By Brad Rosenstein

ASIDE FROM the occasional enlivening word thrown into conversation, the Yiddish I grew up with consisted primarily of the guttural syllables my grandparents lapsed into when they didn't want us to understand their conversation. It was the language of secrets, a deliberately closed book. So it feels entirely fitting that A Traveling Jewish Theatre's new ensemble work, Diamonds in the Dark: A Celebration of Yiddish Poetry, should serve to reopen both that book and the company's renovated theater: this is a homecoming in many senses.

First, of course, it's a homecoming to language. The piece consists of poems by 15 noted Yiddish poets working with a wide range of methods and themes, from Rebbe Levi Yitzhok's astounding "dudele" ("The You-Song"), a beat poem from the 18th century, to Irena Klepfisz's ironic, contemporary "A Few Words in the Mother Tongue." Director Helen Stoltzfus and the ensemble of Albert Greenberg, Naomi Newman, and Corey Fischer have deftly selected and arranged the poems to tell a story about the need for words, and particularly about how Yiddish continues to serve Jews as an ideal medium of emotional expression, the nourishing constant of a people for whom "language is the only homeland."

All the poems are performed bilingually, the patterns and voicing of each piece determined with great dramatic sensitivity. Supplementing the overwhelming music of the language itself are Greenberg's musical settings, which create a subtle dreamscape in which the poems come alive. The actors handle the English-Yiddish transpositions and the emotional quick-changes with aplomb, and Newman is extraordinary throughout, especially in the harrowing tale of Fradel Schtok, a poet going mad in the space between two languages.

Choreographer Stephen Pelton has provided adept movement direction, and the entire evening is graceful and immensely satisfying. This is the finest work I've seen ATJT do in years: mature, elegant, playful -- a perfect match of the material and the company's vibrantly theatrical aesthetic. It's a pleasure to see ATJT back in form, and to receive this show's artful reassurance that home may be no farther away than the tip of the tongue.