New York's Yiddish theater : from the Bowery to Broadway 9780231176705, 0231176708, 9780231541077, 0231541074

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Director’s Foreword, by Susan Henshaw Jones
Overture: From the Bowery to Broadway, by Edna Nahshon
1. Yiddish New York, by Hasia Diner
2. Popular Yiddish Theater: Music, Melodrama, and Operetta, by Nahmha Sandrow
3. Jacob Gordin: The Great Reformer, by Barbara Henry
4. Pathbreakers and Superstars, by Edna Nahshon, Stefanie Halpern, and Joshua S. Walden
Intermission
5. Maurice Schwartz and the Yiddish Art Theater Movement, by Edna Nahshon
6. Yiddish Political Theater: The Artef, by Edna Nahshon
7. Yiddish Theater and the Transformation of American Design, by Arnold Aronson
8. Modicut: The Yiddish Puppet Theater of Yosl Cutler and Zuni Maud, by Eddy Portnoy
9. Yiddish Vaudeville, by Edna Nahshon and Judith Thissen
10. Borscht Belt Entertainment, by Edna Nahshon
11. Tevye’s Travels: From Yiddish Everyman to American Icon, by Alisa Solomon
Finale: A Gallery of Stars of the American Yiddish Stage, by Stefanie Halpern and Edna Nahshon
Editor’s Acknowledgments
List of Contributors
Endnotes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

New York’s Yiddish Theater From the Bowery to Broadway Edited by

Edna Nahshon

New York’s Yiddish Theater

New York’s Yiddish Theater From the Bowery to Broadway Edited by Edna Nahshon

Featuring Images from the Collections of the Museum of the City of New York and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Contents SUSAN HENSHAW JONES

ACT

Director’s Foreword

3

PAGE 7

B ARB ARA HENRY EDNA NAHSHON

Overture: From the Bowery to Broadway PAGE 8 ACT

1 HASIA DINER

Yiddish New York

Jacob Gordin: The Great Reformer PAGE 8 4 ACT

4 Pathbreakers and Superstars Jacob P. Adler and the Formation of a Theatrical Dynasty By Edna Nahshon

PAGE 50

Boris Thomashefsky: Matinee Idol of the Yiddish Stage By Stefanie Halpern

ACT

Molly Picon: Darling of Second Avenue By Joshua S. Walden

2 NA HM H A SA N DROW

Popular Yiddish Theater: Music, Melodrama, and Operetta PAGE 6 4

PAGE 102

Intermission PAGE 140 ACT

5 EDNA NAHSHON

Maurice Schwartz and the Yiddish Art Theater Movement PAGE 15 0

ACT

ACT

6

10

EDNA NAHSHON

EDNA NAHSHON

Yiddish Political Theater: The Artef

Borscht Belt Entertainment

PAGE 174

PAGE 25 6

ACT

ACT

7

11

A R NOL D A RONSON

AL I SA SOL OMON

Yiddish Theater and the Transformation of American Design

Tevye’s Travels: From Yiddish Everyman to American Icon

PAGE 19 4

PAGE 276

ACT

8 E DDY P ORTNOY

Modicut: The Yiddish Puppet Theater of Yosl Cutler and Zuni Maud PAGE 2 2 2

FI NALE : A GAL LERY OF STARS OF THE AMERICAN YIDDISH STAGE By Stefanie Halpern and Edna Nahshon

PAGE 304 E DI TOR’ S AC K NOW L E D GM E N T S

PAGE 314 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

PAGE 315

ACT

9 Yiddish Vaudeville

ENDNOTES

PAGE 31 6 SELEC TED BIBLIO GRAPHY

Entertaining the Crowd By Edna Nahshon

PAGE 32 0

Early Yiddish Vaudeville in New York City By Judith Thissen

I NDEX

PAGE 2 3 8

PAGE 32 2

New York's Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway Exhibition Sponsors:

Additional Support:

Puffin Foundation

Broad Art Foundation

David Berg Foundation

Charles and Mildred Schnurmacher Foundation

Righteous Persons Foundation

Suzanne Davis & Rolf Ohlhausen

Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust

Mr. and Mrs. David Levine

Lucius N. Littauer Foundation

Michael and Tatiana Reiff

Atran Foundation

Larry Simon Sy Syms Foundation Lee Gelber Bernard W. Nussbaum Family Foundation Deborah and Peter Wexler

Co–presenters: National Yiddish Book Center National Yiddish Theater–Folksbiene YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Director’s Foreword

From the late 19th to the mid–20th century, a thriving Yiddish theater culture blossomed on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Second Avenue became a “Yiddish Broadway,” where over 1.5 million first– and second– generation Eastern–European Jewish immigrants came to celebrate their culture and to learn about urban life in the city. They did so via cutting–edge dramas, operettas, comedies, musical comedies, and avant–garde political and art theater. But New York’s Yiddish theater’s influence was felt way beyond the Lower East Side, as it paved the way for many Yiddish theater directors, designers, and performers to “cross over” and find success in the mainstream on New York stages and in Hollywood. Moreover, it forged a New York–style humor and “Yiddish–isms” that made their way into the American comedy vernacular via the Borscht Belt in the Catskill Mountains, where vaudevillians and comedians from Danny Kaye to Sid Caesar to Jerry Lewis launched their showbiz careers. So, why New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway in both book and exhibition form at the Museum of the City of New York? Because it has all to do with New York’s art and culture and because the City Museum’s holdings include a splendid Yiddish Theater collection comprised of posters, prints, drawings, costumes, and many other artifacts. It was David Chack, president of the Association for Jewish Theatre, who urged us to take on this important topic, and who generously provided guidance along the way. But the group who made this project a reality is our funders, and I thank each and every one of them. A lead gift came from the Puffin Foundation, and I remain grateful to Gladys and Perry Rosenstein for their years of support at the City Museum. And I salute Executive Vice President of External Affairs Susan Madden for corralling the support needed for this ambitious undertaking.

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Director's Foreword

Finally, our co–presenters deserve our thanks— not only for what they enabled us to borrow for the exhibition but also for the advice and support over the several years it has taken to complete this project. They are the National Yiddish Book Center, the National Yiddish Theater–Folksbiene, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Both the book and the exhibition have been skillfully realized by Dr. Edna Nahshon, who is a professor of Jewish theater and drama at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She was ably supported by Sarah Henry, the Museum’s deputy director and chief curator; Autumn Nyiri, manager of curatorial affairs; Becky Laughner, curatorial associate; and Stefanie Halpern. Morgen Stevens-Garmon, theater archivist, helped to navigate the City Museum’s Yiddish Theater collection, as did Phyllis Magidson, curator of costumes and textiles. It was a magnificent team effort. I thank the many institutions and individuals who lent artifacts and images to bring the project to life. The design of the book and the exhibition have been undertaken with great panache by Pure+Applied. All told, this book and exhibition will appeal to fans of all theater, as well as to those who love New York City and its fascinating artistic history. New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway illustrates the rich story of Yiddish theater in the city and explores the ways in which the world of Second Avenue in the early to mid–20th century has influenced the American theatrical experience of today. L’Chaim! Susan Henshaw Jones Ronay Menschel Director

OVERTURE From the Bowery to Broadway Edna Nahshon

February, 1901. The play at the 2,500–seat People’s Theatre at 201 Bowery was Jacob Gordin’s The Jewish King Lear, starring Jacob P. Adler in the title role he had originated nine years earlier. As spectators flocked in, they faced a splendid curtain displaying a grand rendition — almost the size of the proscenium opening — of Moses atop Mount Sinai presenting the Ten Commandments to the Children of Israel, their multitudes stretching into the distance.1 This depiction of the quintessential moment when Jews became a distinct people with an ethical and religious code redefined the generic interior of the People’s Theatre as a decidedly Jewish space, one that reflected the cultural and religious heritage that audience, performers, and staged material shared. Grounded in the Exodus narrative, the curtain evoked collective and personal memories of dislocation and an arduous journey from oppression to freedom, an experience the newly arrived Yiddish–speaking immigrants shared with their biblical ancestors. It also implicitly conveyed the lofty aspirations of the serious Yiddish stage to serve as educator and guide for the Jewish immigrant masses in America, where the religious hegemony of Eastern Europe no longer held sway. Writing in 1968, Harold Clurman noted that, between 1888 and the early 1920s, when immigration had ground to a virtual halt, the Yiddish theater “more than the lodge or the synagogue,” served as “the meeting place and forum of the Jewish community in America.”2 Clurman (1901–1990), a leading theater director and critic, a founder of the Group Theatre, and a devotee of the Yiddish stage, was not engaging in hyperbolized nostalgia. In its day, New York’s Yiddish theater offered its public — many of them young men and women navigating their way in a new land — a decidedly Jewish lens for looking at such key issues as acculturation, labor relations, women’s rights, intergenerational conflicts, and personal relationships. It also represented a sanctuary where one could luxuriate in memories of the old country — the home, family, and community left behind. And where but in the Yiddish theater could these new New Yorkers feel their hearts clench with emotion upon hearing Anshel Schorr and Sholom Secunda’s 1915 song “A Heym! A Heym!” (“Homeward! 10

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page 6 Star from Second Avenue's Yiddish Theater Walk of Fame, 2015. Listed on this star are actors Molly Picon and her husband, Jacob Kalich.

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Overture: From the Bowery to Broadway

above Interior of the former Yiddish Art Theatre (today the Village East Cinema), at 181–189 Second Avenue, 2015. The ornate, Moorish–style auditorium boasts a unique ceiling; a double–tiered, gold–leaf chandelier hangs from the center of a shallow dome within which is set a Star of David. In 1993, the auditorium and other interior spaces were officially designated by New York City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in recognition of the theater’s historical and aesthetic significance.

Homeward!”), the shattering outcry of a lonely greenhorn who feels like a lost bird pining for its nest. A fine example of the theater’s impact could be seen on an early morning in 1892, immediately after the premiere of The Jewish King Lear, when a very long line of young men and women formed in front of the “Jewish” bank on Delancey Street. Stirred by the theatrical event of the previous night, they had queued up to send money back to their parents in the Old Country.3 Historian Moses Rischin estimates that in 1900 alone, when New York City’s Jewish population had reached 580,000, the three local Yiddish theaters, the People’s, the Windsor, and the Thalia (all located on the Bowery) presented 1,100 performances, selling some two million tickets. 4 Noting this extraordinary popularity in 1902, the Jewish Messenger explained to its uptown readers, “The East Side has but one chief amusement, and that is the theatre. Instead of attending prize– fights, football games, dog shows, and automobile races, it centers its interest, spends its money, and flocks in great numbers to the People’s Theatre, the Thalia Theatre, or the Windsor’s Theatre. It loves their plays, admires their actors, and sings their music.”5 The stars of the Yiddish theater were the royalty of an otherwise drab Lower East Side. During its formative years, enthusiastic young patriotn (fanatical fans of a particular star) fought over the merits of their respective idols, occasionally engaging in fisticuffs. The actors’ lifestyles, the clothes they wore, and their romantic affairs were closely followed by an adoring public. Yet these stage actors were not fabricated personae. They were familiar faces who shared the same roots, experiences, and ethnic commitments as their more plebeian admirers, and they never detached themselves from their community and its concerns. When a star of the Yiddish theater succeeded on Broadway, the triumph was seen as being shared with every ghetto Jew. When some returned to the Yiddish stage after failing in the English– speaking world, their faithful public embraced them with welcoming arms. When they were sick or down on their luck, special benefit performances were arranged in order to provide financial support. The enormous crowds that came to pay their respects when a popular actor passed away revealed the community’s emotional bond with the great performers who had brought joy and laughter and passion into their lives. When Jacob P. Adler died in 1926 at the age of 71, well over 50,000 mourners packed every square inch of the Bowery pavement as the cortege moved past the Yiddish theaters en route to Mount Carmel cemetery.6 Seen within a larger context, The Jewish King Lear, a play about Jewish life in Russia that was written and first produced in New York, illuminates the relationship 12

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Yiddish theater audience, drawing by Jacob Epstein for Hutchins Hapgood’s book The Spirit of the Ghetto, 1902. The use of the term “ghetto” to mean a homogenous urban enclave with its own subculture was introduced by Anglo–Jewish writer Israel Zangwill in his best–selling novel Children of the Ghetto (1892). It was quickly incorporated into the titles of other works on the life and culture of

13

Yiddish–speaking immigrants. Hapgood’s work must be seen within the context of the public’s interest in Jews, primarily triggered by the massive immigration from eastern Europe, as well as by hair–raising reports of Russian pogroms, shockwaves of the Dreyfus Affair, and a measure of philo–Semitic sentiments triggered by progressive ideals and religious interest in the Jewish origins of Christianity.

Overture: From the Bowery to Broadway

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opposite top The Grand Theatre presents Jacob P. Adler in The Broken Hearts by Zalmen Libin. Photograph by Byron Co., 1903.

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opposite bottom Thalia Theatre and Atlantic Garden, engraving, 1912. The theater opened on the Bowery in 1826 as the New York Theatre, changed names several times, and was renamed the Thalia in 1879. It functioned as a Yiddish theater from 1891–1911. In 1929, the building was destroyed by a fire.

Overture: From the Bowery to Broadway

above Spectators in front of the Grand Theatre. Photograph by Byron Co., 1905.

The marquee announces Jacob P. Adler in The Jewish King Lear.

of Jewish immigrants both to their European past and to their new surroundings: their keenness to engage in a conversation with America and to incorporate icons of Anglo culture while still preserving and cultivating a distinct ethnic subculture. In fact, the theater often served as mediator between the ghetto and American life and culture. Audiences of New York’s early Yiddish stage loved plays about sensational national and world events, such as Marie Barberi notorious murder trial, the Johnstown Flood, or the sinking of the Titanic, and adaptations of popular American works like Trilby and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Their hunger for exposure to the wider culture is also reflected in the popularity of Shakespearean productions in Yiddish, beginning in 1893 with Moyshe Zeifert’s adaptations of Othello and Hamlet, staged respectively at the Windsor Theatre and its rival, the Thalia Theatre. The audience clearly preferred Judaized versions over straight Yiddish translations of Shakespeare’s work, much to the chagrin of the Jewish literary intelligentsia, who scoffed at the adaptations as corrupt and foolish. It did not take long for America to take notice of the booming Lower East Side theatrical scene. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, such New York–based writers as Hutchins Hapgood and Lincoln Steffens were fascinated by the downtown Yiddish theater. They admired the exuberance of the Yiddish stage, the forceful expressiveness of its actors, the intensity of audience response, and the palatable connection between stage and auditorium. In 1903, reviewing a Yiddishized version of Romeo and Juliet by Nakhum Racov, John Corbin of The New York Times contrasted the blandness of Shakespeare productions on the American stage with their vibrant Yiddish paraphrases and posited rhetorically, “Given a devitalized Shakespeare plus an anemic drama on the one hand and an adapted Shakespeare plus a vital drama on the other, which would a wise man choose?”7 English–language critics may have poked good–natured fun at the informalities of the immigrant audience, many of whom had not been to the theater before arriving in America, and whose folksy conduct, especially in the early years, included munching on food, popping soda bottles, talking among themselves, and treating the theatrical gathering as an occasion for socializing. But uptown visitors also recognized the seriousness and rapt attention the immigrant audience accorded the stage. Writing in 1910, the New York Dramatic Mirror exclaimed, “You could have heard the proverbial pin drop. Not a soul in the audience stirred. It hardly breathed. There was no coughing, no clearing of throats. The little children kept their eyes riveted on the stage and listened as intently as their elders.”8

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Poster for a September 3, 1897, performance of Moyshe Horowitz’s King Solomon at the Thalia Theatre, with “first–rate artists” Regina Praeger, Bertha Kalich, Dina Fineman, David Kessler, Bernstein, and Heine. At the bottom, two performances for Saturday, September 4, are advertised: a matinee of Bar Kokhba starring Regina Praeger and an evening performance of Kol Nidre starring Bertha Kalich.

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It is noteworthy that the three theaters that served Yiddish audiences in 1900 had storied histories of catering to earlier immigrant groups, particularly Germans and Irish. Their conversion into Yiddish houses points to the layered history of the Bowery’s entertainment venues and to the commercial and creative exchange among ethnic cultures, at least at the professional level. At times, economic necessities encouraged interethnic collaboration. From June 1 to June 15, 1902, for example, Italian–American actor Antonio Maiori performed an Italian–language repertoire at the normally Yiddish–language Windsor Theatre, with costumes loaned by Jacob P. Adler, who held the lease on the theater. In the spring of 1905, Maiori leased another Yiddish house, the People’s Theatre, where he staged a series of Shakespearean productions, including his own interpretation of Shylock, a role that had already earned Adler the admiration of New York’s theatrical world. Maiori capitalized on this association, and shortly before his own opening of The Merchant of Venice he took the confrontational step of sending a letter to The Times in which he extolled his own portrayal of Shylock and rejected Adler’s outright as “all wrong.” But there was also a more benevolent aspect to interethnic theatrical relations. In 1903, when the harrowing news of the Kishinev pogrom in Russia reached New York, the actors of the city’s Chinese theater on Doyers Street put up three benefit performances to aid the victims.9 The bond between Jews and Chinese as persecuted minorities was the key theme evoked by speakers from both communities. The relationship between the Yiddish and German stages in New York is particularly interesting: first, because the linguistic affinity between the two languages greatly facilitated intercommunication and, second, because of the significant presence of Jews in New York’s German theater, both as artists and spectators. German– language theater preceded Yiddish performance by half a century in the city, and by the late 1800s, newly arrived Yiddish thespians were able to negotiate and contract with local German theater people, take over leases of theatrical properties, and even import some of the German actors — not all of them Jewish — onto the Yiddish stage. The first notable crossover was the much admired classical tragedian Morris (Moritz) Morrison (?1855–1917), a Romanian–born Jew who began his acting career in Germany in 1878 and came to America by the late 1880s. He was hired by Yiddish–speaking actor–manager Boris Thomashefsky and performed his classical repertoire in German while the rest of the cast spoke Yiddish. Around 1900, Morrison was also the first actor to introduce un–adapted Shakespeare originals to the Yiddish stage, playing Othello and Hamlet. 10 Another recruit from the German stage was Rudolph Schildkraut (1862–1930), a Jewish actor who had developed a 18

Edna Nahshon

Jacob M. Gordin cabinet card, c. 1900. Gordin (1853–1909) was the first major dramatist of the American Yiddish stage.

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notable career in Germany and had been a leading actor at the Max Reinhardt–led Deutches Theater in Berlin. He began his American career at the German–speaking Irving Place Theatre in 1911, but soon crossed over to the Yiddish stage when he was offered a highly lucrative contract by Thomashefsky, and switched to performing in Yiddish. Jacob P. Adler, Thomashefsky’s rival, countered Thomashefsky’s coup in nabbing Schildkraut by contracting Ferdinand Bonn, a gentile German–American actor of some renown. Yet another interesting import from the German–American stage was gentile actress Jennie Valliere, who in 1918 was recruited by actor–manager Maurice Schwartz for his Yiddish Art Theatre. Valliere learned Yiddish for the job and in the 1920s performed leading roles as written in the original, starring in major works by Gordin and others. Insufficient command of Yiddish was an issue on both sides of the Yiddish footlights. From the early days, anglicized and translated titles appeared on posters and advertisements, and an English–language synopsis was a regular feature of Yiddish playbills. Language proficiency became even more of a problem when American– born actors began joining the Yiddish stage. Molly Picon (1898–1992), a superstar of the Yiddish stage, born in New York and raised in Philadelphia, wrote in her autobiography that in the early 1920s her husband, Jacob Kalich, took her on an extensive tour of Europe before launching her career in America because “the Yiddish I spoke was completely bastardized, and part of our plan was for me to learn correct Yiddish, with its soft, guttural European accent.”11 By the 1930s, the acting studio of the Artef workers’ art theater, which attracted second–generation youth, devoted considerable time to the instruction of the Yiddish language and Yiddish literature. Actor and distinguished film director Jules Dassin (1911–2008), who began his professional training at the Artef, said he was not alone in having to “learn Yiddish in order to become part of that theater.”12

The first Yiddish theatrical production in America took place in New York in 1882, when theater was still a novel phenomenon in Jewish life. Yiddish theater had come into being only six years earlier in Jassy, Romania, when writer Abraham Goldfaden (1840–1908) joined forces with two singers, then performing at a local tavern, and provided a skimpy storyline that offered narrative continuity to their musical numbers. The new entertainment was soon all the rage, and before long Goldfaden was heading his own traveling theater company, for which he functioned as producer, playwright, director, composer, and librettist. He soon began to author lavish 22

Edna Nahshon

previous spread Funeral procession for Jacob P. Adler, April 2, 1926. More than 50,000 mourners followed Adler’s casket from the Hebrew Actors’ Union, where he lay in state, to David Kessler’s Second Avenue Theatre for the service. He is buried in Mount Carmel cemetery in Brooklyn. above The Yiddish Art Theatre building occupied by the 12th Street Cinema. Photograph by Edmund V. Gillon, 1975.

Built in 1926, this is the only surviving Yiddish theater building on Second Avenue. It is currently home to Village East Cinema. right Hebrew Actors’ Union building at 31 East 7th Street. Photograph by Martin Leifer, 1968.

The Hebrew Actors’ Union, founded in 1900, was the first actors’ union in the country.

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Yiddish operettas, some of which — The Witch (1879), The Two Kuni–Lemls (1880), and Shulamith (1880) — became classics that are occasionally still performed. From the beginning, music was part of the DNA of the Yiddish stage, and the operetta was the most popular and beloved genre. Its musical numbers, hummed and sung at home and in shops, were recorded and did a brisk business as sheet music, especially as immigrant Jews began to purchase upright pianos for their tenement living rooms, one of the first luxuries of the Lower East Side.13 At times, the theatrical origin of a song was obliterated by its popularity, as was the case with “Donna, Donna,” often thought of as an old folk song though originally composed by Sholom Secunda for the Yiddish Art Theatre production of Aaron Zeitlin’s Esterke (1940–41). Given Goldfaden’s influence, it is not surprising that the first record of a Yiddish theatrical production in New York is of one of his operettas — The Witch. The event, featuring a newly arrived troupe headed by the brothers Golubock, was financially backed by Frank Wolf, a well–to–do saloon owner who was also president of the Henry Street Synagogue, where the sweet–voiced Boris Thomashefsky (1866/8?–1939), a recent arrival then employed at a cigar factory, was a chorister. In his memoirs, Thomashefsky offered a transparently self–serving and sensational description of events surrounding this first production, including a highly questionable account of efforts to sabotage the evening by uptown “German” Jews. We do know, however, that the performance occurred on August 12, 1882, at Turn Hall, located at 66–68 4th Street (between Second Avenue and Bowery), home to a local branch of the Turnenverein, a progressive German–American fraternal and gymnastics society. It was presented as the “grand entertainment” for a benefit organized by the HEAS (Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society) to raise funds for a small group of Russian immigrants.14 This first performance was inconspicuous, attendance sparse, and the acting amateurish, but the timing was fortuitous: the number of Jewish newcomers was growing rapidly, and their yearning for amusement would soon be felt. Many were young and unmarried and, though poor, eager to spend the little extra cash they had on entertainment. By year’s end, the troupe, now calling itself the Hebrew Opera and Dramatic Company, moved to the Old Bowery Garden at 113–113½ Bowery, a former beer garden owned by a German Jew, Edward Levy. The Garden was already the site of various theatrical productions, including English and German plays and vaudeville. The company presented a repertoire consisting primarily of Goldfaden operettas and some new plays. Of the original plays staged by the company, Israel Barsky’s The Orphans is credited as the first Yiddish play about life in New York. 24

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Bi–annual publication Kunst un Teater (Art and Theater) with cover illustration by Boris Aronson, 1937 Communal interest in the Yiddish theater was expressed by the significant number of Yiddish books and periodicals devoted to the stage. Aronson signed this illustration “Baruch Aronson” in Hebrew letters.

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The Hebrew Opera and Dramatic Company performed twice a week. The shows were on Friday night and Saturday afternoon; in the absence of a strong rabbinical authority, there was no serious objection to this violation of the Sabbath. Still, the stage respectfully reflected the audience’s religious sensibilities. There was no evidence of activities specifically prohibited on the Sabbath: the lights were turned on in advance, matches and cigarettes were not lit, and letters arrived conveniently unsealed. Friday and Saturday performances remained the most popular and lucrative for the Yiddish theater and were frequented by traditional Jews as well as freethinkers. The first company was short–lived, however. In 1883, the year after its opening, plagued by financial difficulties and personal feuds, the troupe split in two. Neither fared well, and by the end of 1884, the arrival from Europe of the more professional Karp–Silberman company forced the Golubocks and Thomashefsky to leave town. Most of the original players never developed much of a career on the stage. The notable exception was Boris Thomashefsky, who returned to New York three years later to become the long–time matinee idol of the Yiddish theater. More actors arrived over the next few years, an influx triggered by the 1882 czarist ban on Yiddish–language performances. Many of the exiled Russian Yiddish actors first moved to London, but they soon migrated to America, the new central source of audiences and capital, and they made New York the headquarters of the Yiddish stage worldwide. The Karp–Silberman troupe, known as the Russian Yiddish Opera Company, leased the Bowery Garden (by now renamed the Oriental Theatre), and, though Goldfaden operettas continued to be a major attraction, the troupe also introduced historical operettas by other writers. Notably, they staged works by their own resident playwright and prompter, Joseph Lateiner (1853–1937) whose Esther and Haman and Joseph and His Brothers both proved highly successful. Lateiner’s output was legendary. By 1903, he had written and staged more than 100 plays, some of them originals, others adaptations from German, French, or English sources. Lateiner would come to write some of the most successful musical melodramas of the Yiddish stage, including The Jewish Heart (1908), a huge box–office success. Another new troupe arrived from London in August of 1886. The Romanian Opera Company was an accomplished ensemble that gained its name from having played for two seasons in Romania. Their resident playwright and prompter was self–anointed “Professor” Moyshe Hurwitz (1864–1910), who, like Lateiner, kept the scripts flowing, authoring more than 100 melodramas and operettas. Unlike Lateiner, however, Hurwitz wanted to do more than write. He became the lessee of the Windsor Theatre 26

Edna Nahshon

Sheet music for “Isrulik Kim a Heim” (“Israel Come Home”) from Tate–Mamme’s Zures (Father and Mother’s Trouble), sung by Boris Thomashefsky, 1904.

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at 37–39 Bowery and went on to successfully manage his own company for several years until a new owner took over the house. Hurwitz died penniless, a broken man. During their heyday, Lateiner and Hurwitz ruled the stage. Pressured to produce a constant stream of scripts, they and their imitators supplied their companies with often half–baked goods that usually consisted of historical and biblical operettas, some melodramas, and tsaytbilder — dramatizations of such contemporary events as the notorious Tisa Esslar blood libel, the sinking of the Titanic, and the Dreyfus Affair. Though most of the plays were crude and filled with plagiarized scenes and historical inaccuracies, they transported unsophisticated spectators from the dreariness of their tenements and sweatshops to a fantasy world of glamour and heightened emotion. As the theatrical field deepened, a fierce rivalry developed between the companies. They used printed pamphlets to discredit and denigrate each other, and when possible lured away each others’ actors. At times, the plays bore nearly identical titles: when the Romanian Opera House produced Hurwitz’s opera King Solomon, the Oriental immediately responded with Lateiner’s Solomon’s Trial. In his memoirs, Thomashefsky offers a vivid description of the competitive culture of the period: To look like a star an actor had to wear slashed doublets, satin cloaks, golden crowns. Everyone had to do it, there was no other way. [Actor David] Kessler wore a hat with a feather, bare feet, and a shirt with red silk patches. [Jacob P.] Adler, to outdo him, wore a hat with three feathers, a naked throat, a spangled throw over his shoulders, and to make it more realistic, he put on chains, bracelets, and long Turkish earrings. I showed the two of them I could play the game! I put on a crown, a sword, chains, bracelets, silk hose in three colors, and three cloaks instead of one! If they had lightning I had thunder. They declaimed; I sang. If they shot, I stabbed. If they made their entrance on a horse, I came in on a golden coach drawn by a team of horses. If they had thunder, I had lightning. If it snowed in their theaters, I had rain. If Kessler sang the Prayer for Forgiveness, I sang the Mourner’s Kaddish. If, at their theaters, they murdered one enemy, I murdered many and all at one blow.”15 Most of the first generation of actors who began their careers in the 1880s were reared in the culture of popular entertainment, where scripts served largely as vehicles for the display of performative skills. At the heart of their world stood the actor, not the text, and acting was considered most commendable when it hoisted primal emotions to fever pitch. On the New York Yiddish stage, actors were known to 28

Edna Nahshon

Uncle Tom’s Cabin

The actor–managers of the young Yiddish stage in New York were eager to offer their patrons renditions of popular American fare. In 1901, following an immensely successful English–language revival of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Academy of Music, two competing downtown Yiddish theaters, the Thalia and the People’s, produced near–simultaneous productions of the racial melodrama. Adapted from the 1852 novel by abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, the play follows the journeys of several long–suffering slaves. The subject matter, milieu, religious sentiment, and Southern vernacular of the story presented a unique challenge for linguistic and cultural translation. The Thalia production, which used an adaptation by Isidore Zolotarevsky, a popular Yiddish dramatist, sidestepped some of the obstacles by keeping the original English lyrics for at least some of the musical numbers: “In Ol’ Kaintuck,” and “Down on the Swanee River” were

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sung entirely in English; the character of Topsy sang “Shoo Fly, Don’t Bother Me,” and “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” in Yiddish, but the refrains were sung in English. Since the Christ–like submissiveness of Uncle Tom was alien to the immigrant Jewish ethos, the Yiddish play emphasized the combative spirit of the slave who is willing to fight for his freedom. But Jewish actors and audiences alike also experienced an affinity for Stowe’s sympathetic figures. “Members of one persecuted race portrayed the wrongs of another,” wrote the Chicago Tribune of their local production. The character of George Harris, noted one critic, “became a desperate and solitary Maccabee,” and when Legree whipped Tom, the audience hissed out of pure hatred of him. One member of the audience declared, “The play is not so strange to us of the Israelitish descent as its American setting may suggest.”

improvise lines and interject songs or vaudeville shticks that had no bearing on the storyline. Thomashefsky used to insert his popular song “A Letter to Mother” whenever the pace of the performance slackened. Actors adlibbed, slipped in lines from other plays, and relied heavily on the prompter, a fixture of Yiddish theater.

Young intellectuals were contemptuous of the popular Yiddish fare, labeling it shund (trash), and they called for a more elevated theater for New York Jewish audiences. Their hope for a Yiddish Henrik Ibsen was finally realized in Jacob Gordin (1853– 1909). Gordin, who introduced literary melodramas to the Yiddish repertoire, had no theatrical experience, but he impressed Jacob P. Adler, by then an important actor–manager, with his intellect and command of Russian culture. Adler commissioned him to write a play; the result was Siberia (1892), which failed to capture its audiences. But Gordin quickly followed it with the enormously successful The Jewish King Lear (1892), in which Adler played the old patriarch— one of his signature roles. Gordin went on to pen more than 30 original dramas, mostly domestic “problem plays,” written in what was then considered a realistic mode. The best known are God, Man, and Devil (1900), based on the Faust legend, albeit with a happy ending; Mirele Efros (1898); and The Kreutzer Sonata (1902). He also translated and adapted more than 40 plays from other languages, introducing Jewish audiences to the works of Ibsen, Hermann Sudermann, Gerhart Hauptmann, Leo Tolstoy, and Maxim Gorky. Before literary and cultural reformers like Gordin began to change Yiddish theatrical culture, actors generally had delivered their lines in Daytshmerish, an artificially Germanized Yiddish deemed more appropriate for “higher–class” characters. Gordin was important in instituting a more natural stage language. He demanded a faithful rendition of the author’s text and forbade adlibbing and interpolation of unrelated musical and comedic numbers. Writing on commission, he provided actors with strong parts, and the reputation of actors associated with his work — Jacob Adler and his wife Sarah, David Kessler, Sigmund Mogulesko, Keni Liptzin, and Bertha Kalich — rested largely on their roles as the originators and interpreters of specific Gordin characters. His The Kreutzer Sonata was the first Yiddish play to be translated into English. It was in the lead female role that Bertha Kalich captured the attention of American producers. Known as the Yiddish Eleonora Duse, she was the first leading actress to cross over to major roles on the English–speaking stage, appearing in works by Victorien Sardou, George Bernard Shaw, Maurice Maeterlinck, Hermann Sudermann, and other important European writers. 30

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page 29: English–language production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Academy of Music. Photograph by Byron Co., 1901

left: Thomashefsky’s National Theatre, architectural drawing by Anthony F. Dumas, 1919. The National Theatre, at 111 Houston Street, opened in 1912. Above it was a smaller theater, the National Winter Garden. below: The People’s Theatre, architectural drawing by Anthony F. Dumas, 1934. In 1889, Jacob P. Adler and Boris Thomashefsky took over the People’s Theatre at 201 Bowery, reopening it as a Yiddish theater. The building included a drug store and had rooms to let.

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In the early years, Yiddish performances were put up only on weekends and Jewish holidays, which were conducive for premiering “special” productions. Daily performances were instituted soon thereafter, with weekdays usually reserved for “benefits” — involving an older repertoire sold at a reduced rate to social and labor organizations, which used them for their own fundraising purposes. The theaters themselves were originally run as stock companies, where the actors shared in the profits in accordance with their status (i.e., hero, juvenile, comedian, etc.). This arrangement was soon replaced with the advent of the star–manager, who ran a salaried company that he engaged for a full season, a paradigm that had already become obsolete in American theater. This division into management and labor spurred early unionization efforts. The Hebrew Actors’ Union, established in December 1900, 20 years before Actors’ Equity, held a tight rein on every Yiddish production for many years. It enforced a salary scale and often required managers to engage actors regardless of preference or ability. It was also very resistant to admitting new members. Until the 1950s, gaining membership was a humbling experience, with applicants forced to audition before the union’s entire rank and file. Some accomplished actors, including Stella Adler and Maurice Schwartz, failed their first auditions. In addition to the actors’ union, there were separate unions representing costumers, prompters, chorus people, ushers, stage carpenters, scene shifters, and musicians. Though some of them were tiny — the prompters’ union membership peaked at a dozen — their strength lay in affiliation with the United Hebrew Trades. If one union had a grievance against a manager, the entire Yiddish theatrical scene was affected. On the whole, in the ongoing struggle between managers and unions, the latter usually held the upper hand. The prosperity of the Yiddish theater — and the confidence in its longevity — was manifested in the construction of the Grand Street Theatre (1903), the first theatrical house built specifically for Yiddish productions. Located at 255 Grand Street at the corner of Chrystie Street, it opened to much fanfare, with major local politicians in attendance. Seating 1,700, the theater reflected the social mobility and aesthetic aspirations of its patrons. Its elegant red and gold interior included an orchestra floor and three balconies, each with its own lobby, cloakroom, and smoking room. The Grand’s success was short–lived, though. By the end of 1909, it was no longer a Yiddish house but had become home to moving pictures and vaudeville. It was demolished in 1930. Shortly before the First World War, Yiddish theaters began to move farther uptown. Improved economic conditions, the decline of the Bowery area, and the 32

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Yiddish Theater Uptown

Not all of the early Yiddish theater in New York took place in the Lower East Side. Some productions were presented farther uptown, catering to a Jewish population that was more affluent than recently arrived immigrants. During the 1884–85 season, the Bowery–based Russian Yiddish Opera Company offered performances — mostly operettas by Abraham Goldfaden — at the Terrace Garden, also known as the Lexington Avenue Opera House. The complex, stretching from East 58th to 59th Street between Lexington and Third Avenues, was a premier performance venue and gathering place for the city’s German–American

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community. The Yiddish performances were organized for the enjoyment of uptown Jewish patrons who, like their downtown brethren, enjoyed Goldfaden’s popular operettas. In December 1884, the uptown newspaper, the Jewish Messenger favorably reported on a performance of Goldfaden’s Shulamith, noting the large audience and frequent applause. This uptown–downtown collaboration challenges the commonly held belief that German Jews turned up their noses at the Yiddish culture of East European Jews and highlights the link between German–speaking Jews and the early Yiddish stage in New York.

gradual migration of Jews out of the Lower East Side prompted the formation of a new Yiddish theater district on Second Avenue, between Houston and East 14th Streets. Lower Second Avenue had a rather dignified past. In the mid–19th century, it had been one of the aristocratic residential areas in the city; it was later taken over by German immigrants, who were by then themselves in the process of leaving the area for more upscale climes. For the Yiddish–speaking community, moving from the Bowery represented upward mobility. As Lulla Rosenfeld put it, Second Avenue offered “a wide, clean, prosperous street with no elevated tracks overhead and without the derelicts and saloons of the Bowery.” From the early 1910s until the 1940s, this small urban strip, often referred to as the “Yiddish Rialto,” was the undisputed nerve center of the Yiddish stage worldwide. The playhouses of Second Avenue, built in the 1910s and 1920s, constituted the backbone of a thriving Jewish entertainment industry that encompassed cafés, restaurants, cabarets, and vaudeville and cinema houses, as well as such related businesses as photography studios and music, costume, and flower shops. The four flagship theaters were imposing structures, built specifically for Yiddish productions, and each costing about a million dollars, a substantial amount at a time when the average American was earning $25 a week. They were designed by first– rate architects, often from without the immigrant community. Unlike the old Bowery playhouses, these elegant buildings articulated the success and solidity of the Yiddish stage in America. The Second Avenue Theatre, the first Yiddish theater on the strip, was built in 1911 for the star David Kessler. It sat 1,986 and also boasted a summer rooftop theater. The National Theatre, built for Boris Thomashefsky, opened a year later. It likewise had a 1,986–seat auditorium and a rooftop theater that could accommodate 1,000. The Yiddish Art Theatre, built in 1925–26 for actor–manager Maurice Schwartz, had an auditorium seating 1,236 and a restaurant/cabaret in the basement. In 1927, the Public Theatre opened — the last Yiddish house to be built on the avenue — with a seating capacity of 1,743. While “Second Avenue” became a near–generic term for the commercial Yiddish stage, new Yiddish theaters also came into being in Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Bronx. This dispersion of theatrical activity reflected the migration of a considerable number of Jews from the Lower East Side to other parts of the city. A 1928 survey concluded that 45.6% of greater New York’s 1,728,000 Jews lived in Brooklyn, which had supplanted Manhattan as the center of the Jewish population. Manhattan came in second with 28%, with slightly more than half its Jews living on the Lower East 34

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page 33: Terrace Garden Theater (Lexington Opera House). Photograph by Wurts Bros., 1913.

above: Art section of the Forverts, advertising Der litvisher yenki (The Lithuanian Yankee) at the National Theatre, 1929. Aaron Lebedeff (pictured center) was well known for his performance in this operetta by Alexander Olshanetsky.

