Mamele features the iconic Yiddish actress Molly Picon as a dutiful daughter who promises her dying mother that she’ll take care of the family, no matter what. Her father is too busy kibitzing and playing cards with his friends to bother working, and her small-time gangster brother, who is always either running from the law or to the ladies, can’t even begin to help keep the family on course. The young woman is so busy cooking, cleaning, and matchmaking for everyone else that she almost fails to notice the attractive violinist across the courtyard. This classic musical comedy embraces the entire gamut of interwar Jewish life in Lodz, Poland, in all its diversity, and includes the musical number that became Picon’s trademark, “Abi Gezunt.”