Badchen

A badchen or badkhn (Yiddish: בּדחן, pronounced and sometimes written batkhn) is a type of Ashkenazic Jewish professional wedding entertainer, poet, sacred clown, and master of ceremonies originating in Eastern Europe, with a history dating back to at least the sixteenth or seventeenth century.

[1][2] The traditional role of the Eastern European badkhn evolved from older Medieval and Early Modern Jewish wedding entertainers, such as the lets (לץ) or marshelik (Yiddish: מאַרשעליק, romanized: marshélik, sometimes written marshalik), taking on a recognizable new form in seventeenth century Poland.

[6][7]) The earlier type of marshelik guided the ceremonies of the wedding in a more serious manner, but the badkhn turned the role into that a of a religiously-informed, moralistic comedian.

[3] With emigration from Europe, including to Ottoman Palestine, starting in the early nineteenth century and later to the United States, the practice spread to other parts of the world.

[3] With the rise of urbanization and the Haskalah, the role of the badkhn (and their partners, the klezmer musicians) declined in importance in Jewish life in the second half of the nineteenth century.

[9] Some modern cultural critics in the early Twentieth century even disdained their art form, such as Saul M. Ginsburg and Pesach Marek who called the badkhn a "mere mood manipulator at weddings" who "richly deserved the low status accorded to him in society".

[11] In this new context, the role of the badkhn is more limited than it traditionally was in Europe, and is often performed alongside a single keyboardist rather than a klezmer orchestra.

[13][7] He would speak and sing in Couplets, weaving in references to the Talmud and Tanach as well as making sarcastic commentary on contemporary life and doing impressions.

[5][3] The so-called "father of Yiddish poetry", Eliakum Zunser, was a former badkhn, as were many of the early actors in Abraham Goldfaden's theatre troupes as well as coffeehouse singers who are now long forgotten.

[3] As well, an early genre of Yiddish-language recorded music involved parodies of the badkhn's traditional performances by Yiddish Theatre actors such as Gus Goldstein,[21] Julius Guttman,[22] Molly Picon,[23] H. I. Reissmann,[24] and the aforementioned Seiden and Smulewitz.