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Side and in Harlem; 22% lived in the Bronx and 3% in Queens.16 Some sections of the boroughs, especially in Brooklyn, were nearly entirely Jewish. The Yiddish theater followed this movement. For example, while Second Avenue remained the definitive capital of Jewish entertainment, in 1925 there were four Yiddish houses in Brooklyn and four in Upper Manhattan and the Bronx, bringing to 14 the total number of the city’s Yiddish theater houses (including two in the Bowery area).

By the mid–1920s, theater managers regarded the Yiddish stage as a stable American institution that attracted some 300,000 New York–area families to its shows every year. Indeed, The Times went as far as predicting that “the Yiddish stage may become a serious competitor of the American.”17 But change was on the horizon. By 1929, as the affluence and optimism of the Roaring Twenties evaporated into the crisis of the Great Depression, economic collapse conspired with other changes to threaten the future of the business. With the cessation of immigration due to federal legislation in 1924, the Yiddish theater was gradually losing audiences. Yiddish culture was being eroded by Americanization, with Jewish audiences drifting to Broadway and to motion pictures. Further, the high overhead (with personnel costs higher than those of Broadway productions) and the contract requirements of the unions (featherbedding was rampant) took their toll. The Yiddish theaters of New York closed midseason in 1929–30. In 1930, the entirety of American Yiddish theater appeared to be on the verge of collapse. Some big stars left for overseas tours or took jobs on the non–Yiddish stage. The managers of the nine remaining Yiddish theaters declared that they would have to close unless the unions allowed a 40% cut in salaries. The unions threatened to strike, and on December 8, 1930, the theaters closed and remained dark for two weeks. Labor was ultimately forced to make concessions: the salary scale was cut by 10–25%, and unions waived their power to set a quota for actors at every theater for the duration of the season. In the 1932–33 season, five Yiddish theaters again had to close their doors midseason.18 Four remained open, but they were unable to pay their actors full wages.19 Even as the fortunes of the Yiddish stage waned, new opportunities arose for its artists. An increase in Jewish–themed shows on Broadway in the 1920s and ’30s offered crossover roles for Yiddish actors, some of whom divided their time between the Yiddish and English stages. Ludwig Satz was immensely successful in Potash and Perlmutter; Rudolph Schildkraut appeared in the controversial God of Vengeance; 36

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Café Royal

During its heyday (1920s–50), Second Avenue between Houston and 14th Streets was the entertainment area of Yiddish New York, a hub of theaters, restaurants, and nightclubs. Particularly important was café life, which provided the nexus for before– and after–theater socializing and networking. One locale stood out for almost half a century: the Café Royal, located at 190 Second Avenue at East 12th Street, at the heart of the Yiddish rialto. It was a place to eat a hearty goulash, to have a stiff drink or sip some tea, and, mostly, to talk a lot. “No Jewish actor worth his claque, no Jewish critic worth his enemies, and no Jewish art–lover worth his prejudices,” wrote Harry Golden in 1937, could afford to miss this “Colosseum of talk.” The café served as a meeting place and trading mart for the theatrical world and as a thrilling showcase for fans hoping to glimpse the Yiddish matinee idols who held court there. The simply decorated café opened in 1908, replacing a former saloon. It was originally named for its founder, a Mr.

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Breslau, but when he left the business in 1911 it was renamed Café Royal. There were many stories told about the place. According to one urban legend, the owner who had succeeded Breslau lost the café to his Hungarian waiter, Oscar Szathmary, in a game of pinochle; in a second game, Oscar won Herman Tantzer, the establishment’s busboy. The owner was never heard from again. However it actually happened, with Oscar and Herman in charge, the café achieved a mythologized status as the Sardi’s of the Lower East Side. Herman became a legend in his own right. Known as the millionaire busboy, he amassed a fortune from his share of tips and from charging a service fee for cashing checks; he came to own significant real estate assets, and admitted to losing $290,000 in the 1929 crash. Herman admired the theater and backed numerous Yiddish shows, making money on hits, losing heavily on flops. Prone to acts of generosity for out–of–luck actors, his checks, always signed with a plain “Herman,” were rock solid. Despite various offers, he never aspired to advance his status, refusing promotion, happy to don his black tie, sling a white napkin over his arm, and show the guests to their “traditional” reserved tables. The café was divided into three sections: the one near the door, which had tables with white tablecloths, was meant for infrequent guests; the middle, with blue–checked tablecloths, was kept for the regulars; the back, which had no tablecloths, was reserved for card and chess players, always surrounded by a few kibitzing onlookers. Ten years before it closed in 1952, the Café Royal had become such an icon of New York Jewish life that it became the setting for an English–language Broadway production — created by alumni of the Yiddish stage — when its unique atmosphere and its celebrated habitués were depicted in Hy S. Kraft’s comedy Café Crown (1942). The play starred Morris Carnovsky as David Cole, a Jacob P. Adler–based character who dreams of a modern–dress version of King Lear, and Sam Jaffe as Hymie, the rich busboy who finally agrees to back the venture. The play was staged by Elia Kazan, with sets by Boris Aronson. It was revived in 1989, with Eli Wallach as David Cole and Bob Dishy as the busboy. A musicalized version was produced on Broadway in 1964 with Theodore Bikel as Cole and Sam Levene as Hymie.

Jacob Ben–Ami joined Eva Le Gallienne’s Repertory Theatre, where he starred in plays by Chekhov and Tolstoy; and Paul Muni became a major movie actor. These decades also witnessed the rise of a new cadre of Yiddish stars, some of them born and raised in America. The darling of musical comedy was Molly Picon, a multitalented, sweet–faced pixie with an androgynous look. Menasha Skulnik proved an outstanding comic and would gain great success on the postwar English–speaking stage. Aaron Lebedeff and Michal Michalesko sang, and Jennie Goldstein reigned as the queen of melodrama. While operettas remained the bread and butter of the Yiddish stage, the interwar era is remembered for its art theaters, notably the Yiddish Art Theatre, led by Maurice Schwartz from 1918 to the mid–1950s; the Artef, a semiprofessional troupe allied with the communist camp that flourished during the Depression; and in the 1920s, the short–lived Jewish Art Theatre, Unser Teater, and Schildkraut Theatre. The art theater movement, which had a strong literary orientation, was supported by an impressive new cadre of authors who began to write for the stage: Osip Dymow (1878–1959), David Pinski (1872–1959), Sholem Asch (1880–1957), Peretz Hirschbein (1880–1948), and H. Leivick (1888–1962). Most notably, its trajectory was shaped by Maurice Schwartz (1890–1960), a man of extraordinary talent and energy, who embodied and sustained the art theater ideal. In the 1920s, he experimented with various theatrical forms, including a constructivist rendition of Goldfaden’s The Tenth Commandment (1926), with scenery designed by Boris Aronson. Schwartz’s most successful productions were Yoshe Kalb (1932) and The Brothers Ashkenazi (1937), both based on novels by I.J. Singer. Yet by the late 1930s, the effects of Americanization on the Yiddish theater had become more pronounced. It was not only an issue of attendance but also one of audience profile. With the exception of particularly successful productions that appealed to the younger generation, who understood the language but were no longer able to comfortably read or write Yiddish, most shows drew audiences who were older and more interested in nostalgic and feel–good productions. The falling–off became particularly evident after World War II. There were only four Yiddish theaters in New York by 1945, three of which opened the season with musicals with such titles as They All Want to Get Married, Good News, and Pleasure Girls. Few serious plays were now written for the Yiddish stage, and though the efforts to sustain quality Yiddish productions did not cease, they were modest and short–lived. T ̆ he legacy of the Yiddish theater was increasingly being felt on the English language stage. This coincided with a switch away from creating new original works in 38

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page 37: Café Royal. Photograph by Carl Van Vechten, 1938.

above: The first banner of the Hebrew Actors’ Union, 1900. The text reads, “Hebrew Actors’ Union, Inc. Affiliated with the Associated Actors and Artists of America, the American Federation of Labor, and the United Hebrew Trades. Organized December, 1900.” right: Hebrew Actors’ Union striker wearing signs in Yiddish and English, 1930s. page 41: Cast of God of Vengeance at police station, 1907.

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Yiddish: with the ebbing of immigration, fewer new Yiddish dramatists emerged, and the established Yiddish playwrights reduced their dramatic output. But there was no such dearth of new scripts on the English–language stage, where a significant cadre of second–generation, English–language Jewish dramatists was coming to the fore. Children of immigrants were now writing for the general public. The new opportunities brought many of them success and even fame, but to gain it they needed to exercise a measure of self–censorship or risk being deemed “too Jewish.” Playwright Arthur Miller recounted how, as a novice playwright in the 1930s, he approached three Broadway producers with a revised version of his Jewish–themed college play They Too Arise: “All of them wanted to do it,” Miller writes, but “all finally gave up for the stated reason that it was not a time to come forward with a play about Jews.” One major exception was Clifford Odets’s 1935 landmark Awake and Sing!, written for the Group Theatre and often considered the quintessential Jewish–American family drama of the pre–World War II era. Critic Alfred Kazin recalled “sitting in the Belasco, watching my mother and father and uncles and aunts occupying the stage [. . .] by as much right as if they were Hamlet or Lear.”20 Odets was praised for his masterful replication of the Yiddish–influenced English of the second generation, but like other playwrights, he had to somewhat modify his original script to avoid a “smaller horizon.” The postwar shift from Yiddish to English and the formation of a new genre of “Yinglish” entertainment is primarily associated with Catskills entertainers, who became the agents of transition. In the “safe space” where English and Yiddish intermingled, up–and–coming comedians and singers honed their craft and rose to international fame by bringing the shtick of Yiddish vaudeville to second–generation Jewish audiences. Many of America’s best–known singers, entertainers, and comedy writers made their bones in the Catskills drawing on Yiddish materials and capitalizing on cultural references. The immensely popular song “Bei Mir Bistu Shein” exemplifies this dynamic, as the Catskills became the crosscultural mediator between Yiddish stage traditions and the broader culture. It was originally composed by Jacob Jacobs and Sholom Secunda for a 1932 Yiddish comedy musical, I Would If I Could (Men ken lebn nor men lost nisht). In 1937, Sammy Cahn, himself a child of the Lower East Side, heard it sung in Yiddish by African–American performers Johnnie and George at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. (Jenny Grossinger, owner of the famed hotel, claimed to have taught the song to Johnnie and George while they were performing at her resort.) Cahn replaced the Yiddish original with English–language lyrics but kept the original title and opening line. The Andrews Sisters, then virtually 40

Edna Nahshon

God of Vengeance

God of Vengeance (1907), a controversial play by Yiddish writer Sholem Asch (1880–1957), gained tremendous notoriety due to its risqué theme: the intersection of prostitution, lesbianism, religiosity, and sacrilege. The story presents a Jewish house whose first floor functions as a brothel, while the second floor is home to the brothel owner (Yankl Tshaptshovitsh), his wife (a former prostitute), and their daughter (Rivkele), who is being raised as a traditionally virtuous girl. Yankl, who dreams of marrying his daughter to a respectable young scholar, brings into the house a sacred Torah scroll. But the physical and moral separation between brothel and family home is destroyed when Rivkele engages in a lesbian relationship with one of the downstairs prostitutes and runs away with her to join another brothel. Distraught, Yankl throws the Torah scroll, which he equates with his daughter’s purity, out of his house. God of Vengeance was first produced in German translation in Berlin in 1907, starring Rudolph Schildkraut as Yankl. Russian–language productions in St. Petersburg and Moscow soon followed. The play in its original Yiddish opened on October 13, 1907, at the Thalia Theatre in New York, starring David Kessler. It created an enormous stir, with some regarding it as a courageous work of art and others dismissing it as outrageous “filth.” Nearly two decades later, on February 19, 1923, after a two–month run at two smaller downtown venues, an English–language production of God of Vengeance opened at New York’s

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Apollo Theatre on 219 West 42nd Street, with Schildkraut making his English–stage debut. Joseph Silverman, rabbi emeritus of New York’s prestigious Temple Emanu–El, filed an obscenity complaint with the police. On March 6th, a grand jury indicted the producer, cast, and theater owner under section 1140 A of the Penal Code, which prohibits entertainment that “leads to the corruption of the morals of youth or others.” After the indictment, newspapers declined to print ads for the play and ticket sales dropped sharply, forcing the producer to move the show to a minor theater in the Bronx, where it lasted barely a month. The case came to trial in May of 1923, and the jury found all defendants guilty as charged. Following the verdict, the show’s producer, Harry Weinberger, rallied the theater community against the obscenity charges. He circulated a pamphlet in which Asch defended his work, writing that American audiences simply weren’t “adequately instructed to accept God of Vengeance.” Weinberger and Schildkraut were fined $200 each, and the rest received suspended sentences. American playwright Donald Margulies adapted the play, changing its locale from a Russian town to the Lower East Side. His play premiered at the Contemporary Theatre in Seattle in 2000, and was subsequently produced in 2002 by the Williamstown Theater Festival, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Both productions were directed by Gordon Edelstein.

unknown, recorded the song on November 24, 1937. It earned them a gold record, the first ever for a female vocal group, and became an international sensation that over the years has been recorded by dozens of singers, including Ella Fitzgerald, Eydie Gormé and Steve Lawrence, among others. Along with its audience, the style and subject matter of Yiddish theater migrated to the English–language stage. The enormously successful The Fifth Season (1953), a comedy about New York’s Garment District, which enjoyed a Broadway run of 654 performances, strikes one as a Yiddish comedy in English. Its chief creators were affiliated with the Yiddish theater: it was written by Sylvia Regan, wife of Yiddish theater composer Abraham Ellstein; Sam Leve, its designer, had worked with the Artef and the Yiddish Art Theatre; and it starred Menasha Skulnik (1890–1970), the leading Yiddish comedian of his day. Author George Ross used Skulnik’s brilliant performance to examine what was meant by “Yiddish comedy style.”21 He wrote: Skulnik is the Jew in trouble, but his trouble has become an abstraction and the definition of his style: when he appears on the stage, even before the situation seizes him, his tsores are there beside him like a partner in the act, his straight man. He doesn’t hope to defeat them. He needs them. Without them, he would have nothing to say. Even success means only more trouble. And a good thing, too: if there could be a world in which trouble did not weigh on Skulnik’s shoulders, we would be deprived of the most eloquent shrug ever conceived. He explains how Skulnik wordlessly lifts a mediocre gag to hilarity through physical and facial performance — “a process of raising and lowering his arms, his shoulders, his eyebrows, his voice” — and fills the moment with “disappointment, resignation, self–effacement.” These, says Ross, are the trademarks of the Yiddish comic style. It is a style we recognize to this day in popular American comedy.22 The 1960s dramatically altered the country’s cultural landscape. The phenomenal success of Fiddler on the Roof (1964) boldly legitimized ethnic self–representation on the mainstream stage. The musical’s evocation of the Eastern European Jewish shtetl was part of an overall search for roots in an America that had begun to proudly define itself as a nation of immigrants, and Fiddler’s simulacrum of a largely imagined homeland touched a nerve that has not only been lovingly espoused by several generations of American Jews but has also appealed to audiences worldwide. By the closing decades of the 20th century, a new theme arose in Jewish American drama — that of the Americanized Jew who returns to the ancestral home located in the immigrant neighborhood after the death of parents or grandparents. There 42

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clockwise from top left Menasha Skulnik in Uncle Willie, caricature by Al Hirschfeld. Published in The New York Times, December 16, 1956, Caricature by Al Hirschfeld,

Frank Sinatra (right) and his agent study posters of Menasha Skulnik and Miriam Kressyn, c. 1943. Menasha Skulnik. Photograph by Charles H. Stewart, c. 1960.

page 45 Audience at the Grand Theatre. Photograph by Byron Co., November 23, 1905.

The Grand, located at 255 Grand Street at Chrystie Street, was the first Yiddish playhouse in New York. It opened in 1903.

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he grapples with bittersweet memories, family dynamics, and personal identity by encountering the detritus of a life that is no more. The themes of the disappearing past, personal memory, and Jewish identity appear in Arthur Miller’s The Price (1968), in Herb Gardner’s autobiographical Conversations with My Father (1994), and in David Mamet’s The Old Neighborhood (1998). Conversations with My Father is a memory play that ends with a confrontation between the successful Americanized son and his immigrant father, an advocate of assimilation who is unhappy with its end product, represented by his successful and intermarried son. The play ends with the son’s Yiddish shriek, “Vos vilst du, Papa? Vas vilst du fun mir? What do you fucking want?” The last tune we hear is the father’s favorite song, sung by Aaron Lebedeff, a popular Yiddish entertainer: “Roumania, Roumania, Roumania, Geven amol a land a zise, a sheyne” (Romania, Romania, Romania/There once was a sweet and beautiful land). One is often asked if the Yiddish theater is dead. The answer depends on both definition and perspective. Clearly, despite the dedication of groups like the Folksbiene/National Yiddish Theater, the glory days of Boris Thomashefsky, Bertha Kalich, Jacob P. Adler, Maurice Schwartz, and Molly Picon are long gone, but the impact of New York’s Yiddish theater is felt to this day. Writing in 2001, critic Robert Brustein maintained that in the world of the theater, and the Jewish theater in particular, “everyone and everything is an influence.”23 He explained: Yiddish vaudeville had a powerful influence on American burlesque, producing such great comics as Smith and Dale, Bert Lahr, Bobby Clark, and Milton Berle. American burlesque and its adjunct the Borscht Belt circuited, in turn, to the comedy of Mr. Berle’s “Texaco Star Theatre” and Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca’s “Your Show of Shows,” with its great Jewish writers: Mel Brooks, Lucille Kalman, Larry Gelbart, Neil Simon, and Woody Allen. These in turn generated a lot of Neil Simon comedies and Woody Allen’s films, not to mention Larry Gelbart’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “Mash,” and “Mastergate” and Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner’s “The 2000 Year Old Man.” And those traditions clearly have a link with the Judeocentric humor of Jackie Mason.24 Brustein concluded his theatrical genealogy on a romantic note: “Being in the theater is like being in love. It makes the whole world seem Jewish.” The Yiddish theater continues to excite the imagination of scholars and artists alike. They document its history in film and write modern stage adaptations that find new meaning in old playtexts. The best–known contemporaries include 44

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A Survey of the 1932–33 Yiddish Theater Season

An unpublished survey of the 1932–33 Yiddish theater season in New York, prepared by Alexander S. Kohansky, is a treasure trove of information on productions, actors, and audiences. Kohansky writes that during the season that began on September 30, 1932, and ended on April 30, 1933, 185 different plays, including revivals, were produced in Yiddish, most with minimal or moderate success. The one exception was the Yiddish Art Theatre’s hit Yoshe Kalb, which enjoyed a run of 235 performances. The season’s crop (not including revivals) included 64 operettas, 35 melodramas, 33 comedies, 19 dramas, and 7 “revues.” Clearly, operettas were the most popular genre. Kohansky also lists a full roster of the 155 actors who were engaged in the Yiddish theaters of New York, and offers an interesting profile based on biographical data of 61 of them, both male and female. Of these, only eight were born in America and nearly all the others had come from Eastern Europe; 22 reported that they had an American education,

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compared with 32 who had traditional Jewish educations. On average, they had resided in the United States for nearly 25 years. Kohansky divides them into categories based on their age, noting 25 were “adults” (21–40 years old) and 29 “middle–aged” (41–55 years), with only three “old,” namely over the age of 56. Kohansky also tries to profile the audience, offering an impressionistic appraisal of the nearly 3,000 spectators with whom he had attended 12 different productions. Women, he notes, outnumbered men three to two in all age groups. The highest percentages of patrons were “adults below middle age” (ages 21–40) and “middle–aged” (41–55), while the percentage of young people (ages 17–25) and elderly (56 and over) each constituted around 10%. The similarity in the ages of the actors and the audiences was a harbinger of the aging of the Yiddish theater, a phenomenon that would be in full evidence following World War II.

Production of Chaver Paver’s Clinton Street by the Artef. Photograph by Alfredo Valente, 1939.

Lem Ward directed this comedic tale of life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, presented at the Mercury Theatre.

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Sheet music for Long Live the Land of the Free, 1911.

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playwrights Donald Margulies and Tony Kushner, who adapted, respectively, Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance and The Dybbuk by S. Ansky. (Most recently, Indecent, a play about the trials and tribulations about the God of Vengeance affair, written by Paula Vogel, premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre.) Then there are performers like Mandy Patinkin, who in 1998 presented Mamaloshen on Broadway, a one–man show of Yiddish songs. Filmmaker Arnon Goldfinger’s documentary The Komediant (1999) is an exuberant account of the life and career of Yiddish comedy stars Pesach Burstein and Lillian Lux, and Joel and Ethan Coen produced A Serious Man (2009), which opened with a Yiddish–speaking dramatic prologue evoking the dybbuk tale. A sense of continuity is particularly conveyed by the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, run today by Tom Oppenheim, her grandson, who publicly traces his artistic origins to Jacob P. Adler, his greatly admired great–grandfather. Yiddishists often tend to view the American Yiddish theater as part and parcel of Yiddishland, an imagined cultural space defined by language and culture. This is unquestionably true. However, we must always cast our gaze through the additional and no less important lens that reflects the dynamics of intercultural conversations between the Yiddish theater and the American reality in which it existed, which includes so many diverse theatrical cultural heritages. This is a lens that is expressly American and can be said to be uniquely New York insofar as it is informed by the city’s rich human and artistic tapestry. Without the Yiddish Theater, the American stage would simply not be the same.

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Gender Bending in the Yiddish Theater

When playwright and stage director Abraham Goldfaden created the first professional Yiddish theater troupe in Romania in 1876, there were no Yiddish actresses, and he was initially forced to rely on male performers to portray all the characters in his productions. By 1877, several actresses had joined Yiddish troupes, but a tradition of males playing female characters remained, especially in Yiddish vaudeville and operetta. When Sigmund Mogulesko, one of the first professional Yiddish actors, originated the role of the witch, Bobe Yachne, in Goldfaden’s The Witch (Di Kishufmakherin), a theatrical tradition was established: it remains customary to this day to have a male actor in the lead female role in revivals of this popular work. Female actors engaged in crossdressing as well; they usually appeared in male garb, both traditional and

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modern, when the female character they played tried to pass as a boy in order to circumvent traditional gender restrictions. Audiences were, of course, fully aware of the actresses’ true identity and enjoyed the sexual titillation and the dramatic irony of knowing a “truth” that the play’s other characters were unaware of until the moment of gender revelation, usually for romantic purposes. Petite comedienne Molly Picon excelled in the role of “boy who is really a girl disguised as a boy”; one of her best known gender–bender characters can be seen in the 1937 Yiddish film Yidl mitn fidl, in which she plays a girl musician who masquerades as a boy in order to join an itinerant East European klezmer band. She, inevitably, falls in love with one of the male musicians, who believes her to be a boy and behaves toward her accordingly. All ends happily when she reveals herself to be a girl and the two marry.

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Yiddish New York

Hasia Diner

It was one of these letters from America, in fact, which put the notion of emigrating to the New World definitely in my mind. An illiterate woman brought it to the synagogue to have it read to her, and I happened to be the one to whom she addressed her request. The concrete details of that letter gave New York tangible form in my imagination. It haunted me ever after. The United States lured me not merely as a land of milk and honey, but also, and perhaps chiefly, as one of mystery, of fantastic experiences, of marvelous transformations. To leave my native place and to seek my fortune in that distant, weird world seemed to be just the kind of sensational adventure my heart was hankering for. When I unburdened myself of my project to Reb Sender he was thunderstruck. “To America!” he said. “Lord of the World! But one becomes a Gentile there.” “Not at all,” I sought to reassure him. “There are lots of good Jews there, and they don’t neglect their Talmud, either.” Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky (1917)1

Jews from Europe began to flock to New York City in the 1870s. The single most significant piece of New York real estate for the immigrant Jews could be found below Houston Street and north of Division, bounded on the east by the East River and on the west by Allen Street. Variously referred to as “the East Side,” “the Hebrew Quarter,” or “the ghetto,” the Lower East Side, in fact a multiethnic neighborhood, served as the epicenter of Jewish immigrant life, persisting in importance well into the 1920s. Between 1880 and 1890, three quarters of all New York Jews lived there. Their number reached about 60,000 when reformer Jacob Riis, author of the 1890 exposé How the Other Half Lives, declared the neighborhood the most densely inhabited spot on earth, more heavily populated than Calcutta or Bombay. In the following decades, the number of Jewish immigrants in the city grew exponentially, and by 1910 it was home to about 1.2 million Jews, who constituted fully 52

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above Thalia Theatre, c. 1904.

page 49 left Sigmund Mogulesko dressed as a woman, n.d. page 49 right Molly Picon in Yankele. Photograph by Blitz (Lodz, Poland), c. 1924

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one–quarter of the city’s total population. This number reached 1,649,000 by 1930, nearly 30% of the population, and in 1940, nearly two million. Despite the post–World War II suburbanization movement that pulled Jews out of the city and into New Jersey, to other adjacent counties of New York State, and to faraway places like Los Angeles and Miami, the words “New York” and “Jewish” had become almost synonymous. In many ways, the Jewish newcomers resembled their Irish, Italian, Slavic, and German co–immigrants in the years of the great Jewish migration, a period that lasted until the passage of the National Origins Act in 1924, which imposed an immigration quota system. Newcomers usually lived in crammed tenement dwellings on the Lower East Side and over time moved out to somewhat better, less–crowded neighborhoods. With the opening of the Williamsburg Bridge in 1903, linking the boroughs of Manhattan and Brooklyn, the overall population of the Lower East Side and the number of Jews who lived there began to decline, as new neighborhoods cropped up in Brooklyn. By the next decade, Jews had mostly left the Lower East Side — or new immigrants merely sidestepped it — instead opting for Harlem and emerging sections of the Bronx. But immigrant Jews and their children kept coming back to the Lower East Side neighborhood for meetings, shopping, and leisure activities. It retained its Jewish aura well into the postwar era despite the paucity of Jews still living there. In the heyday of the Lower East Side, the mostly Yiddish–speaking immigrants built a phalanx of social, cultural, political, and religious institutions that reflected their shared values and often reflected the hometowns and regions from which they hailed. They formed landsmanshaftn, local societies established for the purposes of mutual benefit, health care, and, just as importantly, socializing with friends and family from back home. Like all immigrants, they sought to maintain connections with those places and participated in transnational networks that linked both sides of the Atlantic. Jewish immigrants, like those from other lands, wanted to keep alive elements of their culture, be it language, religion, foodways, or art forms, though articulated in increasingly American tones and terms. They invested in schools that taught Hebrew to enculturate their sons into the dictates of Judaism. By the early 20 th century, as Eastern Europe receded further and further into the background, they created schools like the Sholem Aleichem Folk Shules and those operated by the Arbeiter Ring (the Workmen’s Circle) to teach the Yiddish language and foster a connection to the world of their parents and grandparents. 54

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clockwise from above: Immigrants at Ellis Island, postcard by Detroit Publishing Co., 1908. Ellis Island was America’s busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. During its first year, almost 450,000 immigrants were processed there; that number reached one million at its peak in 1907. Overall, more than 12 million people entered the country through Ellis Island. Chicken market at 55 Hester Street, between Ludlow and Essex Streets. Photograph by Berenice Abbott, 1937.

The sign, written in Yiddish characters, reads, “Strictly kosher chicken market.” This is a direct transliteration from English. Pretzel woman, Hester Street. Photo by Alta Ruth Hahn., n.d.

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New York’s Eastern European Jewish immigrants consumed Yiddish newspapers on a daily basis, and one of them in particular: the socialist–leaning Forverts, founded in 1897, known in English as the Jewish Daily Forward. By 1916, it sold more copies than any other foreign–language daily in the United States. In 1914, the combined circulation of the four Yiddish dailies — the Forward, the Warheit, the Morgn Journal, and the Yiddishe Tageblatt — exceeded 455,000. 2 The communist daily Freiheit, established in 1922, reported a circulation of 64,500 in 1930, about a third of that of its archenemy, the Forward (at 175,000). In addition to promoting their respective political and social ideologies, these newspapers were instrumental in shaping cultural tastes and functioned as an important platform for practically all the major Yiddish writers, whose work they printed and often serialized well before they appeared in book form. The city was also home to scores of Yiddish weeklies and monthlies devoted to politics, literature, theater, drama, music, and humor. The world of Yiddish culture in New York extended to book publishing, which included Yiddish–to–English dictionaries and manuals, encyclopedias, popular literature, poetry, and major literary works — both originals and translations. It was a bustling cultural scene: newspapers, bookstores, publishing houses, cafés, restaurants, and theaters provided news, ideas, and entertainment to a population standing between their premigration antecedents and the America into which their children would integrate. Eastern European Jewish immigrants made the journey to America largely for economic reasons, a force that pulled in all newcomers regardless of place of origin or religion. Jews found New York particularly attractive and, unlike others, opted for New York more than any other city. Most Irish, Italian, Polish, and other immigrants spread out over many American cities; while they formed solid enclaves in Gotham, New York did not dominate their American experience. Comparatively fewer Jews ventured beyond the metropolitan area, so that more than half of American Jews lived in the city by the early 20th century. The economic profiles of the city and of the Jews explain the New York–centric dynamic of their migration and settlement. The city had emerged as the center of American garment making in the 1860s and 1870s. The garment industry, the city’s largest employer by 1930, served as the Jews’ economic niche. In the early decades of the migration, most work took place in tenement apartments, labeled pejoratively by progressives as “sweatshops.” Each day, Jewish families transformed their tenement dwelling spaces into shops, employing women and men, other Jews, who sat down in front of sewing machines and stitched together garments, brought in 56

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above Waiting for the “Forward.” Photograph by Lewis W. Hine, 1913.

Newboys gather on the steps of the Forward Building. Some of the boys are holding copies of the daily Di Varheit (The Truth), a liberal paper that tried to compete with the Forward. right Forward Building. Photograph by Edmund V. Gillon, c. 1979.

The Forward Building, built in 1912 and located at 173–175 East Broadway, across from Seward Park, was home to the Forverts (Forward) the most important Yiddish newspaper in America, edited by Abraham Cahan from 1903–46. Portraits of Socialist icons, including Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, were carved onto the facade. The building also housed other Socialist organizations, notably the offices of the Arbeter Ring (Workmen’s Circle). When this picture was taken, the building served as the Ling Liang Church. It was later converted into luxury condominiums.

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unsewn and brought back finished to contractors. Sweatshops gave way to more modern factories by the 1910s, like the infamous Triangle Waist Company, which in 1911 was the site of the worst industrial accident in American history. Jewish laborers in the garment industry worked for Jewish bosses, most of whom had started out as workers themselves. Given the low level of capital needed to get started, sweatshop workers could imagine that they might well end up becoming employers. The industry employed men and women (usually young, unmarried women) alike, and, while Italians also worked in this field, Jews predominated. Their preponderance played a role in the unionization of the needle trades. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), founded in 1900, brought Jewish unionists into confrontation with Jewish employers, as did other predominantly Jewish unions like the International Fur and Leather Workers’ Union, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers’ Union (1914), and the International Cloth Hat, Cap, and Millinery Workers’ Union (1934). These unions demanded the right to engage in collective bargaining for purposes of improving wages and work conditions, and there was a lengthy history of brutal strikes and shutdowns. They built cooperative housing for their mostly Jewish members, established healthcare facilities, opened up summer resorts like Unity House (1919), which provided vacations for ILGWU members in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, and invested in cultural programs — all in the name of union solidarity. In 1937, the ILGWU opened a highly popular and intensely political musical, Pins and Needles, in which union members — sewing machine operators, cutters, pressers, basters, and buttonhole makers — sang and danced their vision of Jewish–inflected class consciousness. Ideas mattered tremendously in this community. Though the majority tended to vote with New York’s Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party machine, socialism fostered communal consciousness. The Forward announced itself as a socialist newspaper, and its founding editor, Abraham Cahan (1860–1951), hoped to convert the Jewish masses, though over the course of time his socialist fervor dampened. Meyer London (1871–1926), running on the Socialist Party ticket, served in Congress from 1915 to 1919 representing the Lower East Side. Baruch Charney Vladek (1886–1938) won election as a Socialist in 1917 to New York City’s Board of Alderman, as did many others. Socialism had to compete not only with Tammany Hall but also with anarchism, Zionism, and eventually communism as an ideology bent on winning over the hearts and minds of New York City’s immigrant Jewish quarter. Like other immigrants here and elsewhere, the Jews of New York saw politics— local, state, national, and even international — as a way to advance their group agenda. 58

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above Mr. Goldstein’s sweatshop, 30 Suffolk St. Photograph by Lewis W. Hine, 1908.

right Bodies from Washington Place fire, 1911. Police and fire officials place victims of the Triangle Waist Company fire in coffins.

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The Great Teachers, mural by Abraham Bogdanove. Oil on canvas, wall–mounted, 1930. “The Great Hall” at Shepard Hall, the centerpiece building of the campus of the City University of New York (CCNY), features (in the Lincoln Hallway) a mural (53 feet long by 8 feet high) entitled “The Great Teachers.” Each of the four divisions of the mural, which spans three arching doorways, contains three figures (from L. to R.): Rama, Confucius, Zoroaster, Krishna, Buddha, Abraham,

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Hermes, Moses, Paul, Orpheus, Socrates, and Plato. The mural was created in 1930 by Jewish–American artist Abraham Bogdanove (1888– 1946), a native of Minsk, Belarus, who immigrated to New York City in 1900. Bogdanove received his artistic education at The Cooper Union, The National Academy of Design, and Columbia University’s School of Architecture. At the time he created the mural 75% of the students at CCNY were Jewish.

REMINISCENCE

MIKE BURSTEIN remembers a moment with his father,

PESACH BURSTEIN

I made my Yiddish theater debut when I was three years old. My father and mother, Pesach’ke Burstein and Lillian Lux, were starring in one of their musical comedies at New York’s National Theatre on Second Avenue. It was a Christmas matinee, and my father was onstage singing one of his songs. I was watching him from the wings, along with my twin sister, Susan, when several of his fellow actors suggested I join my daddy onstage. They knew I could sing all of my father’s songs. They put a false beard and a top hat on me, and I walked right out onstage and stood there. The audience started laughing and pointing towards me. My father stopped singing, called me

over, and asked me who I was. I answered, “I’m Santa Claus.” He asked me what I was doing there and I said, “I want to sing.” “What do you want to sing?” I mentioned one of my father’s most famous songs, “Hotsa Mama Pirba Tsosa,” and proceeded to sing it, accompanied by the orchestra in the pit. I took a Shakespearean bow and ran off. I returned for a second bow to a standing ovation. A man threw a silver dollar onto the stage and yelled, “Someday you will be as great as your father!” I haven’t stopped trying to fulfill that prophecy. MIKE BURSTYN, ACTOR, LOS ANGELES

Integration into America became the dominant motif for the children of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. They experienced life in the streets and schools of the city, and they moved with relative ease into the English–speaking world that their parents struggled with, as they finished high school and attended Hunter College (for women) and City College (men) in great numbers and entered professions. By the 1940s, Jewish women, the daughters of immigrants, made up the majority of the city’s schoolteachers. Others of their sisters came to dominate the fields of social work and dentistry, among others. Where the immigration generation shaped a distinctively New York Yiddish stage, second– and third–generation Jews found their way into New York’s artistic world in such undertakings as songwriting, publishing, filmmaking, modern dance, the graphic arts, and theater, to name but a few. Some produced works with Jewish themes, creative works that examined aspects of Jewish history and culture. But whether tackling explicitly Jewish or more universal subjects, they produced a massive outpouring that expressed their collective cultural arrival by appealing to a broad swath of the American public.

