Mascha Benya

After a short career as an opera singer in the Jüdischer Kulturbund in 1930s Berlin, she emigrated to New York after Kristallnacht and became an important figure in the teaching of Yiddish and Hebrew song through the Workman's Circle, Kaufman Music Center, and other organizations, as well as a touring singer, radio performer, and recording artist.

[6] After graduating from a Hebrew language Gymnasium, she traveled to Prussia, first studying in a small town near the Russian border and then at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin.

[6] After finishing her schooling in Berlin and receiving positive reviews for her stage appearances, she came to the attention of choral director Chemjo Vinaver.

[9][10][1] Among her successes in the Kulturbund were her performance of Jacques Offenbach material alongside the tenor Max Kuttner, and in stagings of Don Pasquale, Rigoletto and Si j'étais roi.

[5] During the 1940s and 1950s she was a vocal supporter of Labor Zionism and often performed at benefits for organizations affiliated with it in the United States, such as Pioneer Women and Hadassah.

[22][23][24] She also performed in a popular radio program alongside Sidor Belarsky, created by the education department of the Workmen's Circle and Joseph Mlotek; it was eventually released as an LP in 1957 called Amol iz geven a mayse/Once Upon a Time.

[25] She had a regular Friday morning show The Folk Singer on WEVD, the station owned by the Jewish Daily Forward, from 1958 until some time in the early 1960s.

[27][28] In September 1970 she visited relatives in Vilnius, Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, and was dismayed to see the deplorable condition of the Jewish community there.

[11] In 2005 she donated a scrapbook of photographs and clippings about her life as an artist with the Jüdischer Kulturbund to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.