I'm not familiar with Patinkin's album, but I've run across a bunch of Yiddish albums that are overproduced--songs that require intimate settings often receive a full-scale footlit treatment. Some time the artistry of the singers makes them worth enduring, some don't. Some of the best art-song renditions of Yiddish songs feature simple voice and piano arrangements, notably those by Leon Lishner/Lazar Weiner, and several albums of a Chicago-based duo named Sima and Arnold Miller. Aaron J. Rabushka [log in to unmask]