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May Day strikers in Union Square, 1913. On May 1, 1913, 50,000 workers demonstrating the solidarity of the working class gathered in Union Square, the radical hub of New York City. The Yiddish sign at the left reads, “We demand union shops and union conditions.”

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Popular Yiddish Theater: Music, Melodrama, and Operetta Nahma Sandrow

Music has always played a key role in Jewish religious and communal life, both within and outside the synagogue. Long before there was a Yiddish theater, the carnivalesque holiday of Purim — the only time during the Jewish calendar year when masquerading is permitted — stood out for its rich use of music and performance. Professional and quasi–professional musicians were often employed in wedding celebrations as well. In fact, singers and instrumentalists were the only performers who received at least some professional training in traditional Eastern European Jewish communities. These musical traditions carried over into the early days of the Yiddish stage. Some cantors provided music for the nascent Yiddish theater, while others went further, adding to their liturgical duties stage and even film careers. Yiddish operetta composers like Louis Friedsell (1863–1923), Herman Wohl (1877–1936), Sholom Secunda (1894–1974), and Joseph Rumshinsky (1881–1956) had musical roots in the synagogue and were equally at home composing for both the synagogue and the Yiddish stage. And many of the early stars of American Yiddish theater — including Boris Thomashefsky, David Kessler, and Sigmund Mogulesko — began their careers as meshoreyrim (plural of meshoyrer, a choirboy who accompanies the cantor), training in the service of famous cantors, and were thus singers prior to becoming actors. These traditions had their roots in the decades leading up to the birth of Yiddish theater. By the middle of the 19th century, as Eastern European Jewish life began to urbanize and become more secular, music proved to be the least objectionable form of performance for traditional Jews because of its nonrepresentational nature and its all–male identity. It was thus natural that the first modern professional Jewish performers would be itinerant musicians. The first such group, the Broder Singers, originated, as their name indicates, in the Polish town of Brody. They were café singers who entertained their mostly working–class audience with songs, poetry recitations, and sketches, at times even introducing bits of dialogue and using makeup

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Poster for The Rabbi’s Temptation at Manhattan Theatre located at East 106th Street and Superior Avenue, 1932. Music by Sholom Secunda, book by Sholem Steinberg. This “Hassidic” operetta starring Aaron Lebedeff and Leon Blank was first produced in 1924–25 at the Parkway Theatre. It was revived in 1933 and 1936.

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and props to add dramatic flavor to their numbers. Their success encouraged other musicians, and the term “Broder singers” assumed a generic meaning. The Yiddish theater came into being when a literary man and two singer/performers joined forces and created a new form of Jewish entertainment. The year was 1876, on the eve of the Russo–Turkish war. The place was Shimen Marks’s wine garden in the town of Jassy, Romania. In comes writer Abraham Goldfaden (1840–1908), a child of the Haskala (Jewish enlightenment), who had already made a name for himself as an author of popular songs. Goldfaden was hoping to establish a newspaper, but instead he joined forces with a couple of folksingers who were then performing at the local tavern, and provided a skimpy storyline that offered narrative continuity to their musical numbers. The moment was right: the public was thrilled, and soon the multitalented Goldfaden was heading his own traveling theatrical company, for which he functioned as producer, playwright, director, composer, and librettist. His early offerings resembled commedia dell’arte, with their combination of an uncomplicated, fixed scenario with improvised dialogue and stage business. But he soon grew into lavish operettas, some of which — The Witch (1879), The Two Kuni–Lemls (1880), and Shulamith (1880) — became beloved classics of the Jewish stage. The tales were simple, adopted from a variety of Jewish and European sources, with a musical hodgepodge of adapted cantorial tunes, Eastern European folk songs, German and French marches and waltzes, and melodies lifted from Mozart, Halevi, Meyerbeer, and Verdi. In his magisterial Jewish Music: Its Historical Development, musicologist Abraham Z. Idelsohn (1882–1938) addresses what he terms the “motley origin” of Goldfaden’s music. He offers a close analysis of the music of two Goldfaden operettas, Bar Kokhba and Shulamith, and shows how the 17 musical numbers in the latter derive from a variety of specific sources: four cantorial pieces, four Jewish folk and Hassidic melodies, three operas, and the rest from Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian songs. While Idelsohn notes that Goldfaden’s contemporary enthusiasts had no musical education and were likely unaware of the songs’ derivativeness, he concludes that the tunes resonated with the audiences: “Though Goldfaden cannot be credited with original creations of music in these two operettas analyzed, he showed much dramatic skill and musical taste in adopting fascinating tunes which would appeal to the Jewish masses.”1 Interestingly, he made these adaptations without direct access to written sources: while Goldfaden had an excellent ear for music, he could not read it. Joseph Rumshinsky, a major conservatory–trained Yiddish composer, recounted that when Goldfaden needed music for a play, he would pick a cantorial musical 68

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left Sheet music for The Jewish Yankee Doodle, 1905. Musical comedy by Boris Thomashefsky, music by Louis Friedsel.

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right Sheet music for “Eli, Eli, Lomo Ozavtoni,” 1907. This popular song of the Yiddish repertoire opens with the lament from Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It made its debut in the operetta The Hero and Bracha or the Jewish King of Poland for a Night (1896), by Moyshe Hurwitz with a musical score by Jacob Sandler (1860–1931) and lyrics by Boris Thomashefsky. “Eli, Eli,” which was originally sung by Sophia Karp

Popular Yiddish Theater: Music, Melodrama, and Operetta

(1859–1904), gained universal renown after it was recorded by vaudeville superstar Belle Baker. In November 1921, the anti–Semitic Dearborn Independent vilified the song, calling it “a racial war cry.” It went on to say, “In the low cafés of New York, where Bolshevik Jews hang out. …It is constantly heard…where emotional Russian and Polish Jews — all enemies to all government — shout the words amid torrential excitement. When you see the hymn in print you are utterly puzzled to understand the excitement it arouses.”

score and ask a meshoyrer who could read music properly to sing it to him so that he could choose the sections that suited his authorial purposes.2 According to some contemporaneous accounts, Goldfaden began the process of writing an operetta with the score, not with lyrics. Cantor Abraham Frachtenberg, who met Goldfaden as a young man in Romania, recalled years later their collaboration when the dramatist asked him to write music for Akedas Yitkhok (The Sacrifice of Isaac), a script he was working on. Goldfaden asked for a romantic musical piece, then a lullaby, and then for a love duet. Piece by piece, the score was completed. Only then did Goldfaden add words to the music. Goldfaden’s early storylines may have been thin and the melodies borrowed, yet there was genius in the fresh and often–fantastic concoctions of this Yiddish bard. The people loved his tales and hummed his songs at home and in their shops, and the names of some of his characters — Schmendrik, Bobbe Yachne, and Kuni Leml — entered the Yiddish language as familiar folk types. His success encouraged the formation of competing itinerant troupes, and in a world with little regard for copyright, his work was soon imitated and plagiarized throughout the Yiddish– speaking world. When popular professional Yiddish theater arrived in America with the start of the mass immigration from Eastern Europe, its first production, in New York City, was The Witch, a Goldfaden operetta. By the turn of the century, New York Yiddish audiences could see a great range of plays. The favorites were operettas, musical comedies, and melodramas with musical underpinnings. Though these plays were sometimes an absurd jumble of implausible incidents, the audiences were nonetheless pleased. Practically all plays included music, now influenced by operas and operettas more often than by more traditional sources. During the so–called Lateiner–Hurwitz period, for example, an aria from Tchaikovsky’s 1890 opera The Queen of Spades was used in Joseph Lateiner’s Destruction of Jerusalem, and the music composed by Edvard Grieg in 1875 for Ibsen’s play Peer Gynt was employed in its entirety in Lateiner’s 1893 operetta Bas Sheva. In 1885, in a review of Lateiner’s historical operetta Alexander, Crown Prince of Jerusalem, the critic for the New York Sun wrote: The music vivif[ied] even the dullest portions … a melodious monody which swells sometimes into a chorus of tearful and tender lamentation … quaint, eloquent and touching, full of heart and feeling … lifts up both play and players and creates an illusion stronger than would be possible by the most deft arrangement of ordinary dramatic materials.

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Goldie Awards presented to actress Mina Bern and choreographer Lillian Shapero, c. 1985. Conceived as the Yiddish version of the Tony Awards, the Goldies were named for Abraham Goldfaden and bestowed by the World Congress for Jewish Culture from 1985–87 for contributions to Jewish art and theater. The first awards were presented to such greats as Molly Picon, Pesach Burstein, Miriam Kressyn, Seymour Rexite, Zvi Scooler, and Joseph Buloff.

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These early operettas offered purely escapist entertainments: singing, dancing, romance, laughs, and spectacle. In the late 19th and first decade of the 20th century, the predominant public taste was for large costume operettas. Ancient Judea, the Golden Age of 15th–century Spain, and the courts of sultans and emperors all offered juicy opportunities for pageantry and lofty bombastic speeches delivered in the stiffly Germanic Yiddish known as daytshmersh. Such plays, whether based on biblical incidents, history, or on entirely fantastical creations, romanticized past Jewish glories. Characters were aristocratic or brave. If there were martyrs, they suffered nobly. These portrayals enabled audiences to feel pride in their identity. For newly arrived immigrants, it was glorious to watch Jews wearing golden robes and crowns and speaking Yiddish with crushing dignity. The range and tone of Yiddish melodramas is evidenced by the varied titles of the best–known works of the genre. Joseph Lateiner’s (1853–1935) more than 80 works include such titles as Ezra; or, The Eternal Jew; Blumele; or, The Pearl of Warsaw; Mishke and Moshke: Europeans in America; and Satan in the Garden of Eden. His primary rival, self–proclaimed “Professor” Moyshe Hurwitz (1864–1910), was equally productive, with an oeuvre that contained such titles as Tisa esler (a docudrama); Monte Cristo; Elijah the Prophet; or, Millionaire and Beggar; and The Gypsy Woman. Nokhem Meyer Shaikevitch (also known as Schomer, 1849–1905) dramatized many of his own novels, including The Coquettish Ladies; The Jewish Prince; The Unfaithful Wife; or, The Bloody Idea; and The Second Haman. Many of these plays, though often fantastic in plot and setting, dealt with issues important to the immigrant community. Take, for instance, Lateiner’s Dos yidishe harts (The Jewish Heart, 1908), which ran for several hundred consecutive performances — an extraordinary hit. The play deals with anti–Semitism, intermarriage, and the strength of familial bonds. It tells of Yankev (Jacob), a Jewish art student in Romania, who has won a prize for a painting, thus angering his archrival, the anti– Semitic Christian Viktor Popeska. Act I ends as Yankev discovers that Madame Popeska, Victor’s mother, is actually his own mother as well. It turns out that she abandoned baby Yankev and his late father when she ran off to marry her Christian lover. In Act II, we are told that, according to a new edict, Jews must have their parents’ signatures in order to get a marriage license. Yankev wants to marry Dina, so he contacts Mme. Popeska. She and her newfound son embrace. However, Viktor, horrified by the revelation, as well as by the damage that her public acknowledgment of Jewish blood will bring to him, confronts Yankev and threatens him with a gun. Torn between her two loyalties, the weeping Mme. Popeska refuses to sign, and the 72

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Poster for Thomas La–Rue as “Tevya, the Black Cantor,” 1920s. The Yiddish text reads: “Tevye, the Black Cantor”; “The World’s Greatest Wonder!”; “The famous cantor who has taken America by storm in compositions by Rosenblatt…” Thomas LaRue, who was not Jewish, began his Yiddish career in the successful musical comedy Yente Telebende, produced in 1917 at Boris Thomashefsky’s National Theatre. In 1920, LaRue appeared on the cover of sheet music for “Ferlir nur nit dein hofnung reb Yid” (“Do Not Lose Your Hope, Dear Jew”), by Isidor Lash and Sholom Secunda, as “Thomas LaRue Jones,” the song’s “exclusive interpreter.” It must be around this time that he began to perform cantorial music wearing ceremonial garb. Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, LaRue performed across America, and appeared on radio programs, where he was listed as “the colored cantor.” The theatrical novelty of a gentile black singer performing cantorial music must be seen within the context of the synergy between the Yiddish stage and synagogue music. It also reflects the show–business star status enjoyed by America’s great cantors, who were also recording artists and offered cantorial concerts in secular venues.

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above Poster for Such is Life at the Yiddish Folks Theatre on Second Avenue at 12th Street, c. 1935

opposite, clockwise from top left Poster for I Long for Home at the Satz and Rumshinsky Public Theatre, 1931. Poster for Mish Mash at the National Roof Garden, 1915.

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Poster for Chains of Love at the Grand Theatre, 1933. Poster for The Jolly Cantor at the Irving Place Theatre, 1925.

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curtain falls on Jacob’s declaration that “We remain strangers.” In Act III, Yankev and Dina have decided to immigrate to America and marry there, but Yankev becomes sick. Mme. Popeska visits him in his sickbed and confesses: MADAME POPESKA: Thank God. Yankev, you know the power of love and you will understand me. When I married your father, I was a child, fifteen years old. I didn’t marry him for love. My poor parents pressed me to become a rich man’s wife. Three years later, chance brought me together with my present husband, and then I, too, loved, as only an eighteen–year– old loves for the first time in her life. I sacrificed everything for him, for the emotion of my first love bewitched, enchanted me. I acted without thinking, without considering. When I grew older, the first enchantment passed. With time I recalled more and more strongly my own dear ones whom I had left behind me in my Jewish home. (Trembles.) Most of all I recalled my child, whom I left behind in the cradle. Ah, how often a burning longing came over me, and like a madwoman I wanted to run out into the world, run and find my child. But by then I was already also the mother of my two Christian children, and they too still lay in their cradles. (Weeps.) And this mother–heart of mine was torn in two. I did not know whom to sacrifice, or for whom. No one can imagine how I suffered in silence. Years passed, and the picture of my Jewish child did not fade, until chance brought you to me as a grown man. (She kneels.) Yankev, this sinful woman kneels before you, as before her judge. Hand down your verdict on your sinful mother. Demand the hardest sacrifice from me, and I will do it gladly, only let me be your mamma. You are a Jewish child with a Jewish heart— have mercy on your unhappy mother and forgive her, forgive her. (Kisses his hand.) YANKEV: (After a strong inner struggle, presses her to his heart.) Mother! Shortly after this act of forgiveness, Viktor bursts into the room with a revolver and, after spouting anti–Semitic slurs against his brother, there is a struggle and the revolver goes off, killing Viktor. In an act of redemption, Mme. Popeska saves her son from jail by confessing to the murder. Act IV takes place at Yankev and Dina’s wedding. Mme. Popeska, though under arrest, is allowed to attend. At the end of the ceremony, she prays for the Jewish husband whom she abandoned in her youth, and, overcome, she dies. Yankev sings a reprise of a song, “Always remember your mother’s song.” Onstage, well–acted, this was enormously effective. Moreover, in theme it follows Yankev’s transformation from passive victim of anti–Semitism to active hero, proud 76

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Poster for Style at Bessie Thomashefsky’s People’s Theatre, 1916. Written by Abraham S. Schomer, with music by Joseph Rumshinsky, starring Bessie Thomashefsky, Max Rosenthal, and Peter Graf.

Sheet music for “Oi is schlecht” from The Jewish Heart, 1909. Music by Joseph Brody, with lyrics by Solomon Small and Sigmund Mogulesko.

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above Vera Rozanko (1893–1985) in Natalka Poltavka, c. 1935. The popular Ukrainian tale of Natalka of Poltava was adopted for the stage in both dramatic and musical form. An operetta based on the story was made into a Ukrainian film in 1936, marking the first adaptation of an operetta produced in the Soviet Union. Another film, directed by Ukrainian– American Vasyl Avramenko, was released in the United States the following year. It was the first Ukrainian language film produced in the United States.

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opposite Costume worn by Vera Rozanko for unidentified production.

and in control. He also wins his mother’s heart. By her sacrifice, Madame Popeska pays for her sin, earns forgiveness, and herself rises to heroism. Two of the most familiar and evocative rituals, the Kaddish prayer for the dead and the wedding ceremony, are sung in the last act, further tugging at the heartstrings of the audience. As new melodramas were increasingly set in the United States, other plot and musical motifs proliferated. Characters struggled, not always successfully, to adjust to an alien culture. They were laid off or went on strike; families were separated by an ocean; husbands abandoned wives to start afresh in a new place. Songs like “A brivele der mamen” (“A Little Letter to Mama”) and “A brivele der kale” (“A Little Letter to My Bride”) expressed their pain, as well as the guilt that came from leaving loved ones behind. Plays dealt also with such social issues as unionization, the Russian Revolution, and birth control. Explicitly political songs like “Di grine kuzine” (“The Greenhorn Cousin”), the sad saga of an innocent girl’s descent into poverty and degradation, appeared as theater songs. The style evolved as well: in the course of the 20th century, as tastes shifted in Western theater as a whole and Yiddish audiences became more demanding, melodramas were played in a lower key, with fewer splendid speeches and more naturalistic and intimate moments. Similarly, the operetta form became sleeker, closer to what we would now call a Broadway musical, and the music was heavily influenced, on the one hand, by American jazz and ragtime and, on the other, by folk songs that harkened back to the nostalgic past. In 1923, the wildly popular show The Golden Bride (Di goldene kale, book by Frieda Freiman, music by Joseph Rumshinsky, lyrics by Louis Gilrod) combined many of the abovementioned social themes, as well as several love stories. A poor village girl in a shtetl in the Old Country, raised by relatives and in love with a local boy, is suddenly visited by her New York family and learns that she is an heiress. Complications ensue amidst catchy tunes and amusing repartee in several languages. When revived in concert form in 2013 through the work of Michael Ochs, who translated the book and reconstructed the score, The Golden Bride still proved great entertainment. The lyrics and music of The Golden Bride illustrate the conversation between the European and the contemporary American, between the folk song and jazz: First, the folksong mode. Early in the play, village girls artlessly sing a local song, charming their guests from the big city: A tree stands deep in the woods, its branches blooming, And in my heart a longing has begun Tralala 80

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Poster for Joseph Cherniavsky and His Hasidish Jazz Band. Cherniavsky (1894–1959) was educated at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and studied with Alexander Glazounov, Rimsky–Korsakov, and (in Leipzig) Julius Klengel. He came to America in 1918, and in 1922 he established the Hasidish (later Yiddish) American Jazz Band, touring the American and Jewish vaudeville circuit extensively. Cherniavsky was active on the Yiddish stage, writing, adapting, directing, and performing music for Boris Thomashefsky, Maurice Schwartz, and others. In the late 1920s, he moved to Hollywood, and in 1929 wrote the score for four films, including Show Boat and The Love Trap. Cherniavsky also toured as a conductor, and created and conducted the NBC Radio program “Musical Camera” in New York.

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Next, the ragtime. An American guest tries to woo a local girl with the razzle– dazzle of the New World: Over there, over there, in the golden land I’ll show you God’s wonders — I’m well known there — The little horses run fast at the races … Everybody constantly bets on the horses and loses lots of money on them. At a baseball game you’ll see how each player throws a ball. People pay money for that, and they come from all over … At a baseball game you’ll see how each player throws a ball. And, finally, a comic synthesis of the old and the new. A matchmaker’s jazzy patter song combines tradition with references to the American “Roaring Twenties”: You are a beauty, your father’s name is Louie, For you I have a Chinaman who cooks good chop suey. … Here’s a little lass, I have something to tell you I have a bridegroom for you, it’s Jackie Coogan [a Hollywood child star] In his essay on music in the Yiddish theater, Rumshinsky identified cantorial music and jazz as its oldest and newest influences. The contrast between the two was the nexus of one of the greatest hits of the 1920s, Samson Raphaelson’s The Jazz Singer (1927), the first feature–length “talkie” based on an English–language Broadway play. It is the story of a cantor’s son, played by Georgie Jessel onstage and Al Jolson in the movie, who leaves his religious ghetto family in search of a career in vaudeville. He finally achieves his dream, and his debut as a Broadway star is scheduled for Yom Kippur. His dying father begs him to come home to sing the Kol Nidre prayer in the synagogue. The theater or the synagogue? Filial duty or career? Judaism or the world of entertainment? Torn, the son sacrifices his career to return to the synagogue. The film version, though, added a sort of epilogue where the son’s “American” career is fully resurrected. In the course of the film, two voices are heard: Jolson’s and cantor Yossele Rosenblatt’s. Jolson sings “Mammy,” “Toot, Toot, Tootsie, Goodbye,” and other up–to–the–minute American hits, but he also sings a small section of the Kol Nidre before Cantor Rosenblatt (heard but not seen) sings the Kaddish. The plot and music highlight the tension between the two worlds, and, while the need to choose between identities is emphasized in the stage production, the film proclaims the possibility of adjustment, Americanization, and reconciliation. Jazz and cantorial music, with all their disparate implications, can coexist and enrich each other.

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Yiddish poster for the English– language stage production of Samson Raphaelson’s The Jazz Singer, c. 1925. Starring George Jessel as Jack Rogin, the Jazz–singing son of an immigrant old world cantor, the Broadway production opened on September 14, 1925, at the Fulton Theatre, and after two months moved to the Cort Theatre. It closed in June of 1926 after 303 performances. In 1927, the show was revived for 16 performances at the Century Theatre. The poster reads: “The Success of New York, Boston, and Chicago! Albert Lewis in collaboration with Sam Harris present George Jessel in The Jazz Singer, a comedy of Jewish life in America by Shimshen (Samson) Raphaelson.”

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Poster for the film The Jazz Singer, 1927. Al Jolson (1886–1950), America’s most popular and well paid entertainer at his peak in the 1930s, starred as Jack Rogin in the 1927 Warner Brothers film adaptation of The Jazz Singer. It was the first feature–length motion picture to offer synchronized sound sequences. Its release is regarded as an historic cinematic milestone that signified the end of the silent era and the beginning of the “talkies.” While Jolson sang the secular songs in the film, the Yom Kippur synagogue music was recorded by New York cantor Yossele Rosenblatt. The film’s use of blackface, common in vaudeville in the 1920s, has long generated debate and has drawn serious criticism from current cultural critics.

Popular Yiddish Theater: Music, Melodrama, and Operetta

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Jacob Gordin: The Great Reformer

Barbara Henry

Jacob Gordin (1853–1909), a Jewish–Russian writer deeply grounded in the culture of his homeland, came to America in 1891, where he established himself as the first literary playwright staged in the Yiddish language. His often daring plays became one of the cornerstones of the Yiddish dramatic repertoire, including his 1902 The Kreutzer Sonata, which became the first Yiddish play to be translated and produced in English. Notably, within the world of Jewish New York, Gordin was a pivotal figure in the maturation of Yiddish theater from its early, haphazard ethos into an influential art form. The professional Yiddish theater was a mere 15 years old when Jacob Gordin encountered its American iteration in New York in the autumn of 1891. He had some acquaintance with the emerging Yiddish theater of his native Russia and had airily dismissed its repertoire as consisting of little more than “pretentious” Goldfaden operettas and comedies, with titles like Rivke and the Gefilte Fish.1 But what Gordin saw at New York’s Union Theatre defied all his expectations — and lowered the bar yet further. The raucous play involved a blind miller, speechifying in a weird Germanic dialect, arias cribbed from Italian operas, and people running around hitting each other. The audience seemed to enjoy it, though they were at least partly distracted from its ghastliness by their restless young children and the peddlers selling seltzer and apples during the play: “Everything that I heard and saw was far from Jewish life, was vulgar, without aesthetic merit, false, vile, and rotten.”2 Surely Gordin, a Russian writer and journalist, fluent in four languages and well–read in world literature, could come up with something better. Even his minimal qualifications for the job of Yiddish playwright exceeded those of the existing field of American Yiddish dramatists: Joseph Lateiner (1853–1935), Moyshe “Professor” Hurwitz (1844–1910), and Nokhem Shaykevitsh (Schomer, 1849–1905). These writers catered with varying degrees of proficiency to Yiddish– speaking audiences’ love of romantic, musical, and sentimental plays, churned out rapidly to satisfy a public with little education but a voracious enthusiasm for the theater. The quality of this Yiddish dramaturgy rarely equaled the talents of its 86

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Commemorative micrograph portrait of Jacob Gordin by L. Rotblat, 1909. This poster of playwright Jacob Gordin employs the traditional Jewish art form of micography, which uses Hebrew letters to create an image. The portrait is made up of the entire text of Gordin’s play Mirele Efros.

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actors, a number of whom — Jacob P. Adler, David Kessler, Sigmund Mogulesko, and Sigmund Feinman — met with Gordin shortly after his arrival in New York. Gordin was impressed and wondered, “If Yiddish actors are men like other actors of the world theater, why should the Yiddish theater not be like other theaters?”3 The impulse to make the Yiddish theater more like the theaters of Russia, France, and Germany, and less like its vigorous, creative, and occasionally awful self, was typical of Gordin’s belief that whatever was traditionally Jewish was probably in need of correction. That Russia, France, and Germany had popular theaters no less flamboyant than those of the Lower East Side was not seen as evidence of American Jews’ theatrical parity, however. In Europe, the popular theater was balanced by a literary one: puppet shows, slapstick, and Grand Guignol competed with the Moscow Art Theatre, the Meiningen Ensemble, and Antoine’s Théâtre–Libre. Gordin would offer Yiddish–speaking New York a serious drama of its own. In place of crowd–pleasing melodramas with songs (repeated at the request of audiences) and “elegant” daytshmerish (the stage dialect that resembled neither Yiddish nor the German it strenuously strove to imitate), Gordin aimed at a realist, literary Jewish theater. Realist plays of the late 19th century aspired to be case studies, observing human beings in their social environment, examining the forces that made them who they were and helped determine the choices they made. Realism was indelibly associated with progressive politics and compassion for the working man and woman: the faithful reproduction of reality on stage would bear witness to life’s injustices, and by exposing these perhaps lead to their amelioration. This creative stance, predicated not on creating a diverting fantasy but on the observation of empirical reality, would determine the subject matter, staging, and sociopolitical orientation of Gordin’s plays. This was an ambitious undertaking in 1891, particularly for a novice playwright. In Gordin’s native Russia, realism was a bold artistic mode that would reach its apex at the Moscow Art Theatre, established in 1898. A Yiddish stage based on realist principles such as Gordin envisioned would actually put the Yiddish theater leagues ahead of the English–language American stage’s development of the same principle. But it was going to be a hard sell in New York. Yiddish–speaking audiences were already well aware of injustice. Working for a pittance in factories, in shops, at manual labor, doing piecework while caring for children, would they really want to gaze more closely at reality rather than escape it for a few hours? Did they really want to see crime, exploitation, poverty, and suffering on stage when they could see cheerful comedies, musicals, or matinee idol Boris Thomashefsky on a white horse? 88

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Bust of Jacob Gordin by Julius Butansky. Bronze, 1905.

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With the support of the influential journalists of New York’s radical Yiddish newspaper the Arbayter tsaytung (The Workman’s Paper), Gordin forged ahead. His first full–length Yiddish play, Siberia, performed in November of 1891 at the Union Theatre, tells the story of Rubin Cohn, who escapes a transport to a prison camp and starts a new life under a different name. He marries and prospers, but eventually his ruse is discovered and tragedy ensues: his daughter commits suicide, and he is again in chains by the end of the drama. The opening night audience did not know what to make of a play in vernacular Yiddish, and one with no musical numbers and an unhappy ending. As they grew restless, the play’s star, Jacob P. Adler, made an appeal for patience, invoking Gordin’s reputation as a “famous Russian writer” deserving of their respect.4 It worked — that time. What brought people back to Gordin’s plays was not his reputation or his bearing witness to injustice, but to his unique blend of the real, the musical, and the controversial. Gordin used his extensive knowledge of world literature to adapt and modernize the classics — Shakespeare, Goethe, Ibsen, Tolstoy, and many others— to reflect the anxieties and preoccupations of his Yiddish–speaking audience. The challenges of modern American life, and the wrenching changes it introduced into the lives of traditional Eastern European Jews, in terms of familial authority, sexual mores, work, language, and religious observance, are all explored in Gordin’s plays. Literary adaptations proved vastly more popular with audiences than Gordin’s more overtly sociopolitical dramas like Siberia. Characteristic of Gordin’s adaptive method are Der yidisher kenig Lir (The Jewish King Lear, 1892) and Di yidishe kenigen Lir oder Mirele Efros (The Jewish Queen Lear, or Mirele Efros, 1898), which point directly to their source and focus on the Shakespearean play’s generational conflicts. But there were significant changes: Gordin shifts his settings to contemporary Eastern Europe to comply with realism’s call for familiar settings and vernacular language. Given the paucity of modern Jewish royalty, Gordin’s Lears are prosperous merchants, a move that then offers a platform for indicting the corrosive effects of capitalism on familial bonds. While his detractors, like the influential critic and novelist Abraham Cahan (1860–1951), were inclined to accuse Gordin of plagiarism, the playwright never concealed his sources. Indeed, Gordin invited audiences to draw direct parallels between the action of his plays and the non–Jewish texts on which his The Jewish King Lear or The Kreutzer Sonata were based. Gordin, who had ten children to support, was extraordinarily prolific, churning out new works at an astonishing rate. Indeed, he wrote so many plays that it is difficult 90

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“The Heroes of the Ghetto” postcard with Gordin caricature, n.d. This image shows a combative Gordin ready to fight for his ideals.

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to estimate exactly how many he may have authored, as some (primarily historical operettas) were written pseudonymously. For all their programmatic politics, the source of the plays’ power and longevity is classically dramatic: age versus youth, duty versus love. But because these are also modern American works, created in a land where one can escape the long, skeletal hand of the old–world past, the protagonists of Gordin’s plays can alter their own tragic Shakespearean dénouement. In both Lear plays, the elderly tyrants, exiled from their families, return chastened but triumphant, as the love between parents and children overcomes the divisive power of economics to create a family unit that is stronger for its having been tested. And no one loses an eye, let alone two. Gordin’s almost neoclassical reticence toward violence in his Lear plays is not carried over to his more controversial works. In Di Kreytser sonata (The Kreutzer Sonata, 1902) — a canny interrogation of Leo Tolstoy’s Kreitserova sonata (Kreutzer Sonata, 1889) — set first in Russia and then in New York City, an abused wife shoots her husband and then turns the gun on his lover — her own sister. The title of Di shkite (The Slaughter, 1899) refers to both the murderous knifing unleashed by another abused wife and the everyday treatment of women as little better than animals and objects of trade. Indeed, the “woman question” was a perennial topic of Gordin’s plays. In addition to domestic violence, his dramas also treated free love (Di yidishe Safo [The Jewish Sappho], 1900), the repressive hypocrisies of the “respectable” male Orthodox bourgeoisie (Tares hamishpokhe [The Sanctity of Family Life], 1904), prostitution (Dvoyrele meyukheses [Dvoyrele the Aristocrat], 1896), and the unique problems of Jewish women immigrants (On a heym [Homeless], 1907). Many stars — Keni Liptzin, Bertha Kalich, and Sarah Adler in the United States, and Esther–Rokhl Kaminska in Poland — made their careers playing Gordin’s leading female roles. One of Gordin’s best works, Got, mentsh un tayvl (God, Man, and Devil, 1900), addresses the realist imperative for art that reflects social and political problems but presents them in a form that does not disdain the Yiddish theater’s love for music and the supernatural. The play pointedly draws on Goethe’s Faust (1808), the Book of Job, and one of Gordin’s own Russian–language stories, Syupriz (The Surprise, 1885).5 In a prologue, Satan bets God that a devout Torah scribe and amateur musician, Hershele Dubrovner, can be corrupted by money. Satan takes earthly form as “Uriel Mazik,” a businessman who sells Hershele a winning lottery ticket in order to get the process underway. As Hershele’s wealth grows, he abandons his friends, divorces his wife, and ruins small local businesses that make 92

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Poster for Jacob Gordin’s The Jewish King Lear at the Windsor Theatre, October 13, 1898. The performance, starring Jacob P. Adler, was a benefit for the Hebrew Legal Aid and Protective Association of New York.

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Scene from Jacob Gordin’s God, Man, and Devil at Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre, 1928.

prayer–shawls by opening a factory that mass–produces the garments. Only when his friend’s son dies violently in the factory does Hershele realize that he has betrayed everyone that he loves. He atones by hanging himself with a blood– stained prayer shawl. Satan loses his bet with God. The play reflects Gordin’s persistent themes: the toxic nature of capitalism, the susceptibility of traditional religious Jews to that toxin, the exploitation of women, and the power of art to save us from ourselves. The play is richly atmospheric, with colorful language, and Gordin skillfully weaves in Hershele’s violin solos to testify to both the depth of his feeling and the survival of his conscience. God, Man, and Devil reveals that Gordin’s realism is almost entirely concentrated in his language and in his fixation on economic problems. These are explored theatrically, however, in highly eclectic ways. Far from abandoning the Yiddish theater’s musicality, Gordin incorporated songs and even dance into most of his plays, always integrated logically into the plot. He even attempted symbolist abstractions à la Maurice Maeterlinck in Der unbekanter (The Unknown, 1904) and verse drama in Oyf di berg (On the Mountains, 1906). While these plays were both critically and commercially unsuccessful, their failures were not out of line with the similar results of avant–garde experiments in symbolist drama in Europe and Russia. What then, accounts for Gordin’s reputation as a reformer, the author of the Yiddish theater’s turn to realism? What one generation finds “realistic” in the theater is anything that accurately reflects the spirit of their times and the emotional and intellectual needs of their audience. Gordin’s realism may not be ours, but it was for his audience. His innovations shifted expectations about form, language, and subject matter, and they showed younger writers what might be done further. Playwrights like David Pinski (1872–1959) and Peretz Hirshbein (1880–1948) would reject the Gordin repertoire and produce one that was more recognizably realist, but they did so in the wake of Gordin’s pathbreaking introduction of realism to the Yiddish stage. These attributes include vernacular Yiddish, contemporary settings, and a focus on controversial social issues— always in a form that entertained while striving to impart didactic content. Gordin’s plays were important in their day and enjoyed real popularity as late as the 1940s, but the post–Holocaust era has not been kind to his legacy. Lacking the folkloric and musical dynamism of Goldfaden’s works, the hypnotic symbolism of S. Ansky (1863–1920), or the formal versatility of Pinski’s plays, the majority of Gordin’s works today languish in obscurity. The rapid development and tragically attenuated life of the Yiddish theater meant that playwrights such as Gordin 96

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Bertha Kalich as Miriam Friedlander in The Kreutzer Sonata, performed on Broadway, 1906. Jacob Gordin created the lead role in The Kreutzer Sonata for Bertha Kalich. It was a play to which Kalich would return throughout her career, playing it in both Yiddish and English.

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above Keni Liptzin in the title role of Jacob Gordin’s Mirele Efros, c. 1896. right Skirt and blouse worn by Berta Gersten in the film version of Mirele Efros, 1939.

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Gown worn by Berta Gersten in the film version of Mirele Efros, 1939. Gordin’s play was made into a movie in 1939, directed by Josef Berne and filmed in Yiddish, with English subtitles. Berta Gersten, who played the title role, had made her stage debut as a secondary character in the play three decades earlier.

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achieved a prominence that they might not otherwise have enjoyed in a theatrical tradition of greater breadth and longevity. But given what has been lost in the life of the Yiddish stage, the very survival of so much of Gordin’s work, in dozens and dozens of texts, in memoirs, and in reviews, surely holds the promise of reevaluation, if not renewal.

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above From Jacob Gordin’s Immortal Gallery, n.d. Actors in major Gordin plays: Isidor Hollander as Uriel Mazik in God, Man, and Devil; Herman Yablokoff as Lemech in The Wild Man; Jennie Goldstein as Mirele in Mirele Efros. Bottom: Jacob Zilbert as Shloimke in Shloimke Sharlatan; Peter Graff as Kalmen Moishe in The Stranger; Bertha Gutentag as Chasi in The Orphan (Di yesoyme); Extreme right: Tose Goldberg as Mirele Efros. left Four Great Actresses in One Great Part, December 9, 1936. Mirele Efros was performed at the Folks Theatre as a benefit for the publication Lexicon of the Yiddish Theater. Every act featured another actress as Mirele: (From right to left) Anna Appel in Act I, Berta Gersten in Act II, Dora Weissman in Act III, and Bina Abromowitz in Act IV.

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Pathbreakers and Superstars Edna Nahshon Stefanie Halpern Joshua S. Walden

Edna Nahshon

Jacob P. Adler and the Formation of a Theatrical Dynasty

Reverentially referred to as nesher hagodl (the great eagle), an honorific play on his last name — Adler means “eagle” in Yiddish — actor–manager Jacob P. Adler (1855–1926) was the doyen of the Yiddish stage from its early Bowery years to the post–World War I era. He had a magnetic stage personality, a striking physique, a sonorous voice, a flair for scenic effects, and a flamboyant temper — all vital assets in creating his unparalleled stage charisma. A native of Odessa, Adler began his career in Russia in the early Goldfaden period, moved to London, where he honed his craft, and settled in New York City in 1890 at the age of 35. As an admirer of Russian culture, he was instrumental in introducing literary drama to the young Yiddish stage. In 1891, he commissioned a play from Jacob Gordin, a newly arrived Russian Jewish writer, and fully backed him when that play, Siberia, which Adler also starred in, proved to be unpopular with the public. Adler’s trust paid off; the following year, Gordin penned the phenomenally successful The Jewish King Lear, in which Adler offered a stirring portrayal of a pathetic old man whose two daughters have driven him into the street after he divided his property between them. “Every look of his, every motion, from his quivering lip and his attempt to reassert his old authority, are all illustrated by the great talent of the performer,” wrote theater critic Louis Lipsky in 1903.1 Over the years, Adler created a rich gallery of characters: old men, lovers, rebels, idealists, and madmen — all of whom remained in his repertoire. Shylock, a role in which Adler first appeared in a 1901 Yiddish production of The Merchant of Venice, and which he repeated in 1903 and in 1905 in Yiddish supported by an English– speaking cast, was of particular note. In doing so, he presented himself to the world at large as an actor on par with the other great Shakespearean interpreters of his age, including the illustrious Henry Irving, who had transformed the portrayal of 104

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Jacob P. Adler. Photograph by Lumiere (New York), c. 1920.

