Volunteer Profile
TIKUN OLAM - DECEMBER 2004

You wouldn’t peg a young actor brought up in a Cowansville, Quebec Protestant household as your typical Jewish community volunteer. Nor would you expect to find him putting his acting talent towards keeping an old Jewish tradition alive in both Quebec and Europe.

Brad Picken, 29, has found a new home in the Saidye Bronfman Centres’ Yiddish Theatre group, whose mandate is to carry the Yiddish language forward, making it accessible through art and opening Jewish heritage to a new generation of Montrealers.

Picken plays Sasha, a Russian character in the Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre’s production of Fiddler on the Roof. The company puts on one production every year, performed entirely in Yiddish, with English subtitles. With no previous exposure to the language, Brad picked up his Yiddish lines with the help of diction coaches and his fellow actors. “It was one of the most wonderful groups I have worked with,” he says, “everyone is so welcoming and warm, it’s like a big family.”

The Yiddish Theatre group, championed by the late Dora Wasserman, headed to Vienna this November to perform Fiddler for the small Jewish community that remains in the area. “It’s very meaningful for us to bring our show to Vienna – Austrian Jews were one of the first of Hitler’s targets and it’s symbolic to bring Yiddish culture back to its birthplace. We’re giving them a chance to see how Yiddish has spread and is still alive and well in other parts of the world,” he says.

Also working as a teaching assistant for a predominantly Jewish primary school for children with special needs, he finds exposure to Judaism helps him to greater relate to his students.

His prominent performance in Fiddler on the Roof landed him the part of the barber in the Saidye Bronfman Centre’s upcoming production of Man of La Mancha. He hopes to remain an active member of the Yiddish Theatre family well into the future.

“I never had a curiosity towards Jewish culture or the inclination to even go near learning Yiddish because I was never exposed to it – but this experience has opened my eyes and I’m inclined to learn more,” he says.

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