: Favorite Yiddish Songs.'' 4th Edition. New York, NY: Workmen's Circle, 2000. *Rubin, Ruth, Eleanor G. Mlotek, and Mark Slobin. ''Yiddish folksongs from the Ruth Rubin Archive.'' Detroit, Mich: Wayne State University Press, 2007. *Mlotek, Eleanor and Joseph Mlotek. ''Pearls of Yiddish Poetry.'' New York, NY: KTAV Publishing Press, 2010.

Journal articles

*Molotek, Eleanor Gordon. "International motifs in the Yiddish ballad" ''studies in Jewish Language and Literature'' 209-281 (1964) *Molotek, Eleanor Gordon. "America in East European folksong" ''The Field of Yiddish'' 1: 178-198 (1954)

References

1922 births 2013 deaths 20th-century American Jews American musicologists Jewish musicologists American women musicologists Female archivists Yiddish-language folklore People from Brooklyn History of YIVO 21st-century American Jews 20th-century American women 21st-century American women Jewish women writers {{US-music-bio-stub