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Shylock. Adler offered an entirely Jewish take on the character and boldly included in his portrayal such customs as tearing his garment as a sign of mourning after Jessica’s elopement and conversion. Writing in 1917, Louis Lipsky analyzed Adler’s acting style thus: “He loves to pose, to strike attitudes. His gestures are majestic and impressive. He is capable of dignity of bearing and tone.”2 Though committed to the stage realism of his day, Adler loved roles with a melodramatic tint. Meticulous in his preparation and paying great attention to detail, verisimilitude, and tone, he threw himself into his characters with an open imagination that allowed for some fine tuning on the spur of the moment. Lipsky offered an example from Adler’s famous portrayal of Shylock: “In the trial scene, when the judge ... decides against him, he gathers together the scales and the knife, and the bag of gold, and with a gesture of contempt throws them at the feet of the judge and cries out, ‘May the Devil have dealings with you,’ as he prepares to leave.” This gesture, said Lipsky, into which Adler put an emotion that was distinctly Jewish, “was the product of a momentary impulse, and only as the spirit moves him does he remember to repeat it.”3 The star, he further wrote, had an appetite for contrasts and used lighting effects to punctuate scenes with abrupt transitions and momentary outbursts of passion. With Adler always the focus of the production, his penchant for stage effects was not always extended to the rest of the cast. Adler created deeply moving characters. Lipsky recollects a memorable scene in The Beggar of Odessa, an adaptation of Felix Pyat’s melodrama The Rag–Picker of Paris, in which Adler appeared as an old man watching the cradle of a foundling child: “He gave a portrait of senility, with loose mouth and sunken eyes, whose every word is a quaver and every gesture one that comes from an old man whose machinery is rusty.”4 The melodrama Broken Hearts by Zalmen Libin offered another mesmerizing scene, when Adler’s character entered the home of his dying daughter: “He has not a word to utter, but stands at the door, and resting his head against the door–post, he breaks out into silent weeping.”5 The moment, reported The New York Times, transfixed the audience.6 Adler suffered a major stroke six years before his passing on March 31, 1926, at the age of 71. It was said that, three years before his death, he told his undertaker that he wanted to have the most beautiful funeral a Yiddish stage artist had ever had. He got his wish. Tens of thousands of adoring fans, the entire Yiddish theater world, and representatives of Jewish institutions and Broadway came to pay their respects. It was one of the largest and most impressive ceremonies in the history of the Lower East Side. 106

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Performance of Jacob Gordin’s Homeless, produced at the Grand Theatre by Jacob P. Adler. Photograph by Byron Co., 1907.

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Jacob P. Adler (right) in the role of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, 1903. Adler performed in Yiddish in this otherwise English–language production.

Though Adler was always the star in his productions, other major actors developed their talents around him, among them David Kessler, Keni Liptzin, Bertha Kalich, and Sarah Adler, his third wife, who became an important actress in her own right. For a while, during one of the breakups in their tumultuous marriage, Sarah became actor–manager of her own company, with Rudolph Schildkraut as her leading man. Of her many roles, the most accomplished was Katusha Maslova, the redeemed prostitute in Jacob Gordin’s adaptation of Tolstoy’s Resurrection. Sarah died in 1953 at the age of 95. In addition to Adler’s three surviving children from his previous marriages and relationships, Sarah and Jacob Adler were the parents of six children, all of whom developed careers in the theater. In 1930, seven of Adler’s children — Julia, Luther, Charles, Adolph, Stella, Irving, and Frances (along with Frances’s husband, Joseph Schengold) — reunited in a Yiddish theatrical venture whose aim was to carry on the tradition of their father. Luther gave a striking performance in one of his father’s favorite vehicles, Gordin’s The Wild Man, in an interpretation that was an intentional throwback to the original pathos with which Jacob P. Adler had infused it. The best–known members of the Adler dynasty were Celia (1889–1979), Luther (1903–84), and Stella (1901–92), all born and bred in New York City. Celia, daughter of Dina (Shtettin) Feinman, Adler’s second wife, began her stage career as a six–month–old baby carried on the arms of her mother; at 25 she won her first major success as an adult actress in Osip Dymow’s The Eternal Wanderer, produced by Boris Thomashefsky at the National Theatre in New York. Celia became a notable presence on the Yiddish stage in the 1920s when she allied herself with the Yiddish art theater movement. In 1918, she joined Maurice Schwartz’s newly–established Yiddish Art Theatre, where she played many leading female roles, among them Leah in The Dybbuk (1922), Chava in Tevye, the Dairyman (1926), and Fruma in The Tenth Commandment (1926); in 1920 she left Schwartz for one season to join Jacob Ben–Ami’s new venture, the Jewish Art Theatre. Her commitment to quality Yiddish drama led her to organize her own company in 1937, and to join such short–lived troupes as the Yiddish Dramatic Players in 1938 and Jacob Ben–Ami’s new Yiddish company in 1940. Celia made her Broadway debut in 1920 in an English translation of David Pinski’s play The Treasure, directed by Emanuel Reicher (first director of the Jewish Art Theatre) and produced by the Guild Theatre. Her second appearance on Broadway occurred in 1946 when she played the role of Zelda, an old Holocaust survivor, in Ben Hecht’s pro–Zionist propaganda play A Flag Is Born. Paul Muni and Marlon Brando were her co–stars. The production was directed by her half–brother, 110

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Mourning ribbon and pin, 1926.

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Luther. Celia Adler’s best known film appearance was the starring role in Henry Lynn’s Yiddish film Where Is My Child? (1937); she had a cameo role in Naked City (1948), a highly–praised black and white film noir directed by Jules Dassin. Celia was highly respected for her acting skills. Though fluent in English, her career was defined first and foremost by her Yiddish stage work. Luther Adler, 14 years her junior, began his Yiddish stage career at the age of four. At age seven, he signed his first contract, appearing in his mother’s company at the Novelty Theatre in Brooklyn; at 17, he organized and managed a touring company also headed by his mother. He subsequently appeared on the English–language stage, and his work in Yiddish became increasingly intermittent. In 1920, Luther became a member of the Provincetown Players and, after appearing in Elmer Rice’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Street Scene, he joined the Group Theatre, where his siblings Stella and Jay were already members. He appeared in many notable Group Theatre productions: John Howard Lawson’s Success Story (1932); Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing! (1935), Paradise Lost (1935), and Golden Boy (1937); and Kurt Weill’s antiwar musical, Johnny Johnson (1936). Luther began to appear in films in 1937, and in the early 1940s, he tried his hand at theatrical directing, including Ben Hecht’s A Flag is Born, which starred Celia Adler, Paul Muni, and Marlon Brando, his sister Stella’s acting protégé. In 1965, Luther took over the role of Tevye when Zero Mostel left the Broadway cast of Fiddler on the Roof during a contract dispute. Luther Adler died on December 8, 1984. Three months later The New York Times published a heartfelt letter to the editor that began as follows: “Everyone in and of the theater will feel a sense of loss at the death of Luther Adler, one of the outstanding actors of our time.”7 The letter highlighted his sterling performance as Moe Axelrod in Awake and Sing! and as Joe Bonaparte in Golden Boy, both landmark plays written by Clifford Odets and produced by the Group Theatre. “Throughout his long career,” the letter said, “he gave a glamour, a touch of something larger than life, to every part he played.” It was signed by Marlon Brando, Joseph Buloff, Jack Lord, Joseph Wiseman, and Paul Newman. Stella Adler began her career in Yiddish theater at the age of two. At 18, she made her London debut as Naomi in Jacob Gordin’s Elisha Ben Avuya with her father’s company, a role she played for a year before returning to New York. She continued to appear in Yiddish theater and made her English–language debut on Broadway in 1922 in The World We Live In. Stella joined the American Laboratory Theatre in 1925, where she familiarized herself with Constantin Stanislavsky’s teachings as transmitted by Richard Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya, Russian actor–teachers and 112

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above Sarah Adler cabinet card inscribed to playwright Abraham Shomer, c. 1905. Sarah Adler frequently acted opposite her husband, but also pursued projects of her own, including managing her own theater company for a time. left Celia Adler in Sholem Aleichem’s Stempenyu at Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre, 1929.

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above Playbill for a Cleveland, Ohio, performance of Jacob Gordin’s On a heym (Homeless) by “The Adlers,” c. 1910. The actors listed are Francis, Emma, Pearl, Sarah, Charles, Adolf, Irving, and Luther Adler. The play was directed by Joseph Scheingold. This was a unique collaboration of the entire Adler family in memory of Jacob P. Adler.

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right Stella Adler. Photograph by L. Arnold Weissberger, 1967.

opposite Poster for the film Where is My Child?, 1937. This Yiddish film marked Celia Adler’s screen debut.

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former members of the Moscow Art Theatre. She went back to Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre, touring with the company in Argentina and appearing in its new production of The Man with the Portfolio, a Russian play by Alexis Faiko. That same year, 1931, Stella joined the Group Theatre, performing in nearly all of their productions, notably Paul Green’s The House of Connolly and Claire and Paul Sifton’s 1931 (both in 1931); with her brother Luther in Maxwell Anderson’s Night Over Taos (1932); John Howard Lawson’s Success Story (1932); and Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing! and Paradise Lost (1935). In addition, she directed the touring company of Odets’s Golden Boy and More to Give to People. In 1934, taking a brief leave of absence to travel in Russia, Stella stopped in Paris and studied intensively with Stanislavsky for five weeks. When she returned, she broke with director Lee Strasberg, co–founder of the Group Theatre (and future director of the Actors Studio) over a fundamental disagreement about Stanislavsky’s method of acting. In January of 1937, she moved to Hollywood, occasionally returning to the Group Theatre until it dissolved in 1941. She then returned to New York and began to teach at Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research, and in 1949, founded the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. She was to become one of America’s most admired acting teachers. The Stella Adler Studio of Acting is still fully functioning and is run by Tom Oppenheim, Stella’s grandson. In 2008, Oppenheim wrote on his blog an essay entitled “To Get Where You’re Going, Know Where You’re From,” in which he acknowledged his ties to his theatrical ancestors: As the grandson of Stella Adler and the artistic director of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, I come from a tradition that believes the actor is an ever–evolving person, an independent thinker who studies his or her craft and is deeply connected to the outside world. The foundation of this vision came from my great–grandfather Jacob Adler, a legendary actor and producer in the Yiddish theater of turn–of–the–century New York, and was handed down to his daughter Stella Adler and to Harold Clurman, who helped found the Group Theatre.8 Jacob Adler and his daughter Stella Adler are both members of the American Theater Hall of Fame.

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Irving, Charlie, Frances, Abe, Julia, Luther, Sarah, Joseph Schoengold, and Stella Adler, c. 1930.

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Stefanie Halpern

Boris Thomashefsky Matinee Idol of the Yiddish Stage

Who do you suppose went and married my sister? Don’t you know? Give a Guess! Thomashefsky, shefsky! I knew when I told you it would knock you a twister, That’s a dandy name to hang up in a frame. My father said an actor ain’t a business no–how, But Shefsky’s got a bankroll big enough to choke a cow.

The American theater of the early 20th century — both Yiddish and English — was dominated by the cult of celebrity. In an age when a sensational personality with an attractive visage sold tickets as easily as dramatic talent, Boris Thomashefsky (1866–1939), a great star and actor–manager of the Yiddish stage who came to America in 1881, cultivated a career on both skill and looks. Audiences, especially women, swooned over his curly black hair, dreamy eyes, and imposing stature. Abraham Cahan, long–time editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, New York’s premier Yiddish newspaper, summed up Thomashefsky as follows: “He was just perfect for historical operettas and Biblical stories, which were then at the height of their popularity on the Jewish stage. One could not imagine a more handsome Biblical prince. As a prince, he wore short, puffed breeches so that the women could admire the shapeliness of his legs. Thomashefsky had the most beautiful pair of legs on the Yiddish stage.”1 The popular American vaudeville song “Who Do You Suppose Went and Married My Sister? Thomashefsky,” written and composed in 1910 by the American actress Nora Bayes and her husband, songwriter and performer Jack Norworth, capitalized on Thomashefsky’s reputation as a lothario and savvy businessman, but also highlighted his fine acting ability, numbering him among the 118

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above Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, 1890. This is the earliest photograph of Boris and Bessie, taken around the time they got married. right Boris Thomashefsky as Hamlet at the People’s Theatre, 1901.

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Performance of The Two Sisters, a Yiddish drama by Isidor Zolotorevsky. Photograph by Byron Co., 1904.

Boris Thomashefsky is pictured at far left.

greatest entertainers of the time, including actor–composer George M. Cohan, Irish–born singer and vaudeville star Andy Mack, and Enrico Caruso, the world’s foremost opera singer. Thomashefsky was a larger–than–life figure in the Yiddish theatrical world, and not just because of his six–foot frame. Throughout the course of his 60 years on the stage, he is credited with having written 78 original Yiddish operettas and performing in hundreds of others. Though his career largely featured roles in popular musical comedies and melodramas, during his early years in the theater he was widely recognized for his dramatic acting, starring in a number of serious plays, including Yiddish translations of Shakespeare. These performances appealed to Yiddish and non–Yiddish audiences alike. His Othello was lauded as a performance that was able to “rise superior to the bonds of language with such power that the fact of an alien tongue is forgotten.”2 Thomashefsky’s 1899 Judaized version of Hamlet, titled Hamlet oder der yeshiva bokher (Hamlet, or the Yeshiva Student), was so admired that a critic for the Chicago Daily Tribune described his performance as “powerful on any stage in any language.”3 Many of the plays Thomashefsky wrote and performed in were set in America or touched on themes that spoke to and for an American immigrant audience: labor relations, women’s rights, anti–Semitism, Jewish ethnicity, and American identity, to name a few. Das pintele yid (The Essential Spark of Jewishness), for example, written by Moishe Zeifert but staged and made famous by Thomashefsky, became the most popular play on the Yiddish stage during the 1909–10 season. The play celebrates Jewish survival in the face of anti–Semitism and maintains that Jewishness can endure even if one is removed from old–world customs and traditional religious practice, a message that certainly appealed to an American immigrant audience for whom Americanization threatened to upend Jewish identity. Thomashefsky drove home the idea of America as the site for Jewish survival when, at the end of the play, a Jewish star and the words “das pintele yid” (the essential spark of Jewishness) descended from the ceiling, illuminated, with “Yankee Doodle” sung by actors in the background. His invocation of patriotism seems to have extended to every production — it was said that no Thomashefsky production was complete without an American flag adorning the stage. Thomashefsky’s fame reached beyond stage acting. As a theater impresario, he played a key role in developing the Yiddish theatrical enterprise in New York and expanding it to other major American cities. In 1907, along with his brother Max and Henry C. Miner, Thomashefsky formed the first Yiddish theatrical syndicate, with 122

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above Paradise Gardens Theatre postcard, n.d. In the early 1900s, Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky built a resort in Hunter, New York, in the Catskill Mountains. It housed two theaters, one an 800–seat outdoor theater, and the second a 500–seat indoor theater. left Thomashefsky in The Broken Violin, 1918. Written by Thomashefsky with music by Joseph Rumshinsky, this musical featured a cast of some 50 performers.

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the intention of building theaters devoted to staging only Yiddish plays in New York, Chicago, Baltimore, Cleveland, and St. Louis. The syndicate was also responsible for organizing traveling stock companies that performed in these theaters on a rotating schedule. Thomashefsky was aware that the immigrant community was changing rapidly, and he tried to find ways to attract an audience that had moved away, both physically and socioeconomically, from the Lower East Side. He followed his audience uptown, opening the first Yiddish theater on Broadway in 1923. For a short time, hoping to capitalize on the growing popularity of the film industry, he even owned the Boris Thomashefsky Film Company, producing three Yiddish films in 1915. As befitting a star, Thomashefsky lived lavishly. He owned a brownstone in Brooklyn and a summer home in Hunter, New York, kept a Japanese butler, and was said to import his suits from Europe. During his heyday, he reportedly made $45,000 a year, adding to his income by manufacturing and selling cigarettes embossed with his signature. Having achieved celebrity status, he found his private life becoming the stuff of public gossip. His name was mentioned in the newspapers for his latest theatrical and business ventures, and it was evoked just as frequently for being at the center of juicy scandals. Boris met his future wife, Bessie Kaufman, a great Yiddish actress and important manager in her own right, when the two were performing in Baltimore in 1887. Though legally married until his death, the two separated in 1912 after 23 years of marriage. Their fights and lawsuits were frequent and messy. Bessie once dropped three pending suits against Boris when he agreed to give her a starring role in a new production, only to be slighted when the role was given to Regina Zuckerberg, a Yiddish actress who was also his lover. Shortly thereafter, Sigmund Zuckerberg, Regina’s husband, sued Thomashefsky for $100,000 for “loss of marital affection.”4 Not even Thomashefsky’s children were spared from making the headlines. In a story that could just as well have been plucked from a stage melodrama, his youngest son, Milton, a surgeon in Brooklyn, was drugged with chloroform by Agnes Birdseye, his nurse–assistant and scorned lover. Several days after confessing to “performing” an operation on the unconscious doctor out of revenge, Birdseye first shot Milton and then herself. Though Milton survived this attack, he was confined to a bed for the rest of his short life, dying five years later from his injuries. Though Thomashefsky was beloved by both Yiddish audiences and English– speaking visitors, he was never able to garner a successful career on the English– language stage. In 1923, he starred in the first Yiddish show produced on Broadway, Oscar M. Carter’s Three Little Businessmen, about a wealthy Jewish merchant who 124

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Sheet music for Das pintele yud (The Essential Spark of Jewishness), 1909.

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moves to America and becomes involved in a harebrained scheme that leaves him penniless. Though the production was replete with “clever songs, able acting, pretty women,” and a cast that included the great Rudolph Schildkraut, it was a flop and closed after a week, leaving Thomashefsky unable to pay his creditors.5 Not even a tour by the famous Vilna Troupe, which he brought to New York from Poland, could help recoup all his losses, and he was forced to file for bankruptcy.6 Having lost faith in the viability of an institution he had been instrumental in creating, and claiming that the Yiddish theater had “found itself without a sufficient audience to support its drama,” he again tried his hand on Broadway in 1931, this time writing, producing, and starring in an English–language production of The Singing Rabbi at the Selwyn Theater, which closed after three performances.7 In 1933, he opened Thomashefsky’s International Music Hall in the Bronx. His hope was to replicate the atmosphere of continental cafés with drinking and dancing, and he imported internationally known performers. This endeavor also failed. He spent the final years of his life performing in a small cabaret on Allen Street on the Lower East Side. His final professional appearance, in 1937, was in an autobiographical musical revue titled Boris and Bessie, produced by none other than his long–time lover, Regina Zuckerberg. Despite Boris Thomashefsky’s inauspicious end, his name has become synonymous with Yiddish theater, and his legacy is felt to this day. He is credited with having jump–started the careers of some of American entertainment’s greats, such as Morris Gest, Belle Baker, and Sophie Tucker. When Thomashefsky died in 1939 at the age of 71, 30,000 people attended the funeral to pay their respects to a true superstar of the Yiddish stage.

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When Thomashefsky Still Played Drama, n.d. Boris Thomashefsky and Berta Gersten in Israel’s Hope.

Funeral of Boris Thomashefsky, July 10, 1939. Abraham Cahan, editor of the Jewish Daily Forward, offers a eulogy at the podium above Thomashefsky's open casket.

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Joshua S. Walden

Molly Picon Darling of Second Avenue

“My grandparents came from a little town in Russia that looks like a sneeze in print, and is pronounced the same way.”1 With this joke, actress and vaudevillian Molly Picon began her first memoir, So Laugh a Little, emphasizing her Eastern European Jewish roots as well as her American outlook on this heritage. As a performer, she frequently displayed this mixed perspective, performing in both Yiddish and English on stages in the United States, Europe, South Africa, Israel, and South America. In addition to working in the Yiddish theater, Picon established herself as a crossover star on American radio, on Broadway, and in Hollywood. Across her long career, her performances ranged from childhood appearances in Yiddish variety shows to roles in 1920s Yiddish silent films such as Ost und West (East and West, 1923), and from the Yiddish stages of Second Avenue to mainstream movies and television, in roles such as the mother of Frank Sinatra’s character in Come Blow Your Horn (1963), Yente in Fiddler on the Roof (1971), and even, late in life, a guest spot as a Jewish bubbe in the 1980s sitcom The Facts of Life. While many of her fellow actors in the Yiddish theater began their lives and careers in Europe and immigrated to America, the American– born Picon took the reverse route, traveling in her 20s to Europe, where she would hone her Yiddish, develop her craft, and garner a broad international fan base. In this way, her biography echoes the transnational, multilingual, and stylistically diverse nature of Yiddish theater, operetta, and cinema. Born Margaret Pyekoon in 1898 on the Lower East Side, Picon was raised, along with her sister Helen, by her mother Clara, a seamstress in the costume departments of Philadelphia’s Yiddish theaters who sewed costumes for actors, including Fanny Thomashefsky, sister–in–law of Boris, the star of the Yiddish stage. Molly’s father, Louis, who it was later discovered had left a wife and children behind in Warsaw, was largely estranged from his American daughters. Picon gave her first theatrical 128

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Molly Picon in the Yiddish film The Jolly Orphan. Photograph by Rappoport, 1929.

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performance at the age of five, when her mother entered her into an amateur acting competition at the Bijou Theater. Clad in a bright red, pleated dress and a faux– ermine hat and muff, she took home first prize with a song–and–dance routine that concluded with an impromptu impression of a drunken man she had met on the trolley car that she had ridden to the theater that day. Picon became thoroughly integrated into the life of Yiddish theater as a child. For a time, her family even moved into the Columbia Theatre, where Fanny arranged prominent stage roles for young Molly. The vaudevillian combination of singing, dancing, and ebullient comic impressions would remain a central feature of her act throughout her career; indeed, she even revived her mimicry of the trolley–car drunk in a scene in her musical film Yidl mitn fidl (Yidl with His Fiddle, 1936). Picon met Yiddish theater actor, director, and playwright Jacob Kalich (1891– 1975), known as Yonkel, in Boston, where he ran the Yiddish theater troupe at the Grand Opera House, an ensemble that featured Paul Muni and Menasha Skulnik, who later became prominent crossover Broadway stars. In 1919, she married Kalich, who became her lifelong manager. Kalich, born in Galicia and originally trained to become a rabbi, suggested that she was “too American” to achieve success on New York’s Second Avenue and that they should go to Europe, where she could learn more about the people and settings depicted in the songs and scripts of the Yiddish theater. In Picon’s words, “I knew very little about the characters I was supposed to portray or about the customs. What I needed was to steep myself in the atmosphere and background of my people.”2 Picon considered herself “the All–American Girl” and acknowledged, “The Yiddish I spoke was completely bastardized.”3 Her journey to Europe was thus an effort to achieve the sense of authenticity — linguistic fluency and social and cultural knowledge — that so many of her contemporary stars of the American Yiddish theater possessed by virtue of their European birth and training. After three years touring Europe, starring in plays that her husband wrote for her, Picon was ready to make a name for herself on the stages of Second Avenue. She made her debut in Yonkele (1920), a production written by her husband that had achieved acclaim in theaters throughout Europe, and which she would continue to tour globally in the following decades. Dressed as a 13–year–old yeshiva bokher (yeshiva student), Picon took on what she described as a “Peter Pan role, with a slight difference: whereas Peter Pan doesn’t want to grow up, Yonkele wants desperately to grow up and make a better world for our people and all people.”4 On Second Avenue, Picon worked with prominent Yiddish theater composers, including Joseph Rumshinsky and Abraham Ellstein. In one collaboration with 130

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above Molly Picon in Yankele, 1924. left Advertisement for Yankele at the Second Avenue Theatre, published in Der Tog, 1924. Directed by her husband, Jacob Kalich, with music by Joseph Rumshinsky, Yankele was Molly Picon’s signature role.

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below Costume worn by Molly Picon in Yankele, 1924. Picon played a plucky young boy in this operetta, performing it at the Second Avenue Theatre from 1922 to 1925.

below Costume worn by Molly Picon in The Jolly Orphan, 1929. This outfit was worn by Picon in a Russian peasant musical number from the production staged at the Second Avenue Theatre.

above Costume worn by Molly Picon in The Circus Girl, 1928. Written by sisters Rose and Miriam Schomer, with music by Joseph Rumshinsky, and directed by Picon’s husband, Jacob Kalich, The Circus Girl show enjoyed a 16–week run at the Second Avenue Theatre.

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below Wedding gown worn by Molly Picon in Mazel Tov, Molly, 1950. Harry Kalmanowich’s musical comedy Mazel Tov, Molly was the 30th collaboration between Picon, her director–husband, Jacob Kalich, and composer Joseph Rumshinsky.

above Japanese kimono worn by Molly Picon in Majority of One, 1960. Picon appeared in the London production and several American regional productions of this romantic comedy written by Leonard Spigelgass.

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Rumshinsky, The Circus Girl, she stretched her physical humor to real gymnastics, training in acrobatics for several months to learn “to climb a rope way up to the flies … where I fanned out to the audience, one foot in a noose and my arms spread like a bird’s wings. I did a split and twirled around forty feet into the flies. Then I slowly climbed back down the rope, all to Rumshinsky’s music.”5 Rather than being met on her return to solid ground with the anticipated applause, Picon recalled, her audiences heaved “one big heavy sigh of relief.”6 Picon became known especially for depictions of the meeting, and sometimes clashing, between members of different Jewish communities, and for her comic crossdressing. The first of these themes took multiple forms, in encounters between Jews of different generations, Jews from the United States and the “old country,” characters who remained devoutly religious and those who embraced secular values, and, more generally, Jewish tradition and modernity. Her performances typically concluded by promoting the embrace of modernity, secularity, and assimilation, as exhibited in her theatrical and filmic narratives, as well as in the hybrid mixture of Jewish and American popular styles heard in many of her songs. In her crossdressing acts, a boisterous stage presence at only 4'8", Picon usually played the role of a young boy, or a girl disguised as a boy, as could be seen onstage in such plays as Yonkele, Shmendrik (1924), and Hello, Molly! (1929), and onscreen in Ost und West (East and West, 1923) and Yidl mitn fidl (1936). This form of gender bending was a staple in her comic Yiddish productions of the 1920s and ‘30s.7 Many of her performances combined both of these themes. In Yidl mitn fidl, for example, her character, a girl from the Polish Jewish town of Kazimierz, dresses as a boy named Yidl in order to earn her living as an itinerant klezmer violinist, a field traditionally closed to women. She even fools two members of her quartet, despite inconveniently falling in love with one of them — Froym, also a violinist. By the end of the film, she has doffed her boy’s clothing and made a name for herself as a comic actress in Warsaw. She and Froym meet again by chance on an ocean liner heading for America, both in fancy modern dress. The two finally embrace as a dance band plays a hybrid version of their ensemble’s klezmer repertoire with added blue notes and set to a Latin beat. The romantic coupling of former klezmer performers in urban formalwear and the musical merger of “East and West” — to echo the title of her silent film dealing with similar themes — indicate that even as Picon’s character leaves the shtetl and traditional Jewish mores about female performance behind for a modern life in the New World, she retains respect for the traditions and values of her Jewish heritage.8 134

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right Sheet music for “I’ll Always Be Yours” from The Circus Girl, 1928. Lyrics by Molly Picon, music by Joseph Rumshinsky. below Molly Picon in The Circus Girl, 1928.

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Scene from The Circus Girl at the Second Avenue Theatre with Molly Picon (center). Photograph by Rappoport, 1928.

Here and elsewhere, her crossdressing serves more broadly as a metaphor for the social changes — assimilation, altered gender roles, and cultural adaptation — being experienced by the audiences that came to see her. It was also a potent way of depicting the growing opportunities available to Jewish women in the modern cities of Europe and America that were home to her largest audiences.9 Through her perky humor and prolific songwriting, her representations of modern Jewish life, and her devotion to yidishkayt, Molly Picon certainly earned the epithet that was the title of a song she wrote with Rumshinsky in 1927: “Oy, iz dos a meydl” (Oh, What a Girl)!

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clockwise from top left Molly Picon performing in blackface, possibly in Some Girl, 1927. Book by H. Kalmanovitch, music by Joseph Rumshinsky. Picon sang a minstrel number in blackface for this production at the Second Avenue Theatre. Poster for Milk and Honey, 1961. Book by Don Appell, with music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. One of her English–language stage successes, this musical comedy ran on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theater for a total of 543 performances. Poster for the Yiddish film Mamele starring Molly Picon, 1938. Written by Meyer Shwartz, music by Joseph Rumshinsky. Director Joseph Green worked with Picon on the 1936 film Yidl mitn fidl (Yidl with His Fiddle), and the two decided to collaborate again, this time on an adaptation of one of Picon’s earlier plays, Mamele.

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pages 140–49 Hand–colored glass lantern slides featuring actors of the Yiddish stage, c. 1910.

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5 AC T

Maurice Schwartz and the Yiddish Art Theater Movement Edna Nahshon

Any writing about the Yiddish art theatre movement is about Maurice Schwartz, because Yiddish art theatre is Maurice Schwartz and Maurice Schwartz is Yiddish art theatre.1

This statement by Maurice Schwartz, made near the end of his storied career, may seem self–aggrandizing, but it is entirely correct, for the identity of the Yiddish Art Theatre, New York’s most prestigious and longest–lasting Jewish theatrical enterprise (1918 to the mid–1950s) was completely enmeshed with that of Maurice Schwartz, its powerhouse founder, producer, director, and star. Schwartz (1888/90–1960) was the oldest of six children born into a traditionally religious family in the small Ukrainian town of Sudilkov. Due to a mishap with his ticket during his family’s immigration to America, young Schwartz was stranded in London for two years, finally reuniting with his family in New York in 1901. He began his theatrical career in 1905 at an amateur dramatic club in Brooklyn and worked his way up in Yiddish theaters in Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Philadelphia. In 1912, he returned to New York at the invitation of David Kessler, a major actor–manager who was starting a new company. Schwartz, an ambitious young man, had little formal education and learned about the theater from personal experience. He was also a voracious reader endowed with intellectual curiosity and a great interest in new theatrical trends. In 1918, as Kessler’s company was troubled by family and business feuds, the go–getting Schwartz joined forces with Max Wilner, Kessler’s entrepreneurial manager and son–in–law. Schwartz and Wilner leased the Irving Place Theatre on East 15th Street, formerly a German house, and organized a group of dedicated young actors (among them Celia Adler, Jacob Ben–Ami, Berta Gersten, and Ludwig Satz), proclaiming a commitment to quality repertoire and ensemble acting. The name given to the new enterprise — the Yiddish Art Theatre — was inspired by Konstantin Stanislavsky’s much–admired Moscow Art Theatre. 152

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top Cast of the Yiddish Art Theatre production of The Brothers Ashkenazi with poster in the background.

above Jacob Ben–Ami, Maurice Schwartz, and Berta Gersten, c. 1930.

Photomontage by Ivan Busatt, 1937.

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The idea of an art theater in Yiddish derived largely from Eastern Europe, where it was promoted by Yiddish intellectuals, notably the great writer Y.L. Peretz. In 1908, playwright Peretz Hirschbein (1880–1948) founded the Hirschbein Troupe in Odessa, the first Yiddish company devoted to production of literary Yiddish and world drama done in the modern style. This troupe lasted two years. When art theater devotees, including Hirschbein, immigrated to America, they joined forces with the Yiddish intelligentsia and actively propagandized for the creation of an art theater in their new homeland. They gained support from the press, from dramatic amateur clubs, and from a base of more sophisticated post–1905 immigrants, many of whom had become familiar with the new artistic trends of the Russian stage, always regarded by the Yiddish community’s pundits as the epitome of high culture. The idea of an art theater as an outpost of culture was encouraged by various sectors in the immigrant community, who hoped it would counter what they considered the debasing effect of the shund (trash) offerings that catered to a nostalgic and entertainment–craving popular palate. In conjunction with the opening of the Yiddish Art Theatre, Schwartz, a master of public relations, published impressive declarations in the Yiddish dailies. He criticized the practices of the commercial Yiddish stage and offered a vision of a small theater where actors could devote themselves to their art, not to stardom, with a diverse, high–quality repertoire produced according to the highest artistic standards. Schwartz did not present a clear artistic vision beyond this pledge, however, and it seems that he was still meandering, seeking concrete artistic ground. The new venture was lauded by the intellectual elite, yet it had no external funding, which meant that Schwartz also had to take into account Wilner’s box–office concerns. All this may explain why the Yiddish Art Theatre, which opened on August 30, 1918, with Man and His Shadow, by the popular Zalmen Libin, failed initially to satisfy the high expectations of audiences and critics. Libin’s play was followed by a frantic stream of new productions, none of them providing the desired artistic breakthrough.2 This finally happened when actor Jacob Ben–Ami convinced Schwartz to let him stage Hirschbein’s Farvorfn Vinkel (A Forsaken Nook), a drama that was the very antithesis of the usual Yiddish fare. The budget was minimal, and the opening was scheduled for a Wednesday, a “dead night” in the theater. The modest production premiered on October 16, 1918. It was a resounding success, and the auditorium was filled with an excited feeling that the art theater had found its true voice. Not all went well in Schwartz’s theater, however. He failed to sustain the egalitarian collectivity he had promised his actors. Some of the best players, headed 154

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above Jacob Ben–Ami and Celia Adler in the Jewish Art Theatre’s production of The Idle Inn by Peretz Hirschbein, 1919. right Poster for Shop by H. Leivick presented at the Irving Place Jewish Art Theatre, 1926. Shop is situated in New York on the eve of a garment workers’ strike. One of its major themes is the conflict between old world socialist idealism and the realities of capitalist America.

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by Jacob Ben–Ami (1890–1977), left the company in February of 1919 and opened Dos Naye Yidisher Teater (the New Yiddish Theater), known in English as the Jewish Art Theatre, at the Garden Theatre on 27th Street, part of the old Madison Square Garden.3 They enlisted as artistic director the German–Jewish actor–director Emanuel Reicher (1849–1924), renowned for his roles in works by Henrik Ibsen and Gerhardt Hauptmann. A Galician Jew, Reicher began his career in Yiddish theaters in Galicia and Hungary, and came to Berlin in the 1880s, where he became a leading actor at the Freie Bühne, the Deutsches Theater (under Otto Brahm), and Max Reinhardt’s Das Kleines Theater. He traveled to New York in 1915, performing in German and trying his hand at English–language productions. Reicher joined the young Jewish Art Theatre after the failure of his own venture — the “People’s Theatre” — but stayed with the Yiddish troupe for less than a season, departing when he was invited to direct at the prestigious Theatre Guild.4 His impact was nonetheless significant. He provided actors with an experienced directorial hand that allowed them to flourish. The results were spectacular. Carl Van Vechten wrote that Hirschbein’s The Idle Inn, staged as the troupe’s first offering, was the finest theatrical production he had ever seen.5 Rebecca Drucker, writing for Theatre Magazine, praised the company’s virtues for ensemble acting and a kind of directing that was subtler and finer than any yet seen in New York. Like many others, she also extolled the acting of Jacob Ben–Ami. Only six years in America, Ben–Ami gained attention as an actor of extraordinary caliber. Drucker rhapsodized, “[he] has fire and imagination, an amazing mimetic power, a dynamic personality. … He has the magnetic center of the organization by virtue of a rare creative power.”6 Before long, Ben–Ami was offered a contract to appear on the English–language stage, and he eagerly accepted it. With Ben–Ami gone, the Jewish Art Theatre did not survive for long, and the Irving Place Theatre was taken over by Schwartz, serving as his company’s home until 1926. Over the next four decades, Jacob Ben–Ami would divide his career between English– and Yiddish–speaking stages, and he was admired on both. Over the years, he tried a couple of times to create his own company in Yiddish, but these turned out to be short–lived endeavors. A great and sensitive actor, he was not cut out for the grueling work of leading an art theater in a predominantly commercial environment.7 Two new art theaters opened in the 1920s in the Bronx — Unser Teater (Our Theatre) led by playwrights Peretz Hirschbein, H. Leivick, and David Pinski was followed after its demise by the Schildkraut Theatre, led by actor Rudolph Schildkraut. Neither managed to survive for more than a season or two. It is indeed against the 156

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Scene from a Yiddish Art Theatre production of The Gardener’s Dog by Lope de Vega, 1927. The play was directed by Boris Glagolin, an émigré Russian, and designed by Serge (Sergei) Soudeikin, noted Russian artist.

