Theodore Bikel, 1924-2015: Folksinger for the Ages

A rather long post is coming this afternoon. Meanwhile: When the irreplaceable folk singer Pete Seeger died early last year, I ran a couple of posts about Seeger and the Middle East. One of these was to note a collaboration, as I described it then: "Pete Seeger, that other great [Jewish] folksinger Theodor Bikel, and Palestinian-Israeli poet Rashid Hussain sing about peace in Hebrew on Seeger's Rainbow Quest show in 1965. The song is "Hineh Mah Tov," meaning "How good and pleasant it is to sit as brothers together" (taken from Psalm 133). Unfortunately it's audio only."

The great Theodore Bikel has now left us at the age of 91, He could reportedly sing in 21 languages and was a great raconteur in several of them, so I must repeat it, again crediting my Managing Editor Jake Passel for introducing me to this: