Seymour Rexite

Seymour Rexite, born Shayele Rechtzeit on January 18, 1914, in Piotrków Trybunalski, Congress Poland, was a Polish American singer, actor, and prominent figure in Yiddish theatre in the United States. He died on October 14, 2002, in New York City.

Rexite immigrated to the United States in 1920 alongside his father, a cantor, and his older brother Jack Rechtzeit, an actor and songwriter. When immigration quotas later blocked his mother and remaining siblings from leaving Poland, Rexite performed a song composed by his brother Jack before President Calvin Coolidge, an act that moved Coolidge to grant the family entry visas. Rexite was recognized as a child prodigy, and at age 13 he assumed the lead role in the Yiddish musical The Rabbi's Melody after Ludwig Satz, who had been playing the teenage protagonist at age 30, departed to appear in Potash and Perlmutter on Broadway. Rexite, being the actual age of the character, stepped into the part. He subsequently starred in The Song of the Ghetto at a Second Avenue theatre in the Yiddish Theater District, performing opposite soprano Isa Kremer.

Rexite made his radio debut in 1927, singing in Yiddish, and would continue performing on radio for four decades. During the 1930s he performed with The Dorsey Brothers in late-night engagements at Billy Rose's Casino de Paree, though he ultimately chose to concentrate on his Yiddish-language career rather than pursue broader crossover success. In 1943 he married Miriam Kressyn, a fellow star of the Yiddish stage. Together they hosted a long-running program on WEVD radio on which they performed Yiddish translations of pop standards, including works ranging from Irving Berlin songs to material from Man of La Mancha, with many of the translations their own. Rexite also served as president of the Hebrew Actors' Union.

His Broadway career included an appearance in 1970 in Light, Lively and Yiddish. Kressyn died in 1996 at age 86; the couple had no children. Rexite and Kressyn are buried together under the family name Rechtzeit in Block 67 of Mount Hebron Cemetery, a section reserved for members of New York Yiddish theatre and maintained by the Yiddish Theatrical Alliance.