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background of such repeated efforts that one comes to appreciate the Yiddish Art Theatre’s exceptional longevity, a testment to Schwartz’s stamina and unmatched skill in singlehandedly navigating the fine line between quality drama and economic reality and sustaining for several decades a leading and greatly respected cultural institution. The art theater movement advocated not only changes in acting and repertoire but also a revamping of the visual aspect of the stage. The best representative of the new modernistic stagecraft was Russian–born and –trained set designer Boris Aronson (1898–1980), who after his arrival in New York in 1923, became associated with all the Yiddish art theatrical enterprises in the city. His first stage work was done for Unser Teater where he broke new ground by introducing constructivist–style sets and costumes in his designs for S. Ansky’s Day and Night (1924) and Pinski’s The Final Balance (1925). When Unser Teater folded after just three productions, Aronson then worked with the Schildkraut Theatre, designing Osip Dymow’s Bronx Express (1925), the theater’s biggest success. Aronson also worked for the communist–affiliated Artef, designing its mass pageant Red, Yellow, and Black (Madison Square Garden, 1928), the dance Lag Boimer (1929), and S. Godiner’s futuristic Jim Kooperkop (1930), which featured as its hero a robot created by American capitalism. Aronson’s Kooperkop set garnered much praise for capturing the soul and rhythm of industry, and that of the modern city — themes that had fascinated the Russian avant–garde and would be further developed in Aronson’s later work. In 1926, Aronson began his association with Maurice Schwartz, and over the next four years he designed nine productions for the Yiddish Art Theatre. The most extraordinary was The Tenth Commandment, which marked the opening of Schwartz’s brand new Yiddish Art Theatre on Second Avenue. A highly stylized adaptation of Abraham Goldfaden’s operetta, this production was the most lavish modernistic extravaganza ever attempted on the American Yiddish stage. Some 70 actors — in addition to the four leads played by Schwartz, Joseph Buloff, Celia Adler, and Berta Gersten — participated. The governing concept was the creation of a stage carnival, free of realistic constraints. Aronson designed a constructivist stage with planes and ladders that generated a sense of enormous dynamism. “Hell” was a metal construction in the shape of a human skull, with red–illuminated workers climbing up and down ladders while engaged in Sisyphean tasks and consumed by the huge cogwheels of industry. “Heaven” looked like a drawing from a children’s picture book and included a horseshoe–shaped theater created on stage. A private 158

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clockwise from top left Poster for Peretz Hirschbein's Grine felder (Green Fields) at the Jewish Art Theatre, c. 1919. Poster for Tog un nakht (Day and Night) by S. Ansky, produced at Unser Teater, December 9, 1924. Handbill for an Unser Teater production of The Final Balance by David Pinski. 1925. The English–language synopsis indicated a significant number of non–native Yiddish speakers.

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house was done in the cubist style, with walls and a ceiling that opened like a house of cards, while another looked like a modernistic deconstruction of a Bavarian hunting lodge. Two hundred and fifty colorful costumes and masks combined sculptural and grotesque elements: some faces had three eyes, two noses, or candles in lieu of a beard, and others looked like a tobacco box or a bunch of radishes. Critics devoted to the old realistic school balked; others hailed the production as the Yiddish theater’s grand entrance into modernity. However, the production did not appeal to the general public and was soon replaced by a conventional play, Semyon Yushkevich's Mendele Spivack. It is a daunting task to survey in detail the Yiddish Art Theatre’s five–decade career and its vast repertoire of plays, written by every major Yiddish and European playwright: Goldfaden, Gordin, Sholem Aleichem, Dymov, Pinski, Kobrin, Leivick, and Asch, as well as Lope de Vega, Shaw, Ibsen, Schiller, Tolstoy, Gorky, Molière, de Maupassant, Chekhov, and many others. Initially, it was a repertoire that, in addition to Yiddish works, demonstrated a strong European orientation but included practically no translations of American plays. In the 1930s, however, the repertoire became almost entirely Jewish in content and devoted primarily to current communal concerns, historical personalities and events, and depictions of the Old World, with quite a few plays adapted by Schwartz from popular novels. The reasons for this shift were primarily sociological: with the cessation of mass immigration, the Yiddish–speaking world was becoming bicultural and upwardly mobile, and younger American Jews increasingly frequented the English–language stage and movie theaters. When they went to the Yiddish theater, they were not looking for a Shaw play in translation but for authentically Jewish works that they could not see on Broadway. Moreover, the audience was getting older and wanted a theater of ethnic communion that catered to their specifically Jewish interests. This increased ethnocentrism paralleled a steady decline in the number of Yiddish theatergoers, which finally led to the theater’s demise. Schwartz’s greatest victory came in 1932. After five years of drifting from pillar to post, including an unsuccessful English–language interlude on Broadway, the filming of Uncle Moses, various guest appearances, and an overseas tour, Schwartz returned to his theater on 12th Street and Second Avenue, and produced, directed, and starred in his greatest success, Yoshe Kalb, a dramatization of a novel of the same name by I.J. Singer. Opening on October 1, 1932, the play chronicled the odyssey of Nachum, a delicate youth who is forced into a loveless marriage with the homely young daughter of a lustful Hasidic rabbi, played by Schwartz. The rabbi must marry off 160

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above Maurice Schwartz (left), in costume after a performance of Yoshe Kalb, with Albert Einstein, 1934. Einstein was greatly impressed with the production. right Maurice Schwartz (left) and Charlie Chaplin, c. 1932.

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Jim Kooperkop by S. Godiner at the Artef Theatre, 1930. Directed by Benno Schneider, set design by Boris Aronson, and music by Lahn Adohmyan.

Postcards with etchings by Saul Ruskin of characters from the stage production of Yoshe Kalb, 1932. Clockwise from top right: Saraleh (Judith Abarbanel) and Gitele (Anna Appel); The Rabbi of Dinaburg (Anatole Winogradoff); Melech (Maurice Schwartz) and Zivye (Helen Zelinska); The Judge (Gustav Shacht), Mikhele (Noah Nachbush), The Redheaded Beggar (Pinchas Sherman), and the Rabbi of Dinaburg; Nachumtche (Lazar Freed). Top left: The Wedding at the Cemetery scene, photograph by M. Goldberg. opposite Vitrine with sculpted character heads from the Yiddish Art Theatre’s production of Yoshe Kalb, sculpted by Morris Strassberg, c. 1933. Strassberg played the role of the Rabbi of Lizhan in Yoshe Kalb.

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his daughter before he can take his fourth wife, a sexy and wild teenager, but his young wife, in turn, falls for the son–in–law, Nachum, and seduces him into a sexual encounter. The distraught Nachum leaves home, a tormented soul, to roam the earth. He barely responds to those around him and, refusing to divulge his identity (he lives under the assumed name Yoshe), is taken for an idiot by an ignorant mob that deridingly call him “Yoshe calf.” Yoshe Kalb presented a semi–pagan Hasidic world filled with superstition, ignorance, sexual appetites, greed, and petty fights over succession. The production was enthusiastically received by critics and audiences alike. Brooks Atkinson of The New York Times was fascinated by its unabashed theatricality. He reported that it offered a genuine story and that the acting was done in bold strokes and primary colors. “Mr. Schwartz,” he wrote, “being an actor in the theatrical tradition, knows how to stage a show and enliven the theatre.”8 One of the important observations of non–Yiddish critics was the profound connection between stage and audience, which showed, according to Burns Mantle, “that an audience of one people is a vast help in the theater,” an unattainable goal on the English–language stage. The phenomenal success of Yoshe Kalb led to tours across America and overseas. The Yiddish Art Theatre fully resumed its activities in New York only at the beginning of the 1936–37 theater season, when Schwartz had another major hit with the dramatized version of I.J. Singer’s Brothers Ashkenazi. In 1943, marking the silver jubilee of his theater, Schwartz produced The Family Carnovsky, yet another dramatization of an I.J. Singer novel, the first major play about Jewish life under Hitler. At this point it became clear that, despite artistic renown and communal valorization, the Yiddish Art Theatre was struggling to survive as the number of Yiddish speakers was decreasing. In the program of the play, Schwartz lamented that “The masses have become linguistically assimilated … estranged from our Yiddish language, our literature, and our theatre.” It was a process that would intensify after the war. In 1947, Schwartz toured the DP (displaced persons) camps in Europe and adopted two sibling child survivors. He was approaching the age of 60 and had been devastated by the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis. With Yiddish audiences declining at home and the promise of the establishment of a new Jewish state, he must have been taking stock of his life, pondering the future and his legacy. He made his last grand stand with the production of Shylock and His Daughter, a retelling of The Merchant of Venice from an entirely Jewish perspective, based on the Hebrew novel by Ari Ibn–Zahav. It was a lavish production, with Schwartz playing a proud 166

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Handbill for the Yiddish Art Theatre production of Shylock and His Daughter, 1947. The play, based on the Hebrew novel by Ari Ibn–Zahav, is post–Holocaust countertext to The Merchant of Venice written from an entirely Jewish perspective. The play starred Charlotte Goldstein as Jessica.

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Shylock, a Jewish banker who assists his brethren to escape the Inquisition. Unlike in Shakespeare’s Merchant, Shylock’s daughter commits suicide, regretting her betrayal of her father and community and her choice to assimilate and convert to Christianity. The importance Schwartz attached to this project was highlighted by his decision to publish the English translation in book form. In an introductory essay that appeared in the playbill, the Holocaust reference was made clear: All this occurred in Italy during the famed Renaissance period, when art and science prospered as much as in latter–day Germany; although of course without the same German thoroughness and technique of the Twentieth Century.” He went on: “Paul IV’s period was a small–scale precursor of Hitler’s time, and the Nuremberg laws were practically a copy of Paul’s Roman edicts against the Jews. A description of the time is almost a replica of the anti–Jewish practices in our own day. Schwartz continued to perform, often on the road and in Argentina, at times in English, an aging thespian with a diminished audience. He died in 1960 in Israel, where he had tried to establish a new Yiddish art theater. It was said at times that Schwartz wore too many hats, that he could have been an even finer actor had he not been a producer, a better director had he not been acting, and a more successful producer had he not been an artist. This witticism may be true in theory, but in reality it was the very combination of his skills as actor, director, producer, and writer that enabled him to keep his theater viable for so long a time, an achievement unmatched in the world of the Yiddish theater. With the disappearance of professional Yiddish theaters, the tradition of producing Yiddish literary plays was taken over by the Folksbiene (the People’s Stage), an amateur troupe established in New York in 1915 that came under the auspices of the Workmen’s Circle, a Jewish fraternal organization with close links to the labor movement. While the Folksbiene actors were working–class men and women, the troupe, which presented one production a year, maintained close ties with the professionals of the Yiddish stage, employing its directors, designers, and choreographers, and eventually some leading actors as guest stars. The Folksbiene’s first production was Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, and they had their first major critical success in 1918 with Peretz Hirschbein’s Green Fields (Grine felder). The Folksbiene, which has focused on works by notable Yiddish authors, was professionalized during the 2010s and has been rebranded as the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. In recent years, it has performed in both Yiddish and English. It celebrated its 100 th anniversary in the spring of 2015. 168

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Costume designs by Boris Aronson for The Tenth Commandment, 1926.

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above “Hell” set design by Boris Aronson for the Yiddish Art Theatre’s production of The Tenth Commandment, 1926.

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right “Mathilda’s castle” set design by Boris Aronson for The Tenth Commandment, 1926.

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REMINISCENCE

RISA SCHWARTZ WHITING on meeting her adoptive parents

MAURICE AND ANNA SCHWARTZ (as told to her daughter Robin Whiting) On October 17, 1947, a little more than a month before my eighth birthday, I arrived, with my nine–year–old brother Marvin, at Newark Airport. Born in Belgium and orphaned by war, we walked off the plane and into the world of our new adoptive parents, Maurice and Anna Schwartz, with crowds of reporters with cameras flashing, and an entourage of actors and fans. My only exposure to Americans had been the Jeep– driving GIs who’d given me chewing gum and Hershey Bars after the war. I’d seen Movietone documentaries from Hollywood, and I’d seen Walt Disney’s Pinocchio, but although they were made in English, the versions I saw were dubbed in French. That was it. I had never seen a theater production in my life. As we walked down the steps, toward the tarmac and the crowd of people speaking a language we couldn’t understand, something strange happened. The actor we later knew as Anatole Winogradoff asked us in French — the only language we knew— to go back up the stairs and come down again. This second take— to give the photographers a chance to get just the right shot — was our grand entrance into our new family and way of life — the Yiddish theater. I’d learned from my foster parents, and later, in the orphanage, that life was easier if I followed directions and did what I was told. Sure enough, once I descended from the plane for the second time, I was hugged and kissed by Maurice Schwartz, who, at the time, I only knew as a man whose day–old stubble

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scratched my skin and whose words (in English and Yiddish) were incomprehensible. After a year with my new parents, during which I had learned both English and Yiddish, I learned more about the drama the Schwartzes experienced on the day of our arrival. Because Anna was afraid of flying, she wanted us to be transported to New York by ship. But Maurice was impatient to see us as soon as possible, so he prevailed, and we were sent by plane. The night before we arrived, Maurice and Anna found out that the Sabena flight we were on was delayed by fog. Because it had been his decision to put us on a plane, Maurice felt anxious that he’d made the wrong decision and spent a sleepless night worrying about our safety. In the morning, the Schwartzes arrived at LaGuardia, ready to receive us. But because of the fog, our flight had been re–routed to Newark, so everyone — Anna, Maurice, the fans, the actors, and the reporters — had to get back in their cars and drive to a different airport. Fortunately, we landed without a hitch, unlike the next Sabena that was scheduled to land at LaGuardia, which, we later found out, had crashed. Tragedy, suspense, drama, and a happy ending — there was nothing mundane about our introduction to Maurice Schwartz … or our lives in the Yiddish theater. RISA SCHWARTZ WHITING, ACTOR, HAWAII

Joseph Buloff (left) and Maurice Schwartz (dressed as a woman) in The Tenth Commandment, 1926.

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6 AC T

Yiddish Political Theater: The Artef

Edna Nahshon

New York in the late 1920s and 1930s was home to an energetic theatrical culture that was political in nature and innovative in content and form. Much of this activity, which would leave its imprint on the American stage for years to come, was associated with the political left, especially the communist movement. This “theater of commitment” embraced a myriad of styles, from doctrinaire “agitprop” (agitation + propaganda) skits and living newspapers, formats imported from Germany and the Soviet Union, to minstrel shows and realistic plays. Today it is remembered primarily for its companies, the most famous of which was the Group Theatre, whose very name is indicative of the collective, rather than individual, ethos of the age. In the late 1920s, the theater of the left in New York consisted of nonprofessional troupes who aimed to agitate and raise class consciousness among American workers. The pioneering troupes associated with this movement were the mobile Prolet–Buehne and the Workers’ Laboratory Theater (WLT). The German–speaking Prolet–Buehne (1928–34), led by German immigrant John Bonn, specialized in short political skits with pronouncements such as “Agitprop — Against Hunger and Destitution” and “Agitprop — Theatre of Revolution.”1 Founded in 1929 and led by Al Saxe, the Workers’ Laboratory Theatre was greatly influenced by the Prolet– Buehne’s revolutionary message and its agitational use of posters, collective declamations, speeches, gymnastics, and dance. Both performed at political rallies, strikes, and various proletarian venues. One of the most important theater companies of the American left, the Artef, like the Prolet–Buehne, arose from the ethnic radical left, in its case from the communist–affiliated Yiddish workers’ camp. However, it was also grounded in the Yiddish left’s ideological commitment to high culture, and hence to the ideal of an art theater, which by its nature emphasized literary texts and aesthetic values. At first, with its feet rooted in both political and high–cultural ideals, the Artef had to deal with critiques from revolutionary circles. When it participated in the First National

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above Baccanal scene from Baym toyer (At the Gate), 1928. Directed by Jacob Mestel with sets and costumes by Moi Solotaroff, music by Abraham Elstein and Jacob Weinberg, and choreography by Sophie Berenson. At the Gate was both the graduation work of the Freiheit Studio and the Artef’s first full production. Written in 1919 by Beynush Shteyman, a 22–year– old Russian–Jewish writer who was killed in the post–revolutionary civil war, the drama was critiqued in radical circles as messianic rather than revolutionary. The ornate mode in which it was directed was also seen as contrary to the theater’s revolutionary spirit. right The Tailor Becomes a Storekeeper by David Pinski (1872–1959), 1938. The play is an entertaining pro–union satire that tells the story of Sam, a shop tailor with entrepreneurial dreams who refuses to join the union, ends up a disillusioned pauper, and finally understands the merits of unionization. It was presented by the Federal Theatre Project Yiddish unit in two separate productions, one in Chicago, the other in New York. The New York production opened at the Daly's Theatre on April 13, 1938. It was directed by Martin Wolfson and starred Chaim Shneyur as Sam. The New York Times described the production as “an expressionist romp.”

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Workers’ Theatre Conference and Spartakiade (contest) in April 1932 in New York, for example, it was censured for too closely resembling the bourgeois art theater, including the use of sets that were too cumbersome for mobile performances. There was some truth to this charge, as many of the Artef’s full–length plays — notably plays by Sholem Aleichem, Gorky, and several Soviet Yiddish writers — could have been produced by regular Yiddish theater, fitting easily under its pro–labor umbrella. While the Artef occasionally engaged in localized party events, at times presenting biting anticapitalist skits, this was a definite sideline that was not considered germane by most of its members/actors. The company’s political identity was instead primarily one of affiliation, and as a communist cultural satellite organization, its very existence was defined by the fluctuating fortunes of Jewish communism in America. The founding of the Artef needs to be seen within the context of the bitter internecine war between left and right (i.e., communists vs. socialists) that engulfed the Jewish labor movement between 1923 and 1928 and affected all spheres of life — political, social, and cultural. This battle for control of the labor movement was ultimately won by the socialists, but just barely. One of its major outcomes was the disappearance of the radical segment from many of the organizations of the American Jewish labor movement and the formation of a parallel leftist subculture. At the heart of this subculture stood the Communist Party, the Jewish section of its affiliate, the International Workers Order (IWO) fraternal organization, and the Freiheit, the communist Yiddish daily newspaper, a party organ, which, in turn, encouraged and supported a network of social and cultural initiatives, including dramatic and musical enterprises.2 The Artef (an acronym for Arbeter Teater Farband — Workers’ Theatrical Alliance) began its life in 1925 as a communal organization chartered to promote the creation of a Jewish people’s theater. When it became clear by the end of the year that declarations do not a theater make, the failing organization was taken over by the communists. The Artef itself was now in fact an empty shell, and after some futile deliberations on how to create a workers’ theater, its leaders decided to adopt an amateur group of young radical workers that had formed under the influence of the Freiheit’s articles on proletarian theater. Renaming themselves the Freiheit Studio, the young workers, most of whom were sympathetic to the communists but were not party members, declined to devote themselves to propaganda work for the party. Instead, they committed to artistic goals and insisted on a serious course of theater studies. Only in 1928, under pressure from the party, did they begin to appear at 178

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Michal Gorrin and Goldie Rosler in the Artef ’s production of Trikenish (Drought). Photograph by I. Russack (New York), 1932.

Flier for the Artef ’s production of Aron Kushnirov's Hirsch Lekert, 1932. Directed by Benno Schneider with sets by Moi Solotaroff and choreography by Seida. Originally written in the USSR in 1929, the play presents the story of Hirsch Lekert, a simple Russian–Jewish shoemaker apprentice who was executed for his assassination attempt of the cruel czarist governor of Vilna in 1902. By the time the play was produced, Lekert was considered an icon of revolutionary martyrdom.

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Adapted and translated by Nathaniel Buchwald from Hallie Flanagan and Margaret Ellen Clifford's Can You Hear Their Voices? Produced in 1931 by the Provincetown Players. The original play, which condemned the American judicial system and advocated for government relief for farmers suffering from the Dust Bowl, was considered too “bourgeois” to suit a radical theater. The Artef offered a revolutionary version of the play to fit the theater’s proletarian commitment. Drought was directed by Benno Schneider with sets by Moi Solotaroff and choreography by Sophie Berenson.

communist mass celebrations. Once the members of the Freiheit Studio completed their comprehensive training, which lasted a full three years, the Artef decided to continue the studio training. All told, between 1928 and 1937, it conducted six consecutive studios with 120 students, some of whom, like Jules Dassin and David Opatoshu, participated in major Artef productions in the late 1930s. (While a second acting collective was developed, it was clearly secondary to the main acting company, and it eventually atrophied.) In December of 1928, the Freiheit Studio officially opened its gates as the Artef Theater at the President Theatre at 48th Street (near Seventh Avenue) with At the Gate, a collectivist theater work based on a revolutionary–cum–messianic trilogy by Beynush Shteyman, a young communist killed in the Russian civil war. The reviews in the Yiddish press were not very good: the messianic theme was seen as contradictory to the communist principle that only the masses can free themselves, and the acting and choreography were criticized as too “artsy” and overly engrossed in “bourgeois self–indulgence.”3 Prospects for the fledgling company were unclear at best. Yet distant political developments would have tremendous impact on the company’s future course. In 1928, the Comintern proclaimed the advent of “The Third Period,” during which they predicted capitalist disintegration and revolutionary upheaval. As part of the Soviet anti–British imperialism policy, the Zionist enterprise in Palestine also came under fire. While most of the American Yiddish–speaking Jews were not Zionist, they did maintain a measure of solidarity with the Jewish community in Palestine and accordingly, the Yiddish communist press was not particularly hostile to Zionist aspirations. But in the summer of 1929, it seemed like all hell had broken loose. The eruption of the Arab revolt in British–controlled Palestine led to a pogrom–like attack on the Jews of Hebron, which included the horrific massacre of 40 yeshiva students. American Jewry, with its still–vivid memories of the Russian pogroms, was horrified and shaken to its core, fully identifying with fellow Jews under attack. However, the communist Freiheit, under party instructions and contrary to community sentiments, became a mouthpiece for vitriolic anti–Zionism. This stance triggered an explosion of angry protest and an appeal to boycott the communists and their paper. Artists and intellectuals who had previously been sympathetic to the communists and their efforts to build a workers’ theater, among them author and playwright H. Leivick, now associated themselves with the anticommunist bloc. Yiddish theaters stopped advertising in the Freiheit, and the Hebrew Actors' Union issued a public condemnation of the paper and its politics. 180

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Stella Adler in the stage production Awake and Sing!, 1935.

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The anticommunist boycott led to a counter–boycott, so that individuals and organizations associated with communism stopped attending “bourgeois” Yiddish theater. This turn of events presented the neophyte Artef troupe with an immense challenge, as circumstances and affiliations forced them to become the theatrical arm of the communist movement and satisfy the needs of its organizations and the demands of individual members. The anticommunist boycott subsided by the end of 1930, and communist patronage of commercial Yiddish theaters resumed. The Artef, though, was unable to draw audiences from the general public, as anticommunist hostility surrounded it like barbed wire. In retrospect, this ironically proved beneficial, as it gave the Artef legroom to mature and polish its own style. In the fall of 1934, the Artef began a process of semi–professionalization and finally moved into a permanent home on Broadway, the President Theatre, a 298– seat, non–union house, at 247 West 48th Street. By then, the doctrinaire Third Period had been shelved. The new line from Moscow endorsed instead the creation of a Popular Front — a coalition with liberal groups that, it was hoped, would help create a mass movement against the threat of fascism and in defense of the Soviet Union. In this new climate, there was no more talk of “artists in uniform,” and the Artef, by now having divested itself of its hammer–and–sickle logo, could redefine itself as a “people’s theater.” It was now free to produce the “folkish” plays that audiences craved and at which it excelled. The Artef’s move to Broadway coincided with the highpoint of the American theater of the left. No longer a marginal phenomenon, the politically–conscious theater was now the most interesting theater in town, with the commercial, star–centered stage striking many as an institution out of step with the crisis of the Depression. On November 11, 1934, Elmer Rice, a prominent dramatist and 1929 Pulitzer Prize winner for Street Scene, published in The New York Times an embittered “farewell” to Broadway, calling the commercial theater a trivial pastime devised for the delectation of the mentally and emotionally immature. Likewise, Brooks Atkinson, the revered drama critic of The Times, wrote that the rapid development of the theater of the left signified a major trend in American theater, while Broadway, in his opinion, was in a state of stagnation. The Artef opened its Broadway tenure with Recruits, which would prove a sensational success. It was an adaptation of an old play by Israel Axenfeld (1778–1866) about a small town in Russia around 1828 that is faced with a czarist edict demanding that the community select one young man to be sent to join the Russian army, a virtual death sentence. The dynamic production, which mixed the comic and tragic, 182

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Production photograph (above) and playbill (right) for Rekrutn (Recruits) at the Artef Theatre, 1934. Directed by Benno Schneider with sets by Moi Solotaroff, music by Ben Yomen, and choreography by Lily Mailman.

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Artef ’s production of Aristocrats. Photograph by I. Russack (New York), 1930.

Directed by Benno Schneider with sets by Moi Solotaroff and choreography by Benjamin Zemach. Both Schneider and Zemach had been associated with the Habima Theatre in Moscow and were influenced by the non–realistic trend of the Russian stage. The play, based on Sholem Aleichem’s one–act play Mentshn (People), is a social satire with a “seduced and abandoned” theme. In his directorial work, Schneider juxtaposed the rich and their servants both thematically and stylistically: the simple folk behaved and moved naturally while the rich were depicted as grotesque and highly–stylized figures. This was the first play Scheider directed for the Artef and the company’s first major success.

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farcical and pathetic, and was built on old–world religious and social anachronisms, captivated audiences. Critics were enthralled with its rich panorama of the characters and mores of the old Eastern European shtetl. Like Maurice Schwartz’s hit Yoshe Kalb (1932), it portrayed the shtetl as a cauldron filled with class tensions, superstition, illicit sex, and betrayal. The highly imaginative production reminded many of Habima’s The Dybbuk, in which Recruits’ director, Benno Schneider, had participated a decade earlier. Recruits garnered the endorsement of Brooks Atkinson, who dubbed it “one of the artistic ornaments of this town.” The rave reviews and the absence from New York of the then–touring Yiddish Art Theatre positioned the Artef as the primary Yiddish art theater, rather than just a political tool. The Artef collective, which ideologically opposed the star system, did not produce outstanding actors. The credits for its impressive artistic achievements belong first and foremost to Benno Schneider (1902–1977), its artistic director, widely acknowledged as the best director of the American Yiddish stage. A quiet non–party man, he had come to the United States in 1926 with the Habima Hebrew Theater, established in Moscow in 1918. As one of Habima’s original members, he had incomparable schooling. He studied with Stanislavsky, worked closely with Evgeny Vakhtangov, the fabled director of The Dybbuk, and had been exposed to the immensely inventive Russian theater of the early 1920s. In his work with the Artef, Schneider followed in Vakhtangov’s footsteps and developed a style that prized ensemble acting and focused on the overall concept of the production. His well–paced staging was known for its many imaginative moments, creative touches, and somewhat stylized mode, which was particularly fitting for the folk plays that were the Artef’s greatest feats: Sholem Aleichem’s Aristocrats (1930) and 200,000 (1936), Recruits (1934), and Moyshe Kulbak’s The Outlaw (1937).4 Schneider’s reputation grew, and in 1937, in addition to becoming a sought–after acting coach, he was invited to direct But for the Grace of God (1937) at the Theatre Guild, and in 1940, Liliom, Ingrid Bergman’s Broadway debut. (He returned to Broadway in 1948 with the very successful Strange Bedfellows.) Schneider came back to the Artef in 1940 to direct its final production, Uriel Acosta, a classic of the Yiddish stage. For the first time, the Artef cast an outside actress, Helen Beverley, in the lead female role. It was understood by all that Acosta was the theater’s swan song. The company’s demise in 1940 was rapid. Among the reasons for its failure were managerial miscalculations, a decline in Yiddish speakers, and a changed reality in which the theater of the left was fading fast — the only exception being Pins and Needles, the immensely successful revue produced by the 186

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above Artef production of Sholem Aleichem's 200,000 (also known as The Big Win), 1936. Directed by Benno Schneider with sets by Moi Solotaroff, music by Ben Yomen, and choreography by Benjamin Zemach. right Artef production of The Outlaw by Moyshe Kulbak. Photograph by Alfredo Valente, 1937.

Directed by Benno Schneider with sets by Moi Solotaroff, music by Maurice Rauch, and choreography by Benjamin Zemach.

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Pins and Needles sheet music, 1937.

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The “Four Little Angels of Peace” sketch in Pins and Needles, performed at the Labor Stage Theatre. Photograph by George Byron Gordon, c. 1937.

Directed by Charles Freidman, with music and lyrics by Harold J. Rome, and book by Marc Blitzstein. Performed by the theatrical arm of the ILGWU, originally just for the union’s own members, this satirical comedy revue about the labor movement was soon attracting wider audiences in great numbers. It moved from the tiny Labor Stage Theatre to the larger Windsor in 1939 and continued to run until 1940.

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heavily Jewish International Ladies Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) that ran on Broadway from 1937 to 1940. The Federal Theatre Project (1935–39), which included two Yiddish companies, also siphoned off a segment of the audience and personnel. However, these were but a few contributing factors. Once again, it was communist actions and policies that determined the fortunes of the Artef. The Hitler–Stalin Pact, signed in August of 1939, stunned American Jews, who were rightly alarmed about the destiny of Europe’s nine million Jews, many of them blood relatives. Jewish communists, who had been riding high on the antifascist policies of the Popular Front, were stupefied and bewildered. They were greeted by their shop mates with the Nazi salute, fistfights broke out in the Garment District, and the Freiheit was torn to pieces at newsstands. Outrage against the communists, who were now denounced as enemies of the Jewish people, led to a spontaneous anticommunist boycott. Unable to escape the stigma of its communist heritage, the Artef was doomed. Some of the younger, native–born members developed professional careers. David Opatoshu and Jules Dassin (later an internationally known film director) joined the leftist Group Theatre, one of New York’s most influential companies, which distinguished itself with the works of Clifford Odets. Odets had invigorated the American stage in 1935 with his short agitational Waiting for Lefty, as well as with Awake and Sing!, a milestone work that depicted the multigenerational malaise of the Eastern European Jewish community of the 1930s. Two important members of the group who shone in his plays were Stella and Luther Adler, Jacob P. Adler’s children, who had begun their acting careers on the Yiddish stage. Many other members were the children of Jewish immigrants who still spoke Yiddish with their parents and supported the Yiddish stage whenever called to task.5 While the Artef received excellent reviews for acting, it suffered, unlike the English–speaking theater of social consciousness, from a dearth in original drama. This, in turn, was a symptom of the decline in serious Yiddish playwriting in the 1930s, a problem that also affected Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre. Young second–generation Jews like Clifford Odets, George Sklar, Albert Maltz, Irwin Shaw, George Wexley, and Sidney Kingsley wrote for the English–language theater of the left. In fact, reading their plays is the only way to recapture some of the spirit of the time. Alas, the Artef’s most admired productions survive only by reputation, with not a single extant major, original playscript to represent a movement that, for a time, helped to redefine political theater.

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Program (right) and set design (above) for the Artef ’s production of Karl Gustow’s Uriel Acosta, 1939. Directed by Benno Schneider with sets by Sam Leve, costumes by Penny Grothman, and music by Maurice Rauch. A heroic tragedy written in 1846 by German author Karl Gustow, a member of Das Junge Deutchland (young Germany), a group of authors that sought to express in their writings the spirit of modernity and liberalism. The play, based on the life of Portuguese Jewish thinker Uriel da Acosta, was a classic of the Yiddish stage. It was the Artef’s final production, and marked the first time a guest actor — Helen Beverly — was invited to perform in one of their productions.

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REMINISCENCE

JULIE COBB on her mother,

HELEN BEVERLEY

It is an honor to write a few words about my mother. Her talent, extraordinary beauty, and kindness continue to inspire me daily. As a child, my own creativity was nurtured by listening to her read poetry and attempting to emulate her expressiveness. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 9, 1916, she moved with her family to New York when she was a small child. One of her earliest memories was taking the subway with her father. They would arrive at a theater, library, or performance space, where little Helen would be placed on a tabletop to recite the stories of Sholem Aleichem in Yiddish. Yiddish was her first language, and my mother always tried to convey its wonderful humor to me. I learned that a great deal was lost in translation, but she managed to recreate some of the language’s uniqueness to me. Her life was a series of creative endeavors. She performed with the Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn Dancers. She studied at Hunter College and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She toured Europe with Maurice Schwartz and the Yiddish Art Theatre before World War II and never forgot the huge

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audiences of Jewish theatergoers. It was during that tour that she met my father, Lee J. Cobb, who was touring London with the Group Theatre. She starred in the Yiddish film classics Green Fields, The Light Ahead, and Overture to Glory, as well as appearing in American movies and television. She appeared on Broadway with my father in Jason by Samson Raphaelson and starred in the touring company of Key Largo opposite Paul Muni. She and my father moved to California in the early 1940s, but they traveled and continued to work in New York until they divorced. She lived to the age of 94 and enjoyed sharing her theatrical memories with me. Her femininity and charm remained through her last days. Mostly, however, I remember her great capacity for love. In Remembrance of Things Past, Proust describes his grandmother: “Kisses seemed to spring from her eyes.” He may as well have been talking about my mother. It is her loving gaze that I will never forget. JULIE COBB, ACTOR/AUTHOR, LOS ANGELES

REMINISCENCE

HENRY KELLERMAN about

HIS YOUNGER SELF

Born in 1938, I was a first–generation American. My parents, Samuel (Sol) and Esther Kellerman, came here from Yaruga, a shtetl in the Ukraine on the Dniester River bordering Romania. We lived in the southeast Bronx on Claremont Parkway, and my bubba, Pessie Pellis, lived with us. Bubba spoke no English, and by necessity my first language was Yiddish. Our neighborhood was a virtual United Nations, populated with Italian, Irish, black, Jewish, and Puerto Rican people. Most of the Jewish families sent their children to the Yiddish shuls in the hope that there would be some continuity of Yiddish culture in America. My Yiddish teacher, Nathan Kamen (after whom I’ve named one of my published books), liked the way I spoke Yiddish, and it was thanks to him that my performance career in Yiddish theater was born when I was seven years old. From 1945 until 1955, I was the so–called tip–of– the–spear in the Yiddish progressive movement in America. If it was on a Friday night that I was called upon, I typically just about covered the city, performing at various Yiddish–speaking events: first at 7:00 in the Bronx, then shuttling downtown to Manhattan for an 8:30 performance, and then to Brooklyn for one at 10:00. I developed an extensive repertoire of Yiddish literary works and performed them at a wide variety of venues. The major part of my material (and the part I loved most) concerned the poetry and prose of the Holocaust, as well as material that took a position against oppression. My mother, who was the one to give me a sense of how to do it all (how to deliver the message the way it should be delivered), clipped all the reviews from the Yiddish newspapers and periodicals detailing each event, including, of

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course, the review of my contribution. At the end, she was not able to construct the scrapbook she intended, and her accumulation of material and reviews was stored in three large suitcases and two plastic bags — and languished for decades. Ten years ago, already in my 60s, as an homage to her, I decided that the things she collected were of historical importance and that they deserved an archive rather than just a scrapbook. The final 1,143– page archive comprises 10 volumes— including reviews, advertisements, letters of appreciation, my entire repertoire, all scripts, inscriptions to me by authors of Yiddish books who asked me to include their work in my performances, and playbills of theater productions in which I appeared (including the Second Avenue Yiddish Theatre with Maurice Schwartz as well as the Yiddish Ensemble Theatre), along with an assortment of biographical data. Looking at these 10 volumes, I believe I have fulfilled an important task, not only for my family but also for future scholars and laymen who will want to know about this progressive Yiddish cultural ferment that found its strongest voice from the 1930s until the 1960s. The archive is now preserved at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, at YIVO in New York, and at the Dorot Division of the New York Public Library. Copies on DVD are also in the possession of my sons— Max, Harry, and Jack. One copy remains in my desk drawer for my son Sam, whom we lost one month shy of his 30th birthday in 2004. All of my sons studied Yiddish. HENRY KELLERMAN, PSYCHOANALYST/AUTHOR, NEW YORK

7 AC T

Yiddish Theater and the Transformation of American Design Arnold Aronson

One does not necessarily think of the Bronx as a cauldron of theatrical innovation, let alone a site for a scenographic revolution, yet design for the Yiddish theater in America, and arguably for American theater as a whole, was forever changed there. In 1924, Unser Teater (Our Theater; pronounced “OON–zer”) unveiled its production of S. Ansky’s Day and Night designed by Russian–Jewish artist and designer Boris Aronson,1 who had arrived in New York at the end of the previous year. Frank Rich and Lisa Aronson (Boris’s wife and assistant), in their definitive book on Aronson, credited this production with “introducing Constructivism to unsuspecting Yiddish audiences.”2 Boris Aronson (1898–1980), in fact, served as a major conduit between the vital and dynamic avant–garde art and theater of pre– and post–revolutionary Russia and the United States. While several critics recognized the importance of Aronson’s work in the Yiddish theater, it would take decades for the American theater to understand and accept the practices that Aronson was introducing. To appreciate the magnitude of Aronson’s impact, it is necessary to understand the theatrical world he encountered when he arrived in New York. The scenographic practices of New York’s Yiddish stage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were, not surprisingly, similar to those of the mainstream American theater. The creation of decor was the work of craftsmen known as scenic artists, who constructed and painted scenery — primarily backdrops and illusionistically painted flats — while actors were responsible for their own costumes. The idea of conceptually unified and historically accurate design, let alone the notion of a “designer,” though starting to take root in Europe, was still rare in the American theater. Typically, theaters utilized stock scenery that could be employed interchangeably among many different productions. If a specialized set were needed, it might be built, or a backdrop painted to represent a specific locale, but the standard scenery tended to represent generic interiors and exteriors. For example, when Maurice Schwartz opened the Yiddish Art Theater at the Irving Place Theatre in 1918, an event that one might think called for something new or spectacular, he used sets that had been discarded 196

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above Scene from Unser Teater’s production of S. Ansky’s Day and Night. Photograph by Kessner Studio, 1924.

right Boris Aronson’s costume design for “the Devil” in Day and Night. Gouache and pencil on board, 1924. This was the first Unser Teater production; Boris Aronson designed the play's sets, costumes, and lighting. The geometric sets were rendered entirely in black and white, while the Devil wore splashes of red.

