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With a pioneering sense of eclecticism, he connected the dots between John Cage and James Brown, between Mahler and MTT’s famous grandfather, Boris Thomashefsky, a star of the New York Yiddish theater.

But they represent the global diversity of L.A.’s half-million Jews, melding the Hebrew and English spoken at day care with the Persian or Yiddish learned at home.

“I’m from Boyle Heights, so I know a little Yiddish, OK?”

“And Yiddish. And Mandarin. All bandapats do. Only there aren’t very many of us. We are endangered. I am the only one in Brooklyn. Possibly even in North America.”

Feldman, whose first language is Yiddish, emigrated to Berlin a decade ago.