The Family Business

Nobel Laureate Isaac Bashevis Singer called Mlotek’s grandparents, Yosl and Chana (Eleanor) Mlotek, “The Sherlock Holmes of Yiddish Song.” Mlotek’s father, Zalmen Mlotek, is the artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene. Avram grew up performing publicly with his father since he was three years old — hence the family business.

A talented bottle-dancer (yes, the bottle dance from Fiddler On The Roof) and a juggler, he has performed in gala concerts with Mandy Patinkin, Chava Alberstein, and other stars from the Yiddish stage. He can be seen in the “State of Siege 26/11” TV miniseries in the role of Levi Shemtov. He was an original cast-member of the Off-Broadway show Kids and Yiddish, reviewed in The New York Times and has participated in many staged readings for the National Yiddish Theatre.

While at Brandeis University, his favorite role was playing Henry Drummond in Inherit The Wind.

Producer

During COVID, Mlotek became a bit of an online producer, directing the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene's Kids and Yiddish: The Reunion Special. In the first months of the pandemic, Mlotek convened an online version of The Third Seder, featuring leading Klezmer and Yiddish theatre stars. The event was sponsored by over twenty Yiddish cultural organizations and has been seen upwards of 20,000 times. In 2021, Mlotek presented a recorded version of The Third Seder, A Yiddish Passover Celebration which can be viewed here.

Mlotek hosted Rabbi And A ____ Walk Into A Zoom where he interviewed an array of souls: Holocaust survivors, ethnomusicologists, Grammy Award winning musicians, Tony nominated directors, cantors, rabbis, priests, Sufi mystics, former KKK White Supremacists, and even President Obama’s former speech writer; episodes available here.

Amid Falling Walls

Avram Mlotek worked with his father Zalmen Mlotek to co-create a new musical project: Amid Falling Walls. Amid Falling Walls features Yiddish songs written and performed during the Holocaust. Based off the Holocaust music collection of Eleanor Mlotek, his grandmother, as well as material culled from survivor testimonies and poetry among other songs, Mlotek served as librettist. The title of the piece comes from Hirsh Glik’s partisan anthem, as Glik, age 22, wrote: “This song was written with our blood and not with lead…but a people amid crumbling walls did stand, they stood and sang this song with rifles held in hand.” Amid Falling Walls premiered at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Fall 2023. In April 2024 Amid Falling Walls won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revue and has subsequently been presented in Bucharest, Romania.