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by the Metropolitan Opera.3 The underlying motivation may have been economic necessity as much as anything, but no one saw a compelling aesthetic reason to create original scenery for each production. Audiences came to see stories brought to life by their favorite actors, and the scenery functioned merely on a basic semiotic level, essentially identifying locale and suggesting appropriate mood. A kitchen, after all, was a kitchen; nuance or concept was largely irrelevant. But by the 1880s, this approach had begun to change in Europe, particularly in the art theaters. Fundamental to the new doctrine of Naturalism was the idea that a character’s fate was determined by environment, so the specificity and accuracy of a setting became vitally important. Within the Symbolist theater and subsequent avant–garde movements, visual motifs were often at the core, creating mood and conveying meaning. In the United States, these new scenographic approaches began to emerge after World War I in a movement known as the New Stagecraft. Now, instead of scenic artists, dedicated designers were employed. Strongly influenced by the artistic movements of Symbolism and Expressionism, these designers stripped away the overwhelming details of Naturalistic decor, replacing it with a suggestive simplicity or stylized theatricality. But here, too, it operated largely within the realm of the art theaters. Broadway, the opera, and other mainstream genres were still dominated by realistic scenery. The Jewish Art Theater’s (Nayer Yidisher Teater) initial director, Emanuel Reicher, may actually have been the first to hire artists specifically to create set designs. For their first season in 1919 at the Garden Theater on Madison Avenue and East 27th Street, he engaged painter and caricaturist Leon (Joseph) Foshko (1891–1971) as well as Louis Bromberg, the latter of whom went on to a career at the Detroit Repertory Theater and designed four productions on Broadway in the 1930s (none of which ran for more than two weeks). The Jewish Art Theater’s first production of that season was Peretz Hirshbein’s The Idle Inn, and the Jewish Forum enthusiastically noted the change. The style was still realistic, but now the design was believable and well integrated into the overall production. The JAT, the reviewer declared, attempted “to present drama in the manner of the Moscow Art Theater, that is, as a collaboration of all the arts which enter into the presentation of a play. …There was realism in detail, subdued, not glaring, and the reason one observed it…is because the contrast between this kind of realism and the tawdry realism of the [other] Yiddish theaters was so striking.”4 The Nation, however, was less enthralled and complained that the “harshly brilliant color and movement of the wedding feast in the second act served to heighten the impression both of a remoteness from the Jew of actual Western 198

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Set design (on wood panel) by Serge (Sergei) Soudeikin for Lope de Vega’s The Gardener's Dog at the Yiddish Art Theatre, 1927. Directed by Boris Glagolin, who, like Soudeikin, was an émigré from Russia.

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experience and of an infusion into the whole plan of a wildly and almost savagely Slavic element. One did not know, in plain English, where one was at.”5 Maurice Schwartz, director of the Yiddish Art Theatre himself began to hire designers by his theater’s third season at Irving Place (1920–21). The first person credited as a designer there was Alex Chertov (1883–1961) for the production of Landsleit (Countrymen). (Chertov designed the majority of Schwartz’s productions until 1941, including the 1932 production of Yoshe Kalb that moved to Broadway. For the Group Theatre, he designed the landmark production Waiting for Lefty.6) In 1923, Schwartz hired the relatively well known, Kiev–born painter Samuel Ostrowsky (1885–1946) to design Leonid Andreyev’s Anathema. Ostrowsky had migrated to Chicago from Paris in 1922, exhibited at the Art Institute, and designed several Yiddish plays in Chicago before moving to New York. A Chicago critic described his sets as “impressionistic.” In New York, Ostrowsky designed six productions for the Yiddish Art Theatre through 1929 while also maintaining a successful career as a painter. Even SergeSoudeikin, one of the great designers for Paris’s Ballets Russes, designed a production for Schwartz — The Gardener’s Dog by Lope De Vega — in 1927. Set designers sometimes served as costume designers as well, but in most cases Schwartz followed the standard practice of Broadway theaters of the time and rented from costume houses. In particular, he used Meth and Groper, which specialized in Yiddish productions.7 While Schwartz was advancing design practices in New York, some of the most radical scenographic practices of the second and third decades of the 20th century were being developed and implemented in Russia, and some of the most cutting– edge scenographic experiments there could be found in the Yiddish State Theater (known by the Russian acronym GOSET), as well as in the Hebrew–language Habima Theater, both of which attracted the leading Jewish artists of the day. The designers at these theaters reveled in variations of Expressionism, fantastic realism, the grotesque, Cubo–Futurism, and Constructivism. As with much of the Russian avant–garde, folk traditions and motifs were interwoven with formalist techniques, which for the Jewish designers meant drawing upon religious symbolism and, when appropriate, images of shtetl life. While the innovations of Soviet scenography were slowly becoming known in the West during the 1920s — photographs and articles appeared from time to time in Theater Arts Monthly, the Habima visited New York in 1926, and theater artists and scholars visited Europe and reported on the latest developments. It was not until Aronson began to design at Unser Teater that at least a small segment of the American theater audience got a real taste of Russian avant– garde scenography. 200

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top Scene from the Yiddish Art Theatre's production of Abraham Goldfaden's The Tenth Commandment.

above Mural design for Unser Teater by Boris Aronson. Gouache, pencil, and paint on board, 1925.

Photograph by White Studio (New York), 1926.

Directed by Maurice Schwartz. Set and costume design by Boris Aronson, masks by John (Jack) Soble.

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But what Aronson did at Unser Teater went far beyond a carefully integrated realism. Born in 1898 in Kiev, Aronson studied art but preferred the vibrant Russian avant–garde to what was offered in school and ultimately found his way to the painter Aleksandra Exter (1882–1949), who was also the primary designer for Aleksandr Tairov (1885–1950) at the Kamerny Theater in Moscow. There, Aronson assisted on the landmark production of Romeo and Juliet (1921). In Moscow, he also met and became friends with Marc Chagall, who was designing for GOSET. Chagall’s first assignment there was to paint murals for the theater (something that Aronson would later do at Unser Teater when he arrived in New York). Aronson left the Soviet Union in 1922 and landed briefly in Berlin, where he participated in the first exhibition of Soviet art outside of Russia and wrote two books, including one on his friend Chagall, whose stage designs, he said, “synthesized the Harlequinade of the Jewish theatre and the grotesqueries of the Jewish ghetto.”8 Aronson arrived in New York at the end of 1923. His first designs for Unser Teater reflected the lessons learned from Tairov and Exter. Tairov, for instance, insisted that the director’s primary material was the three–dimensional body of the actor. “Therefore,” proclaimed Tairov, “it can be properly incorporated and displayed only in a three–dimensional atmosphere…worked out only in a definite cubic capacity.”9 Tairov believed that in order “to help the body of the actor to assume the necessary forms, to respond easily to all the necessary tasks of rhythm and movement,” it was the stage floor that needed to be the focus of the design and thus needed to be broken up into a variety of planes. When Aronson later designed The Tenth Commandment for Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theater in 1926, he did precisely that, something appreciatively noted by John Mason Brown, one of the most astute critics of the day: “The many levels and steps liberate the action, and give it a dynamic quality that runs far afield of the ordinary production methods known to New York.”10 Brown was thoroughly taken by how different Aronson’s designs were from everything else on the New York stage: The settings and costumes of B. Aronson are the bravest experiments in scenic design that the present season has disclosed. His endless costumes are thoroughly thought out in terms of individual detail as well as being tonal factors in the large ensembles. By employing not one, but many constructivist settings, which range from heaven to hell, he conditions the style of the entire production, and brings a welcome vigor and originality into our theater.”11

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Costume designs by Boris Aronson for The Tenth Commandment. Gouache and pencil on board, 1926.

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Kenneth Macgowan, one of the producers of the Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village, was also among those recognizing the revolutionary contribution of Aronson. Writing about a stage design exhibition that included the work of Tairov and Exter (which he categorized as Futurist), Macgowan noted that such an approach to design “positively insists on the cooperation of the actor, for it makes over his costume into just such a bizarre composition of angles and surfaces as it gives to the backgrounds. …But in America it remained for the Bronx to demonstrate foreground and background and costumes, all shaped [and] distorted into a visual dramatization of futurist theory. There, in what is now Rudolph Schildkraut’s theatre, an artist from Moscow, B. Aronson, supplied extraordinary decorations for stage and actors.”12 Aronson knew and admired the work of Russian director Vsevolod Meyerhold— the great champion of Constructivism in the theater. Constructivism was an avant–garde art movement that originated in Russia and foregrounded the use of modern materials in sculptural constructions that valued function over aesthetic beauty. With its geometric shapes, dynamic rhythms, and functionality it was an ideal fit for the theater, creating what were often referred to as machines for acting. In the United States, theater critics often applied the term constructivist to any abstract setting. But while Aronson’s designs for the Yiddish theater certainly contained Constructivist elements, especially visible in the fourth act of David Pinski’s The Final Balance, with its electric sign and steps, ramps, and platforms, they were closer in spirit to the theatricalist work of Tairov and Vakhtangov than Meyerhold, combining elements of Suprematism, Cubo–Futurism, and fantastic realism along with Constructivism. The geometric shapes of Day and Night, for instance, were largely decorative. Bronx Express, the first play Aronson designed for Schildkraut after the demise of Unser Teater in 1925, cleverly created a dream world. In the play, a buttonmaker falls asleep on the subway on his way home from work and incorporates the places depicted in the subway ads into his dreams. The set changed as the dream locales changed, but the ceiling of the subway car, with its hanging straps, remained throughout. It was a wonderfully theatrical solution to a scenic challenge, but it was fundamentally a pictorial design rooted in realism. Nonetheless, when Maurice Schwartz moved the Yiddish Art Theater to its new home at Second Avenue and 12th Street and hired Aronson to design the opening production, Goldfadden’s The Tenth Commandment,13 Aronson referred to his own design as Constructivist. “It had a very simplified shape,” he explained: …very architectural and geometrical, stripped of all detailing. It was supposed to represent a structure of many levels. Abstract to the point where 206

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page 204–205 Set design by Boris Aronson for Unser Teater's production of The Final Balance by David Pinski. India ink on board, 1925. The Final Balance was the Unser Teater’s second production, and second collaboration with Aronson. above Chaim Schneyer and Miriam Elias in Day and Night by S. Ansky, 1925. Performed at Unser Teater. right Costume design by Boris Aronson for “Lilith” in Day and Night at Unser Teater. Gouache and pencil on board, 1925.

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the shape of the wood in its natural forms was stressed without any added gingerbread or any kind of decoration — a functional thing of many levels and stripped of any kind of schmaltz.14 Although Schwartz approved of the overall design concept, he asked Aronson to soften the hard edges and angles. “That,” said Aronson, “was my first exposure to the need to tame the Constructivism in my work.”15 The opening scene of the play occurs in a house in the woods. The scene begins with the exterior, then opens up to expose the interior. In style it echoed the work of Chagall and was a clear harbinger of Tevye’s house in Fiddler on the Roof several decades later. Aronson went on to design nine shows for Schwartz, one of his most successful collaborations until his work with Harold Prince in the 1960s and ‘70s. Writing in 1928, Russian Futurist artist David Burliuk declared that Aronson: …is all Eurasia, since he is a living part of the great revolutionary element that is advancing from the East, on the world’s bastions of capitalism. Like a bomb, one of the first, Aronson fell from “over there” onto the thickheaded American stage. Will he find his place? Will he be understood? Will he be valued? In the end, this is not that important. He is already carrying out his work of destruction and cleansing.16 But Aronson was not understood by the English–language theater, and he did have difficulty finding his place. Through 1930, Aronson designed 16 productions for Yiddish theaters in New York, almost every one of which exemplified the conceptual scenographic approach of his Russian training. His first opportunity to design for a Broadway production finally came in 1932 with the revue Walk a Little Faster. But his theatricality placed him outside the practices of the vast majority of American theater. Lee Simonson, one of the major American designers of the era, saw this as problematic, complaining that Aronson’s designs “remained an exotic and transplanted thing despite [his] technical proficiency, his intelligence, and his ingenuity.” “We do not breed the constructivist director as yet because we so rarely need him, nor are symbolic settings often relevant to the work of our most creative playwrights,” Simonson wrote in The Nation in 1929. He went on to voice a hope that “Aronson will be able to divest himself sufficiently of his Russian dogmas so that his undoubted talents can be more readily used to express the current realities of the American stage.”17 While Aronson never “divested” himself of his theatrical aesthetic, he did learn to adapt. His design for the Group Theatrer's production of Clifford Odet's Awake and Sing! (1935), for example, was a masterpiece of American realism. But throughout 208

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Boris Aronson’s set design for the train car interior from Osip Dymow’s Bronx Express at the Rudolph Schildkraut Theatre. Gouache on board, 1925. This dream play is a parody of modern Jewish life and is one of the first to be set inside a New York City subway. In line with the playtext, Aronson replicated the familiar ad icons of the period.

Boris Aronson’s set design for the Atlantic City café in Bronx Express. Gouache on board, 1925.

Cast of Bronx Express at the Rudolph Schildkraut Theatre. Photograph by White Studios, 1925.

From left: Victor Packer, Jacob Bleifer, Vera Lebedeff, Rudolph Schildkraut, Clara Packer, Miriam Bleich, Clara Langener, David Sokolovsky, Shimen Ruskin, Jacob Bergreen. Child unknown.

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Aronson's design for the “house in the woods” in The Tenth Commandment for the Yiddish Art Theater. Gouache on paper, 1926. Exterior (top) and interior (above).

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clockwise from top left Characters in Skyscrapers (Belle Didjah is center). Photograph by Rappoport, c. 1935.

Set and costume design by Boris Aronson. Dancer Belle Didjah in Tartar dance costume designed by Boris Aronson, c. 1930. Belle Didjah in The Bee with costume design by Boris Aronson. Photograph by Maurice Goldberg, 1932.

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above & opposite top Mordecai Gorelik’s set designs for the Yiddish Art Theater’s production of Jacob Gordin’s God, Man, and Devil. Watercolor and pen and ink, 1928.

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opposite bottom Mordecai Gorelik’s set designs for the Yiddish Art Theater’s production of Uncle Moses by Sholem Asch. Watercolor, 1930. Gorelick’s two–tiered design for Uncle Moses allowed for quick shifts between settings.

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his career, when given the opportunity, his Constructivist–, Chagall–, and Exter– inspired creativity constantly resurfaced. This can be seen, for example, in the geometric rooftops of Amsterdam in the backdrop for the otherwise realistic The Diary of Anne Frank (1955) or his famous setting for J.B. (1958) with its platforms, ramps, steps, and evocative backcloth that evoke a nightmarish circus tent. Finally, in the 1960s and ’70s, teaming up with producer–director Harold Prince on Fiddler on the Roof, with its Chagall–inflected decor, Cabaret, Company, Follies, and A Little Night Music, the American theater finally caught up with him, and he transformed the scenography of the American musical. But even before those breakthrough productions, Aronson exerted an influence on the direction of American design. One of his assistants in the late 1950s was Shanghai–born designer Ming Cho Lee. Lee has readily acknowledged that Aronson’s Constructivist and sculptural approach and his use of collage had a profound impact on his own work, which, in turn, radically transformed American design in the 1960s and ‘70s through his extensive work at the New York Shakespeare Festival, the New York City Opera, and theaters around the world. None of the other designers of the Yiddish theater were as radical in their approach; nor did they have the broad impact that Aronson had. Yet many of them were nonetheless more adventurous than their mainstream counterparts, exploring a wide range of nonrealistic genres. Moi Solotaroff (1892–1970), who designed 15 productions for the Artef between 1928 and 1939, had studied art in Paris before coming to the United States, and his paintings were known for their stunning use of color. His stage work, however, was wryly characterized by fellow designer Mordecai Gorelik (1899–1990) as “Hassidist grotesque.”18 The term may have been inspired by a New York Times review of L. Resnick’s Recruits, designed by Solotaroff, which referred to “the slightly grotesque Chagallesque sets [that] make the most of the small stage.”19 Gorelik himself was already an established designer both on and off Broadway when he did five productions for Rudolph Schildkraut and Maurice Schwartz, including God, Man, and Devil (1928), which seemed inspired by the work of Robert Edmond Jones, the primary designer of the Provincetown Playhouse, where Gorelik also worked. Samuel Leve (1910–1999) also brought his technical ingenuity to the stage. For a 1937 production of The Brothers Ashkenazi at the Yiddish Art Theater, he employed a revolving stage to provide fluid transitions among 25 scenes. He went on to serve as a designer for the Federal Theater Project and Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater, and for some three dozen Broadway shows,

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above Painted stage design by Boris Aronson for Angels on Earth, 1929. Play by Khone Gotesfeld. Directed by Maurice Schwartz at the Yiddish Art Theatre. left Painted stage design by Samuel Leve for the musical comedy Café Crown, 1964. The painted set depicts Esther denouncing Haman and 11 signs for different businesses that advertise kosher restaurants and other Jewish establishments and charities.

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above Heinz A. Condell's design for Bronx Express produced by the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Culture Association) in Berlin, 1935. The Kulturbund was established on October 1, 1933, following the enactment of the German Reich's Civil Service Law that required that Jews be removed from the workplace, including cultural institutions. The Kulturbund employed many hundreds of Jewish artists, musicians, and actors who had been fired from German institutions. Condell designed costumes and scenery for the Kulturbund before immigrating to America. left Samuel Leve's stage model for the Yiddish Art Theatre production of Song of the Dnieper, based on the novel by Zalmen Shneur, 1946. Leve, who studied theater at Yale University, designed sets, costumes, and lighting for both the Yiddish and English language stages. He also worked for Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater.

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Heinz A. Condell's “flip flap” book titled “Trick Costume,” n.d. The booklet consists of several moving parts that show different costumes on the same person.

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numerous operas, and presidential events for five administrations beginning with Harry S Truman. One of the last émigré designers to have a connection with the Yiddish theater in New York was Heinz A. Condell (1905–1951). Condell had trained with the great German director Max Reinhardt and had an active career with the Berlin Civic Opera. When Jews were no longer permitted to participate in German theaters, Condell became active in the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Culture League).20 He came to America in 1938 and worked primarily with Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop and several small opera companies, and from 1944 until his death, with New York City Opera. However, the Yiddish theater helped in his transition to the American theater, and he designed three productions for the Yiddish Art Theater: I.J. Singer’s The Family Carnovsky (1943), Three Gifts by I.L. Peretz (1945), and Doctor Herzl (1945), as well as H. Leivick’s The Miracle of the Warsaw Ghetto at the New Jewish Folk Theater (1944). He also designed two Molly Picon productions: the musicals Mazel Tov, Molly (1950) and Take It Easy (1951). The Yiddish theater of New York, particularly its art theater, with its roots in Eastern Europe, was not bound by the rules, traditions, and expectations of the mainstream English–language theater. Thus, particularly in the realm of design, it could draw upon a complex foundation of avant–garde aesthetics and combine them with the resources and practices of the American theater to create something original. And arguably, the scenographic approaches that came to dominate American theater from the 1960s on could trace their origins to the Yiddish theater and its designers.

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above Set design by Heinz A. Condell for the Act I finale of Mazel Tov, Molly, 1950. Written by Harry Kalmonovich with music by Joseph Rumshinsky and sets and costumes by Heinz A. Condell. The show starred Molly Picon and was directed by her husband, Jacob Kalich. left Production of The Miracle of the Warsaw Ghetto by Jacob Ben–Ami’s Yiddish Folks Theatre. Photograph by Ivan Busatt, 1944.

Directed by Jacob Ben–Ami with music by Sholom Secunda and set design by Heinz A. Condell. The play is a dramatization of the events of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (April 19–May 16, 1943). Written in New York by H. Leivick, it was based on information available at the time. While not all the factual details are correct, the play is striking in its overall accuracy.

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Set design by Mordecai Gorelik for John Howard Lawson’s Processional: A Jazz Symphony of American Life. Watercolor, 1925. Gorelik’s designs for the Theater Guild’s Broadway production of Processional gained him professional recognition.

REMINISCENCE

MARC ARONSON on his father

BORIS ARONSON and his mother

LISA JALOWETZ The other day my wife found a YouTube clip of my father that was part of the 1976 Tony Awards ceremonies. He was a nominee for Pacific Overtures, but before giving that award they reviewed a series of blooper clips of prior winners who had stumbled their way onto the stage. Three of them showed my father winning previous awards (he wound up with six), always walking painfully slowly up to the podium, wearing a tux, but, as a man in his 70s, always out

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of place in the sparkle, youth, and glamour of the evening. The longest clip was from 1971, when he won for Company. Then, clutching the statue, he stared ahead and said in his Yiddish–English syntax, “I have a very special feeling about New York. … This magic city, I never had a chance to do something about it.” In a sense, that moment summed up his entire artistic life. He’d been born in czarist Russia, where, as he told me, a pineapple was a miracle— an object from

another planet. Then he lived through two revolutions: first, in the arts, where along with such other Jewish artists as El Lissitzky, Isaachar Ben Ryback, and Robert Altman he created the Culture League. This was an effort, best known in Marc Chagall’s work, to create a new Jewish national identity in the meeting place of abstraction, modernism, and folk art, with Yiddish as the language. Then, second, the political upheaval, the Bolshevik coup that overturned one tyranny to replace it with another. The revolution in the arts made my father yearn to come to America, to New York, which he pictured as the epitome of the modern: skyscrapers, elevators, subways — the opposite of the medieval curlicues of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow. The revolution in politics meant he needed to leave— to escape the rule of ideologues who had, as he put it, “swallowed the truth.” He could not stand a world ruled by aesthetic or political provincialism. He needed to be in the world capital of the new. When he landed in New York in 1923, the Yiddish theater allowed him to experiment— so long as he did not mind starving. At the Unser Teater in the Bronx, he could craft experimental sets, following the ideas he had learned working with Alexandra Exter in Russia. His sets were exactly as linear, rectangular, and stripped– down as was Manhattan (at least in his imagination). But the audience for such experimentation was tiny. His work drew the attention of art critics, who gave him a gallery show in 1930, and from there he began to get work on Broadway. Unfortunately, though, no one wanted modernist sets on Broadway. If my father had a chance to experiment, it was in a few shows he did for Radio City Music Hall, or when he went to sketch at his beloved circus, or in his own paintings, or in the little prose essays he wrote about working in “the designer’s kitchen.” In that 1976 ceremony, you catch a peek at my mother, elegantly dressed beside him. When he is

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announced as the winner, you see her whisper a reminder in his ear. On stage, he seems weaker than in the earlier clips and stares down to read a prepared statement. He thanks those who assisted him, including “Lisa Jalowetz.” Then he says, “I believe that success in the theater is a miracle, but you have to prepare the miracle.” In a way, he was talking about his partnership with my mother. She was always identified, at the back of the Playbill, under her maiden name, as his assistant. But everyone in the theater world knew that, as in that last–second whisper, she was his full partner. She trained as a scenic designer in Vienna. And there was a second education in her home, where her father was a conductor and close colleague of Arnold Schoenberg’s. She followed her parents to Black Mountain College and then came to New York, steeped in theater and experimental art. My mother brought that Viennese combination of modernist visions, delicate diplomacy, and steely will to my father. His Russian experimentalism (and temper) and her Central European artistic clarity (and tact) won those awards. The sets for Company really were the culmination of a life’s dream. My father could finally show New York the New York he had pictured ever since he had first imagined it. But it was my mother (with Bob Mitchell and Jay Moore) who carefully built the models that made his vision a practical reality. He was clearly ailing in 1976, and died four years later. The last project he began was Schoenberg’s opera Moses and Aaron. That would have fully united his brand of modernism with hers. Instead, she gathered those scraps of writing and, with Frank Rich, wrote The Theater Art of Boris Aronson. As ever, he imagined, and she prepared, the miracle. And that is their joint legacy. MARC ARONSON, HISTORIAN/AUTHOR, NEW JERSEY

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Modicut: The Yiddish Puppet Theater of Yosl Cutler and Zuni Maud Eddy Portnoy

The Yiddish Modicut Puppet Theatre —the creation of immigrant artist–cartoonists Zuni Maud (1891–1956) and Yosl Cutler (1896–1935) — was one of several hand–puppet theaters that were part of New York’s theater scene of the 1920s and early 1930s. “Modicut” (a variation on the combination of “Maud” and “Cutler”) enjoyed great success in Yiddish–speaking communities in the United States and Europe. It appealed both to the general public and to intellectuals, merging Yiddish with avant–garde art and popular culture to produce humor as well as political and cultural criticism. Modicut was established by chance. After creating puppets for a Yiddish Art Theatre production, Maud and Cutler began bringing their puppets to the cafés and social gatherings they frequented. Many in the Yiddish literary community loved the skits they put on and suggested they create a real Yiddish puppet theater. Soon thereafter, in December of 1925, advertisements began to appear in New York’s four Yiddish dailies announcing the opening of a Yiddish puppet theater on 12th Street near Second Avenue. Modicut’s first venue was a children’s clothing factory. The space was furnished with a small stage, simple wooden benches, and surreal–looking faces painted on the gas meters; Maud and Cutler left the cutting tables and sewing machines around for effect, an indication that theirs was to be a proletarian–oriented theater. During their first few seasons, they played nine shows every week to packed houses. The left–wing periodical Theatre Arts Monthly took notice, and Modicut was featured in a spread on puppetry in New York City. Maud and Cutler took immense care in fabricating their puppets. Many critics commented on how human the puppets seemed to be and, despite their exaggerated and sometimes grotesque features, how authentically Jewish they looked, from the silk kaftonim and taleysim (prayer robes and shawls) of traditional Jews to the clothes worn by working–class Jews on the Lower East Side. One of their unique innovations was the ability to perform physical gesticulations — for example, the rotating thumb of a traditional rabbi, a typical gesture made by Jews when 224

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Sketches by Zuni Maud, c. 1930. In addition to their creation of puppets and plays, both Maud and Cutler produced paintings, drawings, sculpture, and poems. Maud also contributed articles and cartoons to publications like the Jewish Daily Forward and the Freiheit, and illustrated a number of children’s books.

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discussing the Talmud. Maud and Cutler would sometimes spend months working on a particular aspect, trying to perfect a wrinkled brow, a smile, or a raised eyebrow. These technical innovations were usually executed by strings attached to the back of a puppet, which, when pulled, would cause the puppet’s eyebrows, eyelids, and mouth to move. Unfortunately, very few Modicut playtexts survive, though one can get some idea of them from excerpts, programs, and press reports. The first plays fused satire, Jewish tradition, and modern life and culture to create humorous, mostly folksy comedies. For example, Akhashveyresh, a full–length Purim shpil (play) written by Maud, is a traditional telling of the story with parallels to medieval Purim plays — written almost entirely in rhyming couplets with a loyfer (master of ceremonies) introducing the characters and offering commentary. The text follows the basic story of Purim, in which the evil Haman schemes to convince the Persian King to destroy the Jewish community. The plot is foiled by Mordecai and his niece Esther, and Haman is finally hanged on his own gallows. Since both Maud and Cutler were left–wing secularists, the fact that they chose to parody a traditional Purim play reveals an irony: in rejecting tradition, they relied upon it. There are a number of creative innovations in Akhashveyresh. Emphasis is placed on the Persian king’s drunkenness, and his consumption of shlivovitz in particular. In a satire of the Yiddish theater, the king’s two servants speak daytshmerish, a Germanized form of Yiddish often used in the popular Yiddish theater to indicate high–level language. And in order to associate the hero of the story, Mordecai, with common, workaday Jews, Maud refers to him as “Motl,” a Yiddish diminutive of Mordkhe. The freewheeling comedy and satire in the story emerge in the unusual ways in which Maud and Cutler approached their traditional theme. The play includes typical scenes from the Lower East Side, such as the sudden appearance of an Italian pushcart peddler selling everything from eyeglasses and galoshes to bananas. Other unlikely elements in this Purim play include an “African Dance,” in which two black hand puppets dance to the “St. Louis Blues.” One of Modicut’s best–known pieces is a parody of S. Ansky’s The Dybbuk, satirizing its numerous productions then being performed in English and Yiddish on the New York stage. In Maud’s version, Leah and her dybbuk (the soul of Khonen, the boy who pined after her, which has inhabited her body) live on Delancey Street, and various theater troupes — including the Yiddish Art Theatre, the Neighborhood Playhouse, and the Vilna Troupe (all of which were performing the play that season) — arrive and unsuccessfully attempt to drive it out. After these efforts, the 228

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above Mural in the dining hall of Maud’s Zumeray Hotel in North Branch, New York, painted by Zuni Maud and Yosl Cutler, c. 1928. Maud and Cutler spent their summers at The Zumeray, a summer resort in the Catskills run by Maud’s brother and sister–in law. In addition to practicing and putting on regular performances with Cutler, Maud served as the resort’s tummler, or M.C. The two artists also painted the dining hall with giant surrealist murals, which fit with the resort’s liberal atmosphere. right Modicut puppets in a scene from The Dybbuk, 1926.

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“rabbis,” or, in this case, the directors of each respective theater group, decide to summon Khonen’s late father, the mes toer (immaculate corpse), in a final attempt to exorcise Khonen from Leah. But the father doesn’t understand his son’s English and is upset that Khonen has fallen in with “goyim” (a joking reference to the Neighborhood Playhouse’s English–language version of the play). This was Maud and Cutler’s most brazen satire on popular Yiddish culture to date and the first unambiguous indication that theirs was becoming a theater that would accurately satirize Yiddish popular culture. For a number of critics and theatergoers who had tired of the many productions of The Dybbuk that season, Modicut’s parody was a welcome comic relief. All Modicut plays were accompanied by music, much of it composed by Mikhl Gelbart and Moyshe Rappaport. In addition, they often included parodies of popular Yiddish theater songs, such as Cutler’s Di blekherne kale (The Tin Bride), an adaptation of the song “Yome, Yome” (“Bennie, Bennie”). Maud’s play Biznes (Business) contained a parody of the Yiddish theater song “Ikh bin a border bay mayn vayb” (“I’m a Boarder at My Wife’s”) called “Ikh bin bay mir der boss in shop” (“I’m the Boss of My Own Shop”). Maud and Cutler wrote a number of other original plays that have not survived, including Der laytisher mentsh (The Respectable Man), Shleyme mit der beheyme (Shleyme with the Beast), Farn shpil un nokhn shpil (Before the Play and after the Play), and Der betler (The Beggar). In 1928, Maud and Cutler took their show on the road and played in dozens of cities across America. From the fall of 1929 through the spring of 1930, they toured a number of countries in Western Europe, followed by a large tour of Poland, where they were a massive hit. Poland’s Jewish audiences were amazed that an American Yiddish production could be so rich in folklore and tradition and at the same time be so modern. Modicut played 200 sold–out shows at the Warsaw Literary Union and 75 sold–out performances in Vilna before going on a provincial tour. The pair returned to an America in the throes of economic disaster. Their subsequent shows reflected this crisis, and they crafted puppet caricatures of numerous politicians, who they mocked bitterly. In an updated version of their Dybbuk parody, the puppet rabbis were modeled on Abraham Cahan, the domineering editor of the Forward, a Yiddish newspaper, and another on President Herbert Hoover, whose head was represented as a rotten apple. In yet another incarnation of the show, Leah was portrayed as Mae West and one of the rabbis was President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who chanted “WPA, NRA, CCC,” (Works Progress Administration, National Recovery Association, and Civilian Conservation Corps) while waving the 230

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above Scrapbook with photograph of Modicut performance, c. 1930. The photo shows puppets in Maud and Cutler’s play Tshing Tang Po, in which characters had Chinese–Jewish hybrid names such as Ting–ling–schmul and Ling–ting–scmultshik. right Yosl Cutler, Bessie Maud, and Zuni Maud during their tour of the USSR, 1931–32.

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Two Hasidic puppets used in a skit by puppeteer Nat Norbert, c. 1955.

REMINISCENCE

DAVID BUCHHOLZ on his father

NAT NORBERT My dad, Nat Norbert (professional name of Norbert Buchholz), was the last of the “old–country” Yiddish– speaking puppeteers. After a 70–year career, he passed away in 2014 at the age of 102! At 99, he appeared on “Antiques Roadshow” (a long–running television program featuring local owners of antiques who bring in items to be appraised by experts) with his celebrity puppets. As one of their producers noted, in the entire history of the show, Dad was “the only antique to present his own antiques.” On his 100th

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birthday, an interviewer asked him the secret of his longevity, to which he replied, “The puppets and the children, they kept me young.” And they did. My father came to America from Austria–Poland as a 17–year–old “greenhorn,” barely able to speak English. He found his calling watching his first puppet show at the Prater in Vienna and learned the art of puppetry under the WPA (Works Progress Administration), President Roosevelt’s massive Depression–era jobs program.

He learned how to make, manipulate, and costume hand puppets including Punch and Judy, swazzel and all! He decided that he wanted to make a Yiddish puppet and was introduced to Zuni Maud who, with his partner Yosl Cutler, had created the famous Modicut Yiddish puppet theatre. My dad asked Zuni to help him make a Yiddish puppet, and Zuni was from then on my father’s mentor and dearest friend. When Zuni passed away, his Modicut puppets were given to my dad by the Maud family. My dad married my mom, Sylvia Gold, in 1940. He began his professional career as a puppeteer in 1941, doing a variety show for soldiers at Fort Jay on Governor’s Island. He also did magic and puppet shows for children, as well as some political satires. It was in the late 1940s that he started playing the hotels and bungalow colonies in the Catskills during the summer and the hotels of Miami Beach in the winter. It took some time before hotel owners got used to the idea that a variety show with puppets was “real” entertainment for adults. People loved his winning personality, charming skits, and appealing puppets. He was soon much in demand. Hotels would book him again and again. He was sometimes the headliner; other times he was the opening act for such performers as Joan Rivers, Molly Picon, and Frank Sinatra Jr. He referred to himself as “The Best of the Cheaper Acts.” He performed at first only in Yiddish, by the late 1950s in “Yinglish,” and by the mid–1960s almost entirely in English. He wrote his own scripts, and his shows were always packed with yiddishkayt, which could be risqué and filled with double entendre. His Yiddish routines included “A Pushcart Peddler on Orchard Street,” “A Grocery Store on Delancey Street,” “A Hotelkeeper in the Mountains,” and “A Psychiatrist,” couch and all. Of all his Yiddish routines, the one that was a personal favorite of mine was his “Two Rabbis.” The two rabbis meet on the street. The first says to the second, “I hear that during the year you’re a shames at a shul and during the holidays a Santa Claus at Macy’s. So what’s going on?” The second rabbi replies, “From one god you can’t make a living.” It wasn’t easy growing up the son of a puppeteer. I remember my mother having to hold my hand when I went to the bathroom because I was afraid of the little people hanging from hooks. I was always fascinated watching my dad create the puppets. He first sculpted them in clay, then cast them in plaster of Paris, lined the molds with plastic wood,

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and finally sanded, painted, animated, and costumed them. With just an occasional touch–up with paint, my dad used some of the children’s puppets he had fashioned in the 1940s for the next 70 years! At first, he worked alone and would schlep everything up to the “mountains” by himself. He would strap his stage on the top of our station wagon and load the inside with suitcases full of puppets, a dolly, curtain, props, and scenery. He carefully secured everything in anticipation of having to drive up the infamous “Wurtsboro Hill,” which he, like many others of his generation, always went up backwards. My mom became his partner at shows but was extremely shy and always worked behind the scenes. She prepared magic tricks and props, synchronized music for skits, made puppet clothes, designed publicity mailers, managed bookings, collected the fees, and ran the family. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, my dad introduced satirical celebrity puppets to his shows (in English) to attract a broader audience (teens, younger adults, and non–Jews). Among the characters were Jackie Gleason, Ed Sullivan, Jerry Lewis, Jimmy Durante, and Liberace. A favorite photograph of his was of the “real” Jerry Lewis conversing with his Jerry Lewis puppet. He also created innovative puppets, like the “Apache Dancer” who did a tango–like dance while the man lit and smoked a cigarette, and “Spinning Plates,” where a hobo (Emmet Kelly) would spin six plates at one time on a dark stage illuminated by a giant strobe light as the music played faster and faster. Lola the Stripper was my dad’s last puppet, and probably his favorite. She could hold her arms over her head and do the stripper’s “bump and grind” with her hips to the music of David Rose’s “The Stripper.” As Lola danced, my mom would strip off her clothing. Naked, in a flickering strobe light, her bosoms would light up. This went over really well at midnight shows, especially at the bungalow colonies! It was a wonderful odyssey and adventure for me to have Nat Norbert, puppeteer, and Norbert Buchholz, mensch, as my father. He loved what he did— and it showed. A 1960s fan letter says it all: “Children of all ages were mystified by your magic and delighted by your puppets. I think the key is that you seem to enjoy your work as much as the audience does. That is what makes Norbert’s Puppets so special.” That’s his legacy. DAVID BUCHHOLZ, BLOOD BANK SUPERVISOR, RETIRED, NEW YORK

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NRA eagle over Leah in order to exorcize the dybbuk. One scene that remained a mainstay of the parody depicted rabbis attempting to yank the dybbuk out from under Leah, lined up with their hands around each other’s waists and pulling to the “Song of the Volga Boatmen.” Among the items they extracted, instead of the concealed dybbuk, was a large herring. It is unclear why, but Maud and Cutler parted ways in 1933. Critics considered it a tragedy, saying that they would never achieve apart what they had accomplished together. In 1935, Cutler was killed by a drunk driver in Iowa on his way to California. The Modicut Puppet Theatre represents a moment when Yiddish culture was at its peak and serves as an example of what was possible within the framework of a greater Yiddish culture. The medium of puppetry was important in this respect because it allowed for a flexibility of form that human actors could not offer. In its simple, humorous, and often biting manner, Modicut provided an expression of the clash and consequent synthesis between tradition and modernity.

