Yiddish

Baltimore Choral Arts Society. 10 a.m. to 12: 30 p.m. March 4 at Kraushaar Auditorium, Goucher College, 1021 Dulaney Valley Road. Experienced singers needed for performance of Mendelssohn's "Elijah," with full chorus and orchestra, opera singer James Morris, the Soldier's Chorus, the Peabody Children's Chorus. Auditions consist of scales to determine range, a brief song or aria of choice, a prepared piece, interval identification, and rhythmic and melodic sight-reading. By appointment only.

Albert Kilberg, a retired clothing manufacturing executive, died of a heart attack Monday at his home in Harper House in Cross Keys. He was 92. Mr. Kilberg, the son of Russian immigrant parents, was born in Baltimore and raised on Ann Street. One of seven siblings, he helped support his family by delivering Yiddish newspapers. He was a 1933 graduate of City College. During World War II, he served as a captain in the Army Supply Corps in the European theater of operations. Mr. Kilberg played a pivotal role in procuring and delivering supplies needed for the historic Yalta Conference that was held early in 1945.

Herb Gardner has written about crotchety old men ("I'm Not Rappaport") and crotchety young men ("A Thousand Clowns"). So it's no surprise that there's a crotchety character at the center of "Conversations With My Father." The character in this case, as the title suggests, is at least partly based on his own father, and the script is his richest and most psychologically complex yet.Spanning 40 years beginning in 1936 and calling for a cast of a dozen, many of whom age accordingly, "Conversations" is a challenging play for a little theater.

DR. PHILIP MYERS (nee Tandetnik); son of the late Zelda and Max Myers (Tandetnik); brother of the late Morris and Israel Myers and the late Dora Lachman; uncle of Jonathan and Beverly Myers, Judith and Herschel Langenthal, Paula and Ralph Gilbert, Lynn and Bernie Turiel, Robert Myers and Walter Myers and numerous great nephews and nieces. Private interment at the Garrison Forest Veterans Cemetery in Owing Mills, MD. Contributions to the Yiddish Book Fund at the Sheridan Library of John Hopkins University and Uriah P. Levy Center and Jewish Chapel at the Naval Academy, 326 First Street, Suite 11, Annapolis, MD 21043.

William S. Miller, a retired mechanical engineer who was also a model railroad and dollhouse enthusiast, died Wednesday in his sleep at Emeritus at Pikesville, an assisted-living facility. He was 101. William Samuel Miller, whose parents emigrated from Lithuania, was the son of a tailor and a homemaker. As a youth, he worked in his father's shop while attending Polytechnic Institute, from which he graduated in 1927. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1930 in mechanical engineering from the Johns Hopkins University.

Samuel Moss, a retired home-improvement business owner who broadcast a weekly radio show filled with nostalgic reveries of old East Baltimore, Yiddish expressions and a dose of jokes, died Thursday of a heart attack at his Pikesville home. He was 86. His AM radio program, The Sam Moss Jewish Hour of Comedy and Pride, which aired for nearly 30 years on Sunday afternoons, went off the air in June. "He had a love of Jewish culture, accents, foods and family celebrations," said his son, Franklin Moss of Weston, Mass.

When "Borscht Capades '94" bills itself as a "vaudeville gone meshugah," you know you're in for madly whirling klezmer music, surreal send-ups of the popular songs of yesteryear and comedy skits older than the hills (namely, the Catskills).This show is a generous ladling of Yiddish entertainment, but it's also a heartfelt tribute by master showman Joel Grey to his father, the late musician and comedian Mickey Katz.If the latter name doesn't ring a bell, clarinet or, for that matter, any other novelty band instrument, you may have trouble emotionally connecting to some of the nonsense and sentiment on stage at the Mechanic Theater through this weekend.

Schmoozer? Did someone call him schmoozer? A younger Gerard E. Evans wasn't certain what the guy meant, being somewhat new to Annapolis and unacquainted with the lingo. Sure enough, he says some politico looked at him and used the word, and that moment 10 years ago was the first time he'd heard it."I took it as a term of kind of endearment," says Mr. Evans, 40, a gregarious man who today ranks as Maryland's highest-paid lobbyist.Schmoozer, a noun; one who schmoozes, a verb. This is a good thing, right?

It was the day before Passover at the Columbia Mall. As Jewish shoppers made their way between the Great American Cookie Company and the Imposters jewelry store, many stopped and stared at the wooden cart in between."

The stage lights at Colonial Players, the Annapolis Summer Garden and other community theater venues will seem to shine a bit less brightly this season because of the death of Stan Morrow, one of the area's finest actors, who died of cancer at Anne Arundel Medical Center Sept. 3. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1928, Morrow moved in 1954 to Maryland, where he worked for the American Automobile Association as group travel director and operated a travel business after retiring. His greatest passion was the stage.