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Modicut puppets, 1926–32. From left: a Jew; a dybbuk; a “Boss.”

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Yiddish Vaudeville

Edna Nahshon Judith Thissen

Edna Nahshon

Entertaining the Crowd “Vaudeville,” a loanword from the French, is defined by The Oxford Companion to American Theatre as “entertainment consisting of short, variegated acts, some musical, some comic, all offered on the same bill.”1 Yet in the world of Yiddish theater, which was heavily regulated by union dictates, arriving at an accepted definition of the term proved a considerably more complex undertaking, as it bore very concrete ramifications. In 1905, wary of the economic implications of the growing inroad of dramatic plays into Yiddish vaudeville, the Hebrew Actors' Union, which did not admit vaudevillians into its ranks, engaged in a hotheaded dispute with the Hebrew Variety Actors' Union over the meaning of “vaudeville.” Both agreed that music halls had the right to produce “vaudevilles,” but questions arose as to whether a vaudeville could be “long and serious and dramatic.”2 As each group stood its ground, their representatives engaged in a debate that culminated in a Talmudic probing of Alexander Harkavy’s 1898 Yiddish–English dictionary. Harkavy’s definition was ultimately rejected by the vaudevillians, who argued that the Russian–born lexicographer had never been an actor and so was not an authority on the subject. Vaudeville, a variety show whose chief aim was to keep its audience constantly entertained, emphasized a display of performance skills like singing, juggling, dancing, playing a musical instrument, acting, and telling jokes. Deemed “a people’s culture,” its origins lay in America’s saloons, where skits and songs amused a mostly– male drinking clientele. In the late 19th century, much of vaudeville’s materials were cleansed and made suitable for working– and middle–class family consumption. Vaudeville was moving out of the saloons and beer halls and into spaces that ranged from small halls in residential buildings to elegant theaters, reflecting the socioeconomic profile of its clientele.

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Artwork given to Sophie Tucker by her son Bert, c. 1928. “My Yiddishe Mama” by Jack Yellen (lyrics) and Lou Pollack (music) is one of the most famous songs sung in both English and Yiddish. Though first recorded by Willie Howard, it was Sophie Tucker who made it an international hit in 1928, recording it in both English and Yiddish. Early in her career, Tucker became famous for performing ragtime and “coon

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songs,” though she disliked performing in blackface. As soon as she was able, she established her own stage identity as a Jewish woman. Her first great hit was “Some of These Days,” written in 1910 by African–American entertainer Shelton Brooks. That song and “My Yiddishe Mama,” her two greatest hits, define her uniquely American blend of Jewish and African–American music.

Yiddish vaudeville, which had its start in America, was a new phenomenon in the metropolitan landscape, and it drew quite a lot of attention. On December 28, 1902, The New York Times offered a description of an evening of Yiddish vaudeville on the Lower East Side. Its initial take was condescending, yet it offers an excellent physical depiction of the venue: Of the theatres in New York where performances are given in Yiddish, one of the most interesting, because most primitive, is located near the corner of Grand and Suffolk Streets, and is devoted to vaudeville. Upon the outside of the building there is none of the glittering illumination which distinguishes the more pretentious theatres uptown, and only a modest sign, in the Hebrew character, informs you that this is a temple of the Thespian art. Climbing a narrow stairway one flight, the visitor comes to an entrance hall that opens upon the room in which the performances take place. This room is about 100 feet long, with a varying width of from 20 to 25 feet, and it is about 10 feet high. There is no box office, but halfway down the aisle there is a barrier in the shape of a stalwart young man who blocks the way with a notification that to go any nearer the stage one must either buy a seat in the reserved section, price 10 cents, or a box seat, which can be had for a quarter of a dollar.3 The author goes on to describe the sequence of the evening’s events. As the audience, Yiddish–speaking men and women with “traces of the sweatshop” on their faces, enters the space, the house’s two–man orchestra — which consists of one young man playing the piano and the violin and a preteen entrusted with the bass drum, snare drum, triangle, and a pseudo–xylophone — offers a ragtime overture. Once drinks are served, the actual program begins. It is presented on a small stage, about 10 feet wide, 8 feet deep, and 8 feet high. The first number is a dramatic sketch depicting a couple’s domestic quarrel. This is followed by several variety turns with dancers and singers, who appear in rapid succession. Then another sketch is presented by two actors, followed by a nicely costumed Russian peasant dance. Some song–and–dance numbers ensue, and then comes what the newspaper identifies as the “pièce de résistance” — a short, two–act melodrama about a young Jewish man who has converted to Catholicism and entered the novitiate preparatory to becoming a priest. After an unpleasant encounter between his parents and the priest overseeing his conversion, the young man realizes the error of his ways and returns to the Jewish fold and to the arms of his loving father and mother. The play was most

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Mae Simon's red satin shoes (below) and makeup kit (right), n.d.

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probably written by the popular Joseph Lateiner, a regular supplier of scripts to the dramatic Yiddish stage. The ingredients of the evening show — American tunes, song–and–dance numbers, Yiddishized songs, folkloristic Russian dances, and a heartbreaking moralistic play — appear to be the usual fare of Yiddish vaudeville programs. The influence of American popular culture is of particular interest, for Yiddish vaudeville was an entirely American form of entertainment, and manifested such influence well before the “legitimate” Yiddish stage. This can be gleaned from a 1903 Times article on Yiddish vaudeville that bore the subtitle “Where the Families of the Crowded Ghetto Find Amusement in the Highland Fling Transformed into a Yiddish Dance and in the Strains of ‘Upidee.’” The author astutely observed that the entertainment “represents perhaps as emphatically as almost anything else the strenuous effort of the Ghetto population at adapting itself to local conditions.”4 Historians of Yiddish theater have downplayed the role of vaudeville, focusing almost exclusively on the so–called “legitimate” stage. Only a small number of vaudeville–related objects have survived — a script, a pair of shoes, a few feathers. Many of these items belonged to vaudeville star Mae Simon (c. 1890–c. 1950). Born to Orthodox parents in Grodno in Polish Lithuania, she came to America at the age of ten. By her 20s, she headed her own vaudeville company. She appeared at the Clinton Street Vaudeville House and, in 1910, moved to the old Atlantic Garden on the Bowery, where, it was announced, she would continue to offer “old–style Yiddish vaudeville” and would present a three–part program consisting of an operetta in three acts, straight vaudeville, and a “rapid–fire” melodrama in four acts. Unlike most vaudevillians, Simon transitioned onto the dramatic stage and appeared in some serious plays. She also had roles in two films: In 1917, she was prominently featured in the silent film The Liar. In the ads, she was credited as “the famous Russian tragedienne.” She appeared in Sidney M. Goldin’s talkie My Jewish Mother in 1930. Even after its heyday, vaudeville never disappeared from the Yiddish stage. Yiddish variety shows, some of them headed by major stars like Molly Picon or Ludwig Satz, were still advertised in the mid–1940s and beyond. Overall, vaudeville, along with its ethnic variations, has mostly disappeared from America’s theatrical culture, but its revue format was transported to early radio, film, and television, leaving its mark on American show business.

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Poster advertising Mae Simon, n.d.

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above Yiddish vaudeville house advertising great vaudeville stars every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Photograph by Andreas Feininger, c. 1939.

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opposite page Sheet music for “Bluff ! Bluff ! Bluff !,” lyrics and music by Hyman Kanapoff, with additional musical arrangement by Joseph Rumshinsky, 1903. Charles Cohen was a veteran Yiddish vaudevillian. He is best remembered for his song “Levine and His Flying Machine” (1927), which he recorded in both Yiddish and English.

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Judith Thissen

Early Yiddish Vaudeville in New York City The first Yiddish–language vaudeville house in New York City opened in September of 1901 on the Bowery. The novelty was copied, and soon Yiddish theater stars Jacob P. Adler and Boris Thomashefsky, capitalizing on the public’s growing interest, opened the People’s Music Hall as a subsidiary of their People’s Theatre. By early 1902, there were three admission–charging Yiddish vaudeville/music halls on the Bowery. Several Lower East Side saloonkeepers also began offering “free” variety shows to customers, who spent five cents on a glass of beer or wine. While the legitimate Yiddish stage attracted an audience from all strata of New York’s immigrant Jewish community, including those who had moved out of the Lower East Side both socially and geographically, the Yiddish music halls catered primarily to working–class patrons and recently arrived immigrants who lived in the immediate vicinity. Proximity and price were crucial aspects of the allure of vaudeville. As the Yiddish daily Warheit explained: Not everybody can go to the theater two or three times a week, or even once a week. First, the theater is several blocks away. Second, it is expensive. However, an entire family — father, mother, and children — can amuse itself for an evening in a concert hall. All in all, it only costs fifty cents.5 Bernard Gorin, the first historian of Yiddish theater in America, argued in 1918 that, under the influence of playwright Jacob Gordin and other advocates of a more literary Yiddish theater in the realist tradition, older immigrants had developed an appreciation for “true art,” while the newcomers had no taste for the Yiddish theater they found upon arriving in New York: Even the trashy plays were too high for them, because these plays had acquired some polish and therefore did not match their taste. The newcomers wanted something which looked like the real purimshpil. … In the wake 248

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above Poster advertising a vaudeville performance starring Ludwig Satz at the Premier Theatre, 1935. right Rosa Margules in a Yiddish vaudeville show, c. 1910. Margules (1931–1969) came to America from her native Romania in 1900 and found moderate success on the vaudeville stage. Her husband, Edouard Margules, was a playwright/director, and her son, De Hirsh Margules, was a noted artist.

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of the great migration, the music halls proliferated all over the Jewish quarter. The type of entertainment offered by the music halls met the needs of the newcomers, and they wore out the doorsteps of these places.6 Gorin actually blamed the greenhorns’ lack of taste and education for the demise of Yiddish literary drama. He was right insofar as the Yiddish music hall boom prompted a commercial battle between legitimate theaters and music halls. Still, it was not until 1905 that Yiddish vaudeville became a booming business. The closing of Moyshe Hurwitz’s 3,500–seat Windsor Theatre in November of 1904 may have led to an upsurge in patronage of the vaudeville shows. For almost two decades, Hurwitz had offered Yiddish operetta, a type of entertainment that, with its grand gestures, slapstick, singing, and dancing, closely resembled vaudeville performance practices. Capitalizing on the increased demand for their product, the more enterprising concert saloon owners renovated their establishments and began charging admission— anywhere from 10 to 25 cents per show. While most managers sold beer and liquor on their premises, the new policy of charging admission dissociated vaudeville entertainment from the previously compulsory purchase of alcohol. This helped the Yiddish music hall business divorce itself from the controversial image of early concert saloons. Moreover, the newly renovated houses offered more elaborate programs that contained at least one three–act sketch, supplemented by songs, jokes, dances, single turns, illustrated songs, or moving pictures. The success of this revamped format also attracted a number of newcomers to the business. “Today every important street [on the East Side] has its glaring sign which announces ‘Jewish Vaudeville House’ or ‘Music Hall,’” settlement worker Paul Klapper observed in 1905.7 A year later, New York City counted about 14 admission–charging Yiddish music halls, each of which employed around 10 to 15 actors, actresses, and chorus girls, several musicians and stage hands, as well as a projectionist for moving pictures and magic–lantern slides. Hundreds of actors, choristers, dancers, singers, and musicians worked in the Yiddish vaudeville business during its boom years. In fact, the availability of cheap talent was a key condition for the success of Yiddish music halls. There was an almost inexhaustible supply of fresh faces, amateur and professional, recently arrived from Eastern Europe, as well as American–born youngsters. Many vaudeville performers were still in their teens when they started out on the Yiddish music hall stage.8 They often made their debut in small concert saloons and then moved up to the admission–charging houses. The most successful vaudevillians achieved stardom far beyond the immigrant milieu in which they began. Belle (Bella) Baker 250

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Sheet music for “Eli, Eli” featuring Belle Baker on cover, 1919.

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(1893–1957), one of the “red–hot mammas” of American vaudeville, recalled her debut at the Victoria Music Hall on Cannon Street thus: We lived on the East Side, next door to a small music hall. At night, the sound of the music and song used to drift into the tenement. That made me dream of the stage. I was just 14 when the stage bug bit me in earnest. I went around to a small music hall on Canon Street, managed by a Mrs. Klein, a gentle Jewish woman, whose kindness I shall never forget. “I have a dandy voice, lady,” I said. “Won’t you give me a job? I’ll work for nothing the first week.” … Mrs. Klein gave me a chance. … The audience liked me. In fact, I was a hit. I was right away given two songs, and my salary was raised to $15 a week.9 According to Klapper, the Yiddish music hall crowd had little affinity for the “Ibsenisk” plays that were staged in legitimate Yiddish playhouses: “There is a lighter element among the Jewish theatre–going population that rebels against this seriousness. Their tastes are like those of our own comic opera and vaudeville habitués.”10 Vaudeville was frowned upon by the Yiddish intelligentsia. In May of 1902, the Yiddish press began a fierce anti–vaudeville campaign, scorning it as the “plague” of the Yiddish music hall. Both the conservative Tageblatt and socialist Jewish Daily Forward considered the new entertainment an improper sort of Americanization. They charged that the Yiddish music halls were “schools for drinking” and dens of vice, especially prostitution. They not only condemned the bawdy songs, vulgar jokes, and suggestive dances but also the performers and their audiences. Abraham Cahan, editor of the Forward, charged that vaudeville was a “crime against decency,” and he repeatedly urged his readers to boycott the concert saloons in order to show their managers and performers that they could not make money with this shmutz (filth).11 True, like its American counterpart, Yiddish vaudeville was often slightly risqué, spiced with double entendres and suggestive gestures, though it seems that the fine distinction between decency and indecency was very much in the eye of the beholder. In his analysis of a rare set of broadsides, ethnomusicologist Mark Slobin argued that, while the fare offered by Yiddish music halls was crude entertainment, only a few of the sketches and songs were truly vulgar or coarse, and that low comedy was mixed with topical materials, didactic and political songs, traditional Jewish folklore, and pirated versions of Yiddish theater songs.12

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clockwise from top right Souvenir button and mirror featuring Mae Simon's image and her brooch, n.d.

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When Yiddish vaudeville moved from the margins to the center of Jewish culture, thanks to the Yiddish music hall boom, it once again became a prime concern of the guardians of immigrant morality and good taste. In the winter of 1905, the Forward renewed its anti–vaudeville campaign — a battle that Cahan would continue to wage for several years. But it was a losing battle. Yiddish music halls flourished until they were gradually pushed out of the market by moving–picture theaters, the latest novelty in the way of cheap amusement. As film exhibitors took the lead, the older Yiddish music halls lost their competitive edge and audiences. The saloonkeepers who ran these places had neither the expertise nor the financial reserves to operate on an increasingly professionalized entertainment market. Bankrupt and disillusioned, Samuel Agid, the “King of Jewish Varieties,” passed away in December of 1914. His death marked the end of an era when Jewish–American vaudeville had a home in the Yiddish music hall. Yiddish vaudeville did not completely disappear, though. By the early 1910s, many movie theaters in Jewish neighborhoods had incorporated live Yiddish and English entertainment into their programs. In 1912, there were ten music halls in New York City presenting vaudeville and films, and it was reported that they were doing “very well.”13 Thanks to the movies, Yiddish vaudeville survived well into the 1930s. Transformed into Jewish–American vaudeville spiced with Yiddish phrases, the genre eventually moved from the Bowery to Broadway and from the Jewish neighborhood cinema into Marcus Loew’s picture palaces.

REMINISCENCE

EVE KAHN on her

UNCLE MISHA My mother came from a family of artisans who lived in Sebastopol, the Crimea, a resort city in an area known as the Russian Riviera. They were rumored to have embroidered gold braid for the czar’s navy. The one celebrity my mother’s family produced (aside from a cousin who was a physician and an officer in the czar’s army) was my Uncle Misha, an opera singer reported to have performed with Caruso and Chaliapin in the 1920s at the Chicago Opera Company, then a rival for the Met. It was family legend that Caruso had commented on Misha’s fluent command of foreign languages, thinking

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he was actually Italian. For some reason never made clear to me, he abandoned opera, came back to New York City, and became involved with the Yiddish stage, then in its heyday. At some point (probably while in Chicago), he had married a German baroness, Elsa. She was not a real baroness, but had once been married to a baron — impoverished but titled. I never knew her; they were divorced, probably before I was born. The reason the family gave for the divorce was that she was going blind and needed to find a new husband who could actually support her (apparently, not Misha).

In New York, Misha boarded with his older sister, my Tanta Nessie (and for all I know, he might have lived with her while he was married). She rented an apartment off Tremont Avenue in the Bronx, a dark and dingy railroad flat furnished with worn linoleum “rugs.” Misha’s room, I remember, was tiny, maybe 8 × 10 feet, with a window overlooking an airshaft. Since he was rarely home (between performances he hung out with his “Bummerkes,” my aunt’s derisive term for his theater friends) at the Café Royal on Second Avenue, the darkness didn’t matter. It was just a place to sleep. The one bright spot I remember was his wonderful dog, Lupa (“wolf ” in Italian), a German shepherd. He certainly looked like a wolf, but despite his size and ferocious appearance, he was extremely gentle and allowed me to ride on his back. I mourned his passing, though my aunt soon replaced him with another, less interesting, animal. When I was about 12 years old, Misha announced that he was coming to visit my parents and me in our Bronx apartment, but while we were waiting for him to arrive, we received a call (through a neighbor— we had no phone) that he had taken ill and we were to come over right away. It took two buses to get to my aunt’s apartment, and when we arrived the place was catastrophically still, except for the wailing of Tanta Nessie. As we came into the long hallway, I could see a pair of naked white legs protruding from the side hall. I was quickly rushed into another bedroom, while my mother ran over to be comforted by the assembled family. I was deemed too young to see Misha’s body or attend the funeral. When my mother and aunt returned afterwards, they were in a state of shock. It seems that all the “royalty” of the Yiddish stage turned out for his funeral, all the big names my aunt had only heard about, never met. I remember her wailing, “I didn’t know who I had,” apparently only then realizing the

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importance of her heretofore unappreciated boarder. It seemed that while he was only an impoverished actor to her, he held a position of importance in the Jewish Chorus Union, had many friends (and girlfriends), and was much admired. He was close to Sholom Secunda’s family and supposedly composed music with them. My mother never recovered from his passing, followed by the death of another brother and, shortly afterward, her beloved brother–in–law, Henoch, Nessie’s husband, a musician who played cornet in klezmer bands. I have a kind of humorous coda to this rather sad story. About 15 years ago, I went down to the Lower East Side with a couple of friends, and after we finished our business there, we decided to go to the Second Avenue Deli for lunch. As we were about to go in, I noticed the funeral parlor next door and realized that this was the place where Misha’s funeral was held (the one I was too young to attend). I called my companions over and started to tell them about Misha, how he had sung with Caruso and been on the Yiddish stage, when a tall, rather blowzy older woman ran over and pushed me out of the way. She turned to her friends and grandly announced that she had “buried three husbands” out of that place. How could I trump that? I slunk into the restaurant without saying a word. All I have left from him are a couple of photos and one of his satirical drawings of backstage at the Yiddish theater. I became an artist, and his work, amazingly, looks just like mine. Can one inherit a line? A point of view? It looks like I did. Unfortunately, my much older cousin, Sally, took over the job of clearing out his room, and, offended by the occasional nude study, threw out all his artwork along with the music he had composed. EVE KAHN, WRITER, NEW YORK

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10 AC T

Borscht Belt Entertainment

Edna Nahshon

The Joys of Yiddish by humorist Leo Rosten (1908–1997), pundit of Yinglish (Yiddish + English) lexicography, is a treasure house of nifty definitions. Here’s a most relevant (abridged) example: borsht/borscht: pronounced boarscht; from the Slavonic, where it is pronounced bor–sh–tch. Beet soup, served hot or cold (delicious!), often with a dab of sour cream (superb!), sometimes with tiny new potatoes bobbing in it or cucumber slices floating on it (a mekhaye!). Borscht was a great staple among Jews, because beets were so cheap. “You don’t need teeth to eat borsht.” Another saying goes, “Bilik vi borsht,” “Cheap as borsht.” Rosten then adds: The “Borsht Belt” refers to that sizable suzerainty in the Catskill Mountains, of summer (and now winter) resorts that cater to, and were once patronized almost exclusively by Jews.1 The term “Borscht Belt” was coined in the late 1930s by Variety, the show business daily. It refers to the Jewish resort area located mostly in Sullivan and parts of Ulster Counties in the Catskill Mountains, between Monticello, White Lake, Liberty, and Fallsburgh, about 100 miles northwest of New York City. In 1965, this 1,000–square– mile countryside was heralded by The New York Times as the “greatest concentration of resort hotels to be found anywhere in the world.”2 While some sophisticates have turned their noses up at what they considered its vulgar excesses, Borscht Belt culture is deeply ingrained in the collective memories of both American Jews and American entertainment. Its mention evokes nostalgic reminiscences of gastronomic overindulgence and an inescapable roster of who’s who in American 20th–century entertainment: Jerry Lewis, Red Buttons, Danny Kaye, Sid Caesar, Phil Silvers, Mickey Katz, Jackie Mason, and many others who got their start in Catskills hotels. 258

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above Riverdale Hotel by Philip Sobin. Oil on canvas, 1952. Fallsburg and South Fallsburg, in Sullivan County, New York, were home to more than 100 hotels, resorts, and bungalows during the heyday of the Catskills, including the Riverdale Hotel. left Dean Martin (holding award at left) and Jerry Lewis presented with humanitarian awards by the Yiddish Theatrical Alliance. He was closely associated with the Brown’s Hotel in the Catskills. Jerry Lewis began to work for Charles and Lillian Brown as a youngster and became very close to them, returning to perform at their hotel even after becoming a Hollywood star. The Browns, equally fond of him, named their hotel lounge The Jerry Lewis Theatre Club. In an advertising campaign for the hotel, billboards along the highway urged invited travelers to “Do a Jerry Lewis — Come to Brown’s.”

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Jewish summer vacationing in the Catskills dates back to the early decades of the 20th century, and its “golden age” is associated with the 1950s and ‘60s, when hundreds of thousands of Jewish vacationers spent their summers in the area’s numerous guest establishments. These ranged from such mammoth all–encompassing resorts as the Concord (1,250 rooms), Grossinger’s (600 rooms), and the Nevele (900 rooms), to modest bungalow colonies, four–room guest houses, and kokh–aleyns (boarding houses with a shared kitchen). The “Jewish” Catskills offered their constituency a comfortable ethnic space within the American melting pot, where Jewishness was a given and identities were not challenged. The large hotels were kosher, served traditional Jewish food, and no one drew attention to himself by wearing a skullcap or carrying a prayer shawl. Public smoking was forbidden on the Sabbath, Jewish holidays were celebrated, and there was no drinking, no music, no shows, and no golf on the High Holy Days. There was no food service on Yom Kippur, and there was always a synagogue on site. The hotels also offered a convenient platform for meeting prospective spouses, the topic of more than a few jokes. Though English was the language most commonly used, it tended to be suffused with untranslatable Yiddishisms and Jewish references. Most of the hotels started out as farmhouses and remained family businesses throughout their existence. Many, like Grossinger’s, traced their roots to the early 20th century, when Jewish immigrants who wished to devote themselves to agriculture began to settle in the Catskill Mountains. However, the 1,200 Jewish families that set up house there by 1910 were barely eking out a living as dairy farmers and, in order to supplement their income, began to take in summer boarders who wanted to escape the city’s oppressive heat and enjoy a bit of nature and fresh air. Hosts and guests naturally developed a friendliness that the large Catskills hotels tried to maintain years later, even when accommodating hundreds of guests. “We get to know our people,” said one hotelier. “They tell us their troubles. We say hello to them and goodbye to them.”3 Arthur Winarick, owner of the cavernous Concord Resort Hotel, was noted for visiting table after table in the dining room, talking to his guests. Jennie Grossinger welcomed all guests as if they were personal callers. “They were like politicians running for office,” remarked one veteran of the Catskills. “They made it an art, knowing their guests.” In the early years, when the location was agrarian and accommodations were simple, guests would enjoy modest entertainments comprised of self–generated and often spontaneous activities like campfires, group singing, amateur nights, and hayrides. This changed in the 1920s, as boarding houses developed into hotels. They 260

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Advertisement for Catskill Honeymoon, 1949. The story device of this comedy/revue is the celebration of the 50th anniversary of an American–Yiddish couple, thus allowing for a parade of comedy and musical acts performed by the singers, dancers, comedians, and impressionists. It was filmed on location at Young's Gap Hotel in Parksville, New York.

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began to employ social staffs headed by a social director, a.k.a the tummler — the grandmaster of entertainment. Leo Rosten explains the Yiddish origin of the word tummler (pronounced toom–ler) and translates it as noisemaker, funmaker, or prankster, and a Borscht Belt mainstay, and defines the latter’s job as follows: …to guarantee, to the blasé (but insatiable) patrons of a summer resort, that most dubious of vacation boons: “Never a dull moment!” The tumler performs — that is, entertains in the formal sense — every night: as a comic, singer, actor, master of ceremonies. He acts, writes, directs, and produces shows. He extemporizes, monologizes, and plagiarizes. He puts on vaudeville skits, minstrel shows, amateur night, ordeals–by–dance. But the rest of the 18–hour day, the tummler is a noisemaker, a fun generator, a hilarity organizer, and an overall buffoon. He initiates endless tomfooleries — individual and en masse. He tells stories, cracks jokes, plays pranks. He wears outlandish costumes, imitates peculiar people, trips over chairs, falls off diving boards. He leads songs like “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” and games like Simon Says. He perpetrates broad hoaxes and risqué treasure hunts. He pretends to be a waiter, a doctor, a dishwasher, a cretin. He launches public and putative romances for the favor of the fattest, shortest, tallest, or least pulchritudinous females. He forever traverses the grounds, the dining room, the recreation hall, in an uninterrupted exhibition of joking, jollying, baiting, burlesquing, heckling, clowning. He makes, in short, whatever complete fool of himself is necessary to “keep the guests in stitches” — which can be as painful as it sounds. His mission is to force every paying customer to “have a ball.” His guiding principle is the maxim “Have fun!!” And his shattering resourcefulness is put to the final, awful test on those most gruesome and challenging [of] days: rainy. For only the tummler stands between the guests’ incipient depression and departure.4 In short, the ideal tummler, Rosten asserts, would be a cross between Milton Berle and Jerry Lewis, both known for their legendary Catskills status. Mel Brooks described his experience as a lowly “pool tummler” thus: I would wear a black heavy alpaca coat and a derby, and carrying two suitcases with rocks I would walk off the diving board shouting “Business is terrible!” I would go to the bottom of the pool and drown every day. The audience would almost let you drown for that laugh.5 The growing importance of entertainment and the availability of a young and inexpensive workforce — namely, second–generation youth and unemployed 262

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above Postcard for the Concord Hotel, Kiamesha Lake, New York, 1950. left Admission tickets for shows at the Eldorado in Fallsburg, New York, 1960s.

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left Postcard for the Grossinger Hotel and Country Club, Ferndale, New York, 1950. below Postcard for the “Waikiki indoor pool” at the Nevele Country Club, Ellenville, New York, 1950.

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above The staff of the White Roe Lake Hotel, Livingston Manor, New York, 1935. Staff at the Jewish resorts typically lived on site during the summer in special bungalows. Danny Kaye (pictured in the top row, second from right) worked for six summers at White Roe. left Postcard showing the social hall at the White Roe Lake Hotel, Livingston Manor, New York, 1940. Livingston Manor was the site of a number of summer resorts, the most popular being the White Roe Lake Hotel. In its heyday, White Roe was known for catering primarily to singles, aged 18 to 35.

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vaudevillians — enabled hotels to enlist a sizable staff under the baton of the social director, who often made trips to New York to attend the newest Broadway shows, which were later cloned at the resorts by the hotel’s considerable social staff. Brickman Hotel had a social staff of 26. White Roe, a resort that catered to young, working–class singles, had a team of 30. Its performance space, commonly known as the casino, where cut–down versions of musicals were staged, had first–rate sound and light systems on a par with those of a professional theater and a seating capacity of 750. Paul’s Hotel boasted four chorus boys and four chorus girls, a prop man, and a wardrobe mistress for putting on major dramatic and comic presentations. In 1929, the 18–year–old Danny Kaye (1911–1987) was hired by White Roe, where he worked for several years. He began as part of a singing duo and soon expanded the act to include starring parts in the Saturday night revue and conducting the orchestra on Sunday nights. He would become one of America’s most beloved stars of the stage and screen. The Library of Congress held a special exhibition devoted to him in 2013. It located the roots of his unique style in his Catskills experience: Much of Danny Kaye’s success onstage came from his one–of–a–kind performances. One aspect of his performance style was his scat–like singing that he called “double–speak.” Kaye would rattle off gibberish at speeds few people could reach, while staying in perfect key and rhythm with the music being played. It was a skill that he learned early in his career entertaining in the Catskills and perfected as his repertoire grew.6 Another Catskills “graduate” was Moss Hart (1904–1961), an outstanding talent who, from the early 1930s on, would write and direct some of Broadway’s greatest hits. Renowned for the extravaganzas he staged at the Flagler Hotel’s theater, in 1929 he became the highest–paid and most sought–after social director in the Catskills. His staff of 26, which included Dore Schary (1905–1980), playwright and future president of MGM Studios, staged fine dramas as well as Broadway knockoffs.7 Among Hart’s productions were The Trial of Mary Dugan, a successful 1927 Broadway melodrama by Bayard Veiller, and The Valiant, another crime play imported from Broadway. He appeared in some of the sketches of his “An Intimate Musical Review in Fifteen Scenes,” called The Flagler Scandals of 1929, where he offered his own hilarious impersonation of Fanny Brice.8 Grossinger’s, another leading resort hotel, also built its own playhouse. From 1936 on, it offered elaborate musical revues with titles like Thanks A Million!, Tropic of Tropic, and Show Boat, productions that also included eight show girls, the Roxyettes.

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above Playbills for the Grossinger Players' productions of Show Boat, 1936, and Golden Boy, 1939. Grossinger’s Hotel, located in Liberty, New York, was one of the most popular of the Catskills resorts, serving up to 150,000 guests a year at its peak. left Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine at Grossinger's, c. 1941. Danny Kaye and Sylvia Fine (1913–1991) grew up in the same Brooklyn neighborhood but met only in 1939 when they worked on a short–lived show for which Fine contributed music and lyrics. In 1939, they were engaged by director Max Liebman of Camp Tamiment, a left–leaning retreat in Pennsylvania’s Poconos Mountains, Fine as co–writer and Kaye as cast member of the Camp Tamiment Players. Fine and Kaye married in 1940. Fine became Kaye’s manager, writing music solely for her husband. It was estimated that she wrote over 100 songs for him during their 40–year collaboration.

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In 1939, Grossinger’s even produced Clifford Odets’s Depression–era Golden Boy, presented two years earlier by the Group Theatre in New York. The work of the social director was grueling. None but the very young could keep up with the frenetic pace, but as was the case with Danny Kaye and many others, Catskills entertainment proved, in hindsight, the greatest training ground for theatrical talent since the old days of vaudeville and burlesque. Beginning in the late 1930s, the structure of the entertainment was gradually being transformed as the hotels started to supplement their staff–directed productions with some extra attractions from the big city. This was noted by Variety in May of 1938, which reported, “It is now recognized as a lucrative field for professionals, and as one of the few remaining proving grounds and break–ins.”9 The hotels did not pay much for such one–night engagements, occasionally bartering services — a week’s vacation in exchange for an hour on the floor. Comedian Rodney Dangerfield (1921–2004) was 19 when he began working at a resort in 1940 for $12 a week plus room and board. Even famous entertainers like Eddie Cantor, Joe E. Lewis, Milton Berle, Sophie Tucker, and George Jessel were priced low at $500 a week. Before long, the practice of hiring stars rather than depending solely on staff was commonplace. Competition for names became bigger, but the fee demanded by megastars was beyond Borscht Belt budgets. Booking agents and managers then pursued the not– yet–superfamous performers — Dick Shawn, Alan King, Buddy Hackett, and Morty Gunty — who embraced the opportunity to try out new material before showing it nationwide. Borscht Belt veteran Jerry Weiss recalled that the Brickman Hotel's weekly showcases reserved ringside seats for TV and casting agents. Some of the featured talent included Freddie Prinze, Billy Crystal, and a budding comedienne named Bette Midler. Every noted Borscht Belt comic had their own idiosyncratic style, but they all utilized one–liners, unexpected puns, and ethnic wisecracks. They poked fun at family relations, spoiled children, Jewish mothers, shopaholic wives, schlemiel men, and waning sexual desire, subjects close to the hearts of their middle–aged audience. Here are a few examples: I just got back from a pleasure trip. I took my mother–in–law to the airport. There is a big controversy on the Jewish view of when life begins. In Jewish tradition, the fetus is not considered viable until it graduates from medical school.

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Danny Kaye and Jennie Grossinger, 1951. Grossinger’s was started as a smaller boarding house by Selig Grossinger and his wife, Malke, who ran the kosher kitchen. Their daughter, Jennie Grossinger, started out as a hostess and eventually became the face of Grossinger’s, growing it into a resort renowned for its food, top–rate amenities, and star–studded entertainment.

Bagels and Yox, an American– Yiddish revue, at the Holiday Theatre in New York. Photograph by Lucas–Monroe, 1951.

Music by Sholom Secunda and Hy Jacobson. This song–and–dance show, which ran in New York City for 208 performances, capitalized on the “Borscht Belt”–style of entertainment popular in the Catskills. Its use of “Yinglish,” a mix of Yiddish and English, was frowned upon by some cultural critics.

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Bagels and Yox at the Holiday Theatre. Photograph by John Bennewitz, 1951.

Q: Why do Jewish mothers make great parole officers? A: They never let anyone finish a sentence! Catskills audiences were tough to please. As harmonica virtuoso Alan “Blackie” Schackner reminisced: I’ve done thousands of shows in the Catskills, worked before drunks, people who have eaten too much, who are tired, can’t keep their eyes open. You learn in front of these people how to perform. They were the seasoned audiences.10 The Depression years constituted a period of retrenchment and little development in the Catskills, though business began to improve as the economy started to recover. The financial boom that followed World War II led to the rapid renovation and expansion of the large resorts. The figure for improvements totaled $10 million in 1962; a year later, $15 million; it went up to $18 million in 1964.11 Competition between the hotels was fierce. Fields became golf courses, and pools and ice rinks were built indoors, and while clear mountain air used to be a major attraction, hotel buildings started to take on an urban look and were referred to as “resort cities.” The grand shows put up by large social staffs waned during and after World War II as production costs rose and guests demanded more polished entertainment. “Years ago, people didn’t expect too much,” explained the manager of Kutsher’s hotel in 1965.12 Back then, he said, “We used to whip together ‘Tobacco Road’ in two days and they’d get a kick out of it.” This was no longer the case. By the mid–1960s, Las Vegas had become a model for resorts and a competitor. The Concord built a nightclub with a seating capacity of more than 3,000 that was as big as the orchestra floor at Radio City Music Hall, and in 1965, Grossinger’s was breaking ground for a club that would accommodate 2,000. By the late 1960s, however, it became clear that the decline of the Borscht Belt was imminent. First the small family–run hotels disappeared, then the large resorts. Jews had been Americanized, and the younger generation was not interested in ethnic resorts. Many of the older people retired and moved to Florida condominiums, where a new Jewish entertainment circuit was developing. Air–conditioning was readily available in the city, and the massive Jewish migration to the suburbs curtailed the need for “fresh air.” Air travel increased, and Las Vegas offered gambling in addition to lavish entertainment. The last hotel to survive was Kutsher’s. Built in 1907 by Max and Louis Kutsher, it was expanded by Louis’s son Milton in the 1950s. Vacationers there could enjoy shows featuring Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Woody Allen, and Jerry Seinfeld. It was razed in 2014. Jim McKnight of the 272

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above Cast of Borscht Capades, c. 1948. Katz (1909–1985), a Jewish comedian and musician, had a special talent for recasting popular American songs with a Yiddish flavor. One of his standards was “Haim afen range,” a humorous take on “Home on the Range.” right Mickey Katz performs one of his cowboy numbers in Borscht Capades, c. 1950. Mickey Katz first produced this Yiddish–English revue in 1948, touring it from Los Angeles to Florida to the East Coast. In addition to Katz’s Yiddishized versions of American standards, the show also featured music by Joseph Rumshinsky and choreography by Belle Didjah, and co–starred Katz’s young son, Joel (Katz) Grey. In 1950, the show headed to Broadway, but closed after 90 performances.

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Associated Press, who reported this news, spoke for many when he wrote, “It’s time to sit shiva for the old Borscht Belt.” Over the years, the Catskills resorts have been depicted in several successful Broadway productions. Arthur Kober’s Having Wonderful Time opened in February 1937 and enjoyed a 372–show run. It was remade as a musical in 1952. It was the first production to feature an onstage swimming pool, and it was a resounding success, playing 598 times. Two revues with music by veteran Yiddish theater composers opened in 1951: Bagels and Yox, a Yiddish–English revue with music by Sholom Secunda and Hy Jacobson; and Borscht Capades, which was directed by popular Catskills entertainer Mickey Katz and featured special music by Joseph Rumshinsky. Catch Me If You Can, an Americanized adaptation of a French play, which took place in a summer cottage in the Catskill Mountains during Labor Day Weekend, opened in 1965 (103 shows). Catskills on Broadway opened in 1991. Conceived by Borscht Belt comedian Freddie Roman, it was a four–part revue, each consisting of a solo standup performance by Catskills veterans Mal Z. Lawrence, Dick Capri, Marilyn Michaels, and Freddie Roman. It played for more than two years to packed houses and enjoyed a run of 453 shows. Harvey Fierstein’s Casa Valentina, about crossdressing in the Catskills in the early 1960s, was produced by the Manhattan Theater Club in 2014. On the big screen, the most famous depiction of Borscht Belt culture is the immensely popular film Dirty Dancing (1987), which spawned various offshoots, including a stage version. Each of these productions used the Catskills as context for different audiences and for various agenda ranging from parody to nostalgia to sexual politics. There is little doubt that the imagery of the Borscht Belt will continue to inspire creative works about show business and American Jewish life.

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above Moss Hart (left) with songwriter Cole Porter, 1935. Playwright and theater director Moss Hart (1904–1961) got his start in show business as the entertainment director for a series of Jewish resorts along the Borscht Belt, were he wrote and organized amateur theatrical productions for six summers in the 1920s. In his late teens at the time, Hart later said that keeping city folks entertained in the country taught him how to keep them entertained in a Broadway theater. right Eddie Cantor, 1930s. Cantor (1892–1964) was a New York–born comedian who got his start in vaudeville and, in the 1930s, became one of the best–known — and highest paid — radio personalities. As a young man, he honed his craft in the Catskills, performing alongside such up–and– comers as Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and Jerry Lewis.

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Tevye’s Travels: From Yiddish Everyman to American Icon Alisa Solomon

In September of 2009, right in the middle of the High Holy Days, the satirically conservative talk–show comedian Stephen Colbert reported on fundamentalist Christian efforts to “take back” Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as part of their own heritage. He played a brief clip from “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network in which Gordon Robertson displayed a large shofar and, referring to the holidays, wondered “why we left them in our church history. It is time to reclaim them.” In full faux agreement, Colbert exclaimed, “Exactly!” and then pushed the act of appropriation a spoofing step further. “It is also time for Christians to reclaim Fiddler on the Roof,” he said. “The part of Tevye will be played by Mel Gibson.”1 The joke hinges, of course, on an incongruity, one that requires viewers to recognize those names as belonging, respectively, to a beloved fictional Jewish patriarch and to a famed anti–Semite. It’s reasonable enough to assume that audiences would know Gibson, a Hollywood celebrity as frequently in the news for his outbursts as for his action–packed movies. But how did the comic–tragic hero of a series of Yiddish short stories written a century ago become familiar enough to trigger a primetime punchline? How did Tevye become such a mythic figure that he could be taken up and reshaped to serve the needs of artists and audiences of different times and places? The answer begins in New York’s Yiddish theater and with one of the inventors of modern Yiddish literature, Sholem Aleichem. Born Sholem Rabinowitz in 1859 in Pereyaslav, Ukraine, Sholem Aleichem adopted his penname to cultivate his image as a man of the people (though, in fact, he was very well educated and urbane and married into a wealthy family). The phrase “sholem aleichem” literally means “peace be unto you,” but colloquially it’s a common greeting — more or less, “How do you do?” Sholem Aleichem chose this moniker to make himself, right off the bat, not just a household name, but an everywhere, all–the–time name, and to embed himself thoroughly into the daily usage of Yiddish. In the late 19th century, his short stories — warm, witty tales of ordinary Jews coping with the vicissitudes of poverty, modernization, anti–Semitism, and just plain 278

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above Poster for Shmuel Pasternak by Sholem Aleichem, starring Jacob P. Adler, 1907. Sholem Aleichem had his American premier two–fold — Boris Thomashefsky’s National Theatre opened Stempenyu and Jacob P. Adler opened Shmuel Pasternak at the Grand Theatre, both on February 8, 1907.

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following spread Sholem Aleichem's Hard to Be a Jew at the Yiddish Art Theatre, 1920.

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life — were hugely popular throughout czarist Russia and beyond, circulating in Yiddish periodicals around the world. On irregular schedules, he brought out new episodes of different serials featuring his enduring characters: the struggling but irrepressible “little people” of the fictional shtetl of Kasrilevke; Menakhm–Mendl, the bungling financial speculator, and his long–suffering wife Sheyne–Sheyndl; and his supreme creation, the beleaguered yet affable Tevye. Tevye first appeared in 1894 in a story called “Tevye Strikes It Rich,” which introduced the scripture–misquoting patriarch as a man barely making ends meet by delivering logs. When Tevye leads some women lost in the woods back to their dacha, he receives a cow as a reward and becomes Tevye der milkhiker — the dairyman or milkman, as the phrase is usually translated, but in Sholem Aleichem’s neologism, it more literally means “the milky one”; in other words, the opposite (as kosher dietary law has it) of being “meaty.” This label feminizes Tevye, whose paternal authority is challenged by his daughters as the series of tragicomic stories unfolds over the next two decades, each responding to the historical forces reshaping Jewish life in the Pale. In the third story, “Modern Children” (1899), the eldest daughter, Tsaytl, prevails by overturning her arranged betrothal to the well– off local butcher and is allowed to marry her poor but beloved Motl, the tailor. In “Hodl” (1904), written during the workers’ strikes and peasant uprisings in Russia, the second daughter follows her revolutionary husband, Perchik, when he is exiled to Siberia. In a period rife with pogroms — including a particularly brutal one in Kiev, where Sholem Aleichem and his family cowered indoors while hooligans tore up the streets — he wrote “Khave” (1906), in which another of Tevye’s daughters elopes with a Ukrainian, Fyedka, sending Tevye into an anguished crisis of faith. In “Shprintze” (1907), the fourth daughter drowns herself when the wealthy young man she loves is taken far away by his family, who will not allow him to marry beneath his station. In the seventh story, “Tevye Leaves for the Land of Israel” (1909), the fifth daughter, Beylke, marries the nouveau riche man her father approves of and is miserable. By then, Tevye’s wife, Golde, has died and Beylke’s husband tries to pack his father–in– law off to Palestine. That seemed to be the end of the cycle— Sholem Aleichem published the stories together in one volume in 1911 — but Tevye reappeared a few years later for “Lekh Lekho” (“Get Thee Out,” 1914), in which a czarist edict expels Tevye and his neighbors from the region and Khave returns to join her father and her sister Tsaytl (all that is left of the family) as they head into the wilderness. Weathering the winds of oppression and change in real time, Tevye was embraced by Yiddish readers worldwide as their own Everyman. 282

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right Sholem Aleichem's gravestone in Old Mount Carmel Cemetery, Queens, New York. The gravestone is inscribed in Yiddish with an epitaph written by Sholem Aleichem: Here lies a simple Jew Who wrote Yiddish tales for women And for the common folk He was a humorist, a writer His whole life he laughed And joined the world in its reveries The whole world enjoyed itself While he — oy vey — had troubles. And even as the public Laughed, split their sides, whooped it up He grieved, as only God knows In secret, so that no one should see.

following spread: Fiddler on the Roof painting by Boris Aronson. Gouache, 1964. Bottom inscription reads, “To Jerry [Jerome Robbins] with admiration and affection.”

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Part of his appeal was built into the story’s form: the action is always told in Tevye’s voice as he speaks to Sholem Aleichem, his unseen interlocutor. This structure produces a poignant irony: readers can recognize the limits of Tevye’s self–understanding as he recounts catastrophes without grasping his own role in making them. It’s not easy to maintain such literary complexity on stage, but that didn’t stand in Sholem Aleichem’s way. He enthusiastically adapted several of the Tevye stories into a play, making Khave’s apostasy and return its central action. Describing his dramatic hero, he wrote, “His life is full of tragedy, but he will make the audience laugh from beginning to end, not with derision but with the happy laughter of sympathy and fellow–feeling for all his great anguish and little troubles.” He imagined the great New York actor–manager Jacob P. Adler in the title role.2 On one hand, it made perfect sense that he would envisage Adler as Tevye. Sholem Aleichem had first seen the “Great Eagle” in the summer of 1906 in London, where Adler was touring in a Jacob Gordin drama. The performance dazzled him (though he didn’t like the play). No one had as much range and command on stage as Adler. On the other hand, by the time the author had completed his Tevye dramatization, he had become disillusioned with Adler — and by New York’s Yiddish theater in general — and had little reason to expect any opportunity there. When they’d met in London in the summer of 1906, Adler invited Sholem Aleichem to create a piece for him, and the author feverishly set about drafting a play. Two months later, he read it for Adler, who did not accept it for production. Nor had the impresario responded to plays Sholem Aleichem had sent him earlier in New York. Nonetheless, when Sholem Aleichem moved there in October of 1906, along with his wife and youngest child, he expected to make a killing in the Yiddish theater. At first, his hopes were justified. Welcome events and press coverage of his arrival — including in the English–language papers — hailed him as a beloved culture hero. It wasn’t long before both Adler and his rialto rival, Boris Thomashefsky — banking on Sholem Aleichem’s potential brand–name draw, despite not thinking much of his plays— announced, separately, that they would be producing the premiere of Sholem Aleichem’s work on the New York stage. Thomashefsky, presenting Stempenyu, a story of thwarted love between a seductive fiddler and a lonely married woman, kept moving up the opening date at the People’s Theatre to be the first with a Sholem Aleichem premiere. Adler, presenting Samuel Pasternak, or The Scoundrel, a farce centered on the undoing of a financial speculator, was keeping pace. The two agreed on a compromise: both opened their plays on February 8, 1907. And both productions flopped — miserably! Adler and Thomashevsky had each added songs 286

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Set design by Boris Aronson for the Shabbos night scene in Fiddler on the Roof. Gouache, 1964.

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House model for Fiddler on the Roof, 1964. Designed by Boris Aronson and constructed by Lisa Aronson.

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or scenes and otherwise monkeyed with the texts, but the plays themselves didn’t catch on with New York audiences. Sholem Aleichem’s stories were immensely popular in the private domestic sphere; his one–act plays were the favorites of amateur groups reading aloud among themselves or playing for family and friends. But in the raucous public arena of the theater, Yiddish–speaking immigrants were forging a new American identity. They had left behind the world Sholem Aleichem stood for, and he didn’t understand or know how to address them. A few months after his double failure, he returned to Europe with his wife and son. He had to borrow money to make the passage. It was after his disappointing experience in America that he wrote the darkest of the Tevye stories and then worked on its dramatization. Adler never did play the role, though Sholem Aleichem brought the script along when he returned to New York in December of 1914, taking refuge as war rampaged throughout Europe. Eventually, some half a million Jews in Czarist Russia and Hapsburg Poland were expelled from their homes by edict. Tens of thousands starved to death, and hundreds of thousands fled the battlefields (often their villages) for the big cities. Relatives who had immigrated to the United States followed the news with horror and, in an unprecedented show of unity, the various political and religious factions of Jewish New York came together to raise funds for refugees. Though he was not a direct victim of the strife in Europe, when Sholem Aleichem died on May 13, 1916, at the age of 57, the Jewish community similarly united. They thronged in the streets for his funeral procession, which lasted for hours, moving from his home in the Bronx to Manhattan’s Lower East Side, then on to a Brooklyn cemetery. He was a symbol of the Old Home, a world that was going under. Jews poured out their collective grief at the public funeral. Sholem Aleichem represented “a microcosm of the Jewish people,” as the Yiddish writer Yehoash put it in his eulogy, especially as the war ended and the extent of the destruction became known.3 A few years after Sholem Aleichem’s death, in 1919, the emerging actor–manager Maurice Schwartz opened the second season of his Yiddish Art Theatre with Tevye der milkhiker and scored a colossal hit. The family story about Jewish steadfastness and adaptation during times of change has held the stage in one form or another ever since, the various versions themselves displaying both steadfastness and adaptation. Schwartz brought a contemplative realism to his acting as Tevye (and to the depiction of Tevye’s front yard, crowded with real chickens, a cow, and a horse). The production, which employed Sholem Aleichem’s own dramatization, was sold out 290

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Poster for the film Tevya, directed by and starring Maurice Schwartz, 1939.

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for 16 weeks and remained a part of the Yiddish Art Theatre’s repertoire for years. Schwartz toured with it in Boston, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and Vienna. Its success also primed him to present other works by Sholem Aleichem, often Schwartz’s adaptations of the stories and novels, among them The Grand Prize and Wandering Stars. In 1931, Schwartz even played a piece of his Sholem Aleichem repertoire on Broadway in If I Were You, a translation of a work more accurately (but less invitingly) rendered in English as Hard to Be a Jew, a Prince–and–the–Pauper–like tale of a Jew and Gentile trading places. It ran for 77 performances. Maurice Schwartz frequently returned to Tevye, and in 1939, with news of Nazi incursions into Poland casting a pall of doom over everything, he directed and starred in a film version of Tevye der milkhiker, giving a particularly somber performance. By then, Sholem Aleichem had become a staple in the Yiddish theater, and as a symbol of yiddishkayt itself, was claimed as a badge of authenticity by artists with differing doctrines and demands. It was no surprise then, that though Sholem Aleichem was no leftist himself (despite writing some characters who were revolutionaries and champions of the poor), he was a favorite of the communist troupe the Arbeter Teater Farband (Workers’ Theatrical Alliance), typically known by its acronym, the Artef. In addition, as Edna Nahshon pointed out in her book about the troupe, Sholem Aleichem appealed because he “portrayed characters largely as the products of their social environments.”4 Admired for its dynamic staging and stylized acting techniques, the Artef offered its radically schematic take on one of the most oft–produced of Sholem Aleichem’s works, Mentshn (People) — or, as the Artef presented it in 1926, Ristokratn (Aristocrats) — in which the ill–treated domestic help in the home of a boorish petit– bourgeois family rises up against their employers. The Artef won big with another Sholem Aleichem work in 1936: the satirical farce The Big Win (Dos groyse gevins), also known as 200,000 after the number of rubles a poor tailor suddenly acquires when he wins the lottery. That same season, though not in a major production, the Artef brought Tevye onto its workshop stage, drawing mostly from the second story in Sholem Aleichem’s cycle, “Tevye Blows a Small Fortune” (1899), in which Tevye invests and loses a bundle under the inept investment advice of his relative Menakhm–Mendl. It was theater artists with communist leanings who were first to bring Sholem Aleichem onto the English–language stage in a major way after World War II, when, in the face of even greater destruction of Jewish culture, the author’s metonymic role intensified. In 1946 and 1949, two volumes of his stories were published in 292

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above A Gallery of Sholem Aleichem Types Brought to Life by Maurice Schwartz, 1937. right Maurice Schwartz in Tevya, 1939.

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English to ecstatic critical acclaim and bestseller status: The Old Country and Tevye’s Daughters. The success of these publications inspired a new theater troupe made up of actors and writers whose careers in radio and cinema had suddenly come to a halt because of the Red Scare blacklist. Led by the erstwhile Hollywood star Howard Da Silva (1909–1986) and radio writer Arnold Perl (1914–1971), the company, Rachel Productions, debuted in 1953 with a modest Off–Broadway show called The World of Sholem Aleichem. A folksy and inventive poor–theater presentation of three Yiddish stories tied together by the narrating Mendele the Bookseller (a Chelm tale, a parable by I.L. Peretz, and a story by Sholem Aleichem about a family’s bank–breaking efforts to win a place in high school for their son despite anti–Jewish quotas, only to see him join in a student strike once they prevail), the show was a surprise blockbuster. It became the longest–running show of the season and then toured all over the country in theaters, Jewish community centers, and school auditoriums. (In 1959, it aired on television’s Play of the Week, widening the early cracks in the blacklist.) Propelled by this success, Perl adapted more Sholem Aleichem stories for community productions around the United States, and he and Da Silva tried their luck Off Broadway again in 1957 with Tevya and His Daughters, the dairyman’s major English–language theatrical debut (with his name spelled atypically in Perl’s transliteration.) Though it broke Off–Broadway records for advance ticket sales, it did not make as big a splash as the earlier show, as reviewers found the protagonist tepid in this version, which stripped Tevye of religious commitment and resistance to change. Still, at the very least, the play provided proof of a new concept: Tevye could speak English on stage. In the meantime, playwright–producer Irving Elman imagined that Tevye might also sing. Barely a month after the volume of Tevye stories came out in English in 1949, he licensed them for adaptation into a musical, and no less than Rodgers and Hammerstein optioned his libretto. After they let the 11–month claim run out (while busy with The King and I), producer Michael Todd (né Avrom Hirsch Goldbogen) picked it up, but (thankfully, no doubt, given his penchant for flashy, fleshy burlesques) never brought it to stage. As the whole world knows— and can sing along — musical adaptation of Tevye stories did eventually come into being, this one by some of Broadway’s most esteemed artists: librettist Joseph Stein, music–and–lyrics team Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, and director–choreographer Jerome Robbins. These authors made a concerted effort not to include Yiddish phrases in the show because by then Yiddish had become the butt of easy jokes in Borscht–Belt routines and Broadway revues. Nonetheless, one can draw several straight lines from New 294

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left Playbill for Sholem Aleichem's 200,000, also known as The Big Winner, 1974. This comedy by Sholem Aleichem has been one of the favorite classics of the Yiddish stage. The 1974 production had music by Sol Kaplan, lyrics by Wolf Younin, and choreography by Sophie Maslow. The revival starred and was directed by David Opatoshu, well– known film and stage actor, who had begun his theater career at the Artef. It was presented at the Eden Theatre on Second Avenue and 12th Street (originally Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre). below Large souvenir bills given out to the audience at performances of The Big Winner by Sholem Aleichem, 1974.

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York’s Yiddish theater to Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, where Fiddler on the Roof debuted in 1964 and broke all standing box–office records. Robbins (1918–1998), for starters, made his own stage debut in 1937 at age 18 at the Yiddish Art Theatre as a supernumerary in Maurice Schwartz’s adaptation of I.J. Singer’s Di brider ashkenazi (The Brothers Ashkenazi). That show’s choreographer, Gluck Sandor, was Robbins’s dance teacher and secured the part for him; some 25 year later, Robbins returned the favor, casting Sandor as the rabbi in Fiddler. He also cast, as the innkeeper, Yiddish theater veteran Zvee Scooler (who played the part of the rabbi in the 1971 film version of Fiddler). And on Broadway, Jacob P. Adler's son Luther was Zero Mostel’s replacement in the role of Tevye. Performing eight or nine times a week for six months, the young Robbins had observed Schwartz’s work as director and actor keenly, noting his attentiveness to realism and ensemble playing, his methods for building dramatic crescendos, and his meticulous staging of a flashy wedding scene; all skills he would later employ in his staging of Fiddler. Some of the experimental innovations of the Yiddish theater were carried into Fiddler by its set designer, Boris Aronson. Born in Kiev around 1900, Aronson immigrated to New York in 1923 via post–revolutionary Moscow (where he worked under avant–garde designer Alexandra Exter and befriended Marc Chagall, admiring his Constructivist scenery and costumes for Sholem Aleichem plays at the GOSET) and Berlin. Having long since broken into Broadway, Aronson eagerly sought out the job on Fiddler, knowing that he was the only designer in New York with intimate knowledge of its milieu. He understood how the scenery would have to combine both fantasy and reality — a sensibility he achieved by painting swirling backdrops and a line of shtetl houses tumbling around the proscenium and by suggesting the interior of Tevye’s house with historical precision. The house was set on one turntable within another — a means of giving visual shape to Robbins’s idea, echoed in Stein’s script, that the community of Anatevka, the setting for the play, was a circle of Jews inside a wider circle that included Gentile neighbors. The house first appeared showing its exterior as part of the community, then folded open to reveal the indoor domestic space. This was exactly the device Aronson had used when he designed Maurice Schwartz’s 1919 production of Sholem Aleichem’s Stempenyu. And, of course, Sholem Aleichem’s writing was a thread between Fiddler and the Yiddish theater. Bock, Harnick, and Stein (the only one of the three to have grown up in a Yiddish–speaking household) had been drawn to the Yiddish master as they searched in the early 1960s for material on which to base a new musical. Harnick had suggested Sholem Aleichem’s epic novel about two competing Yiddish theater 296

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Fiddler on the Roof production with cast in front of Tevye's house, c. 1964. Music by Jerry Bock, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, and book by Joseph Stein. Directed and choreographed by Jerome Robbins, with sets by Boris Aronson, and costumes by Patricia Zipprodt.

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Tevye’s Travels: From Yiddish Everyman to American Icon

Cast of Fiddler on the Roof by Al Hirschfeld. Published in The New York Times, September 20, 1964. Featured are Austin Pendleton (Motel Kamzoil), Julia Migenes (Hodel), Tanya Everett (Chava), Joanna Merlin (Tzeitel), Zero Mostel (Tevye), Gino Conforti (the Fiddler), and Maria Karnilova (Golde).

troupes traipsing across Europe and America, Wandering Stars (1911), but Stein found it too sprawling to be contained by the Broadway form and suggested, instead, the Teyve stories he remembered enjoying in his youth. The translations, it turned out, were out of print when Stein went looking for them. He found a copy of the 1949 volume in a used bookstore. Their work of translating Tevye’s world into a Broadway musical — especially for Jerome Robbins when he came on as director — became a labor of loving rediscovery of their roots. The show, in turn, invited assimilated American Jews in the audience to make a similar cultural recovery: to embrace a lost heritage (but without making any demands). This was achieved, in part, through the most significant change to the source material the authors made: sending Tevye and his family to New York when the eviction notice comes, instead of leaving the hero wandering aimlessly and bereft, as Sholem Aleichem had done. Catching a cultural wave of liberal tolerance at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the show also helped recalibrate America’s origins story as, in the words of the scholar Matthew Frye Jacobsen, the locus of its genesis shifted from Plymouth Rock to Ellis Island.5 The ecstatic response among Jewish spectators (notwithstanding severe critiques from Yiddish scholars, who rejected what they considered Broadway accommodations to simplification and shtetl nostalgia) helped the show break box–office records and run for a record–smashing 3,242 performances (nearly eight years). National tours triumphed across the United States, and the original cast album sold by the millions. The show was eagerly embraced by audiences of all kinds. The themes of generational conflict, the tensions between holding fast and letting go, the tug of tradition and urgency of change, all ran on a universal track parallel to the particulars of life in the Jewish Pale. Joe Stein loved to tell of his visit to the premiere of Fiddler in Tokyo: a local producer asked him how Americans could appreciate the show since it was “so Japanese.”6 Within a decade of its debut, Fiddler on the Roof had played in some 25 countries — among them Australia, France, Germany, Holland, Mexico, and Yugoslavia. By 1971, the year the film version was released, expanding Fiddler’s reach ever more widely, there had been 15 separate productions of the show in Finland. Fiddler has been on stage somewhere in the world continuously ever since, with countless productions in community theaters and high schools the world over, and enjoying its fifth Broadway revival in 2015. Tevye has become an American icon, embodied by Hollywood celebrities and schoolboys — even schoolgirls — in paste–on beards. From his humble Yiddish beginnings in Ukraine, Tevye now belongs to the world. Except, perhaps, to Mel Gibson. 300

Alisa Solomon

Zero Mostel as Tevye and Maria Karnilova as Golde in Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, 1964.

Zero Mostel's Tevye costume from the original Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, 1964.

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Tevye’s Travels: From Yiddish Everyman to American Icon

Original Broadway production of Fiddler on the Roof, 1964. Fiddler was the first Broadway production to surpass 3,000 performances. It won nine Tony Awards in 1964, including best musical, score, book, direction, and choreography.

A Gallery of Stars of the American Yiddish Stage

Jacob Ben–Ami (1890–1977) Born in Minsk, Belarus, then part of the czarist empire, Ben–Ami participated in minor roles in the Russian theater. In 1908, he joined a Yiddish company and as a young man collaborated with playwright Peretz Hirschbein to form the Hirschbein Troupe in Odessa — a company with high literary standards that launched the Yiddish art theater movement. In 1912, following a brief acting engagement in London, he came to America at the invitation of Sarah Adler and joined her Yiddish theater company. A year later, he was engaged by Boris Thomashefsky to take part in Osip Dymow’s The Eternal Wanderer, directed by the playwright, and in 1914, following a tour with actress Keni Liptzin, he organized a modest production of three I.L. Peretz plays (in Yiddish) at the Neighborhood Playhouse, this being his first foray onto the American stage. Always committed to the ideal of quality drama, Ben–Ami joined Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre in 1918; his production of Hirschbein’s A Forsaken Nook won over critics and audiences and was instrumental in establishing the theater’s artistic orientation. However, Ben–Ami became disillusioned with Schwartz and soon quit to form his own company, the Jewish Art Theatre (called in Yiddish the Naye Teater, i.e., the New Theatre) where he offered a literary repertoire of works by major modern dramatists. Ben–Ami was considered by many to be the finest dramatic actor on the American Yiddish stage, and his work soon drew

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the attention of Broadway. Following his success in the Yiddish translation of Sven Lange’s Samson and Delilah in 1919, he was invited by Arthur Hopkins to repeat the role on the English–language stage. Ben–Ami went on to join the Theatre Guild, and subsequently, Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory Theatre, performing leading roles in plays by Anton Chekhov, Leo Tolstoy, Gerhardt Hauptmann, Jean Girodoux, and others. From 1920 on, he divided his career between the English and Yiddish–language stages, and in 1926, and again in 1944, he started his own Yiddish companies, each lasting only a season or two. Some of Ben–Ami’s most notable Broadway performances were given in Hirschbein’s The Idle Inn (1921), Ernst Toller’s Man and Masses (1924), and Chekhov’s The Seagull (1929) and The Cherry Orchard (1929). His final Broadway appearance was in Paddy Chayefsky’s highly successful The Tenth Man (1961), a play inspired by S. Ansky’s Yiddish play The Dybbuk.

Mina Bern (1911–2010) Bern first forayed into theater in her native Poland. She performed in Russia, fleeing there with her young daughter after the 1939 invasion of Poland by the Nazis, and even entertained Polish refugees in Uganda for a time, before immigrating to Israel, where she performed in Hebrew in Li–La–Lo, the country’s satirical theater. She came to America in 1949, when Yiddish theater in New York was already on the decline. But Bern, known

primarily for her cabaret singing and comedic flair, was one of the popular stars who managed to keep Yiddish theater afloat into the 1960s and ‘70s. Along with her second husband, the actor and producer Ben Bonus, Bern toured with Yiddish revues through the United States, Canada, and Latin America. Not only did the couple perform together, they often created the costumes and scenery, even serving as ticket–takers for their own shows. Together they worked to bring Yiddish theater to places where the language wasn’t often heard, in an attempt to keep the culture alive. Bern performed into her 90s, starring in a one–woman show about her life as late as 2005. She also appeared in several American films including Crossing Delancey (1988), Avalon (1990), and I’m Not Rappaport (1996). Bern was awarded an Obie (Off–Broadway Theater Award) for her life’s work in 1999.

Buloff reluctantly made the transition to American theater in 1936, debuting on Broadway in John Crump’s Don’t Look Now. His English–language mainstream performances garnered as much praise as his Yiddish– theater work, and he went on to appear in Morningstar (1940), My Sister Eileen (1942), and Oklahoma! (1943), where he originated the role of Ali Hakeem. Buloff continued to work in both English and Yiddish theater throughout the 1960s and ‘70s; his last Broadway role was in a revival of Arthur Miller’s The Price in 1979. He also translated and performed in Yiddish versions of American plays, most notably The Diary of Anne Frank and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. It is estimated that he performed in some 277 plays over the course of his career. Buloff offered an account of his early life in his autobiography From the Old Marketplace (1991), and his wife wrote on their joint careers in her book, On stage, Off Stage: Memories of a Lifetime in the Yiddish Theatre (1992).

Joseph Buloff (1899–1995) Born in Vilna (Vilnius, today the capital of Lithuania), Buloff was a mainstay of the Yiddish theater for over 60 years. He was a seminal figure in the prominent Vilna Troupe, where he met and married actress Luba Kadison, daughter of the group’s founder and director. The company fractured in the mid–1920s, and Buloff came to New York at the behest of Maurice Schwartz, director of the Yiddish Art Theatre. Buloff appeared in several Yiddish Art Theatre productions, including The Tenth Commandment (1926), The Witch of Castille (1930), and Uncle Moses (1930), but he ultimately became disenchanted with Schwartz. After brief attempts at establishing his own art theaters, in the Bronx for one season and in Manhattan for another,

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Pesach Burstein (1897–1986) Lillian Lux (1918–2005) Burstein, a native of Warsaw, Poland, left home at a young age for a career on the stage and soon established himself as a star of the city’s popular Yiddish theater. He came to New York at the behest of Boris Thomashefsky in 1923, to appear in the Broadway Yiddish production of The Jolly Tailors. In New York, Burstein met and married Lillian Lux, a native of Brooklyn, who began as a Yiddish child actress and later worked in the Catskills, where she was teamed with a young Danny Kaye. Burstein and

A Gallery of Stars of the American Yiddish Stage

Lux performed together in the city and abroad, and later added their twins, Michael and Susan, to the family business. Advertising themselves as the Four Bursteins, the family’s most notable productions were the musical comedies A Shtetl Wedding and the partially English–language The Megilla of Itsik Manger, performed on Broadway in 1969. Burstein was also an immensely successful singer; he cut 300 records during his 20–year contract with Columbia Records. He and his wife coauthored the book What a Life!, about their careers, in 1980. Following the passing of Burstein, Lux appeared in a documentary film about her husband, The Komediant, in 1996.

choreographer of Jewish–themed materials in both Yiddish and English stage and screen productions into the 1960s. In 1959, Didja supervised the dances in the highly successful Broadway production of Paddy Chayefsky’s The Tenth Man, directed by Tyrone Guthrie.

Berta Gersten (1894/6–1978?)

Belle Didjah Married to Yiddish writer and theater critic Chaim Ehrenreich, Belle Didja adhered to her professional stage name. Born in New York, Didjah was an eminent dancer and choreographer who studied with the influential choreographer Michel Fokine and attended the Metropolitan House Ballet School. As a young woman, Didjah traveled to Germany to continue her dance training with Mary Wigman. She made her New York debut in 1929 at the Martin Beck Theater in a performance that consisted of mime and character portraits. That same year, she appeared in drag in the production Bar Mitzvah (Chassidic), in which she portrayed a young Orthodox man. Didjah also traveled widely to study the dances of many regions and cultures; she toured Palestine and Syria in the early 1930s to observe their dance traditions, and presented dances based on Middle–Eastern and Yemenite themes in New York in 1934. She was an important

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New York’s Yiddish Theater

Berta Gersten was a prominent dramatic actress who enjoyed a 50–year career on the Yiddish stage. Born in Krakow, Poland, she came to the United States with her family in 1899. In 1908, an actor–client of her mother, who was a seamstress, mentioned the need for a child actor for an upcoming theatrical production; the play was Jacob Gordin’s Mirele Efros, and young Gersten was selected for the juvenile role. Having caught the acting bug, Gersten thereafter pursued a career in the Yiddish theater. She was one of the first members of Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theatre, where, with the exception of short hiatuses, she played leading roles for several decades, until the theater’s demise in the 1950s. She also played the lead female roles in two Yiddish films based on Jacob Gordin’s plays Mirele Efros (1939) and God, Man, and Devil (1949). Gersten crossed over into English–language theater in 1954, with a role in Arnold Perl’s The World of Sholem Aleichem, and in the same year made her Broadway stage debut starring opposite Menasha Skulnik in Clifford Odets’s A Flowering Peach. Gersten also appeared in the Hollywood film The Benny Goodman Story in 1956.

Jennie Goldstein (1896–1960)

Bertha Kalich (1874–1939)

Born in New York, Goldstein made her Yiddish stage debut at age six in Hannah the Seamstress at the Windsor Theatre opposite Bertha Kalich. Next came a role in Jacob Gordin’s Family Purity at the Thalia Theatre, in which she performed two songs written specifically for her by actor–composer Sigmund Mogulesko. At age 13, Goldstein left school and began to perform more adult parts, including a starring role in Joseph Lateiner’s wildly successful The Jewish Heart. Around 1912, the 16–year–old Goldstein met and married Yiddish playwright and actor Max Gabel, who began writing melodramas exclusively for her. The shows, in which the couple frequently performed together, were immensely popular. The two divorced in 1930, and Goldstein went on to manage her own company at the Prospect Theatre in the Bronx during the 1932–33 season, and in 1939 starred in the Yiddish film Two Sisters. In her later life, she became known for her tear–jerking “melomama” roles. Goldstein performed on Broadway in Arthur Carter’s The Number (1952) and Tennessee Williams’s Camino Royale (1953).

Born in Lemberg, Galicia (today Lviv, Ukraine), Kalich was a greatly admired dramatic actress during the golden age of Yiddish theater in the late–19th and early– 20th centuries. Kalich began her career at age 13 in the chorus of a Polish theater company. She also performed roles in German and Romanian, having learned the latter language in a matter of months in order to perform at the Romanian Imperial Theater. Kalich enjoyed success everywhere she appeared, despite increasing anti–Semitism in the region. She was so well received that there was rumored to be an assassination plot against her by jealous rivals; in light of this, Kalich eagerly accepted an offer in 1894 to appear at the Thalia Theatre in New York’s Lower East Side. There, she appeared in landmark Yiddish–language translations of Shakespeare (including in the title role of Hamlet). Playwright Jacob Gordin was so impressed with Kalich’s grand, emotional style that he created several roles for her, most notably in Sappho (1900) and The Kreutzer Sonata (1902). Promoted as the “Sarah Bernhardt of the American Yiddish stage,” Kalich’s talents attracted the attention of American theatrical managers and producers, particularly Harrison Grey Fiske, and in 1905, she became the first Yiddish actress to debut on Broadway, in Fiske’s production of Victorien Sardou’s Fedora. For the next decade, Kalich, who achieved diva status, continued to appear on Broadway, successfully mastering English and working to eliminate her foreign accent. She played title roles in Monna Vanna (1905), Martha of the Lowlands (1908), and Rachel (1913), and reprised her earlier Yiddish roles for English adaptations. As her Broadway career waned after 1915, she returned often to the Yiddish stage; her success in

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A Gallery of Stars of the American Yiddish Stage

American theater only enhanced her appeal to Yiddish audiences. By the end of her career, Kalich estimated that she had performed in some 125 roles in seven languages.

staging and performing in lesser, popular works. His last years were plagued by bitter disputes with his stepson, who ran the financial side of Kessler’s theater. Kessler died in 1920 when, against doctor’s orders, he insisted on performing just hours after undergoing an intestinal operation. His name is mentioned in the annals of the Yiddish theater in the same breath as those of Jacob P. Adler and Boris Thomashefsky as one of the three great actor–managers of the Yiddish stage.

David Kessler (1860–1920) David Kessler belongs to the first generation of leading Yiddish dramatic actors. He was born in Kishinev, in what is now Moldova, then part of the czarist empire, and began his theatrical career in the newborn Yiddish theater of Russia and Romania. Like many of his colleagues in the early Yiddish theater, Kessler soon immigrated to the United States, arriving in 1890 and quickly establishing himself as one of the great dramatic actors of the Yiddish stage. His first important performance in New York was in 1891 in Jacob Gordin’s first play, Siberia, where Kessler co–starred with Jacob P. Adler. Other major roles included leads in Gordin’s God, Man, and Devil (1902), which Kessler also directed; in Sholem Asch’s controversial God of Vengeance (1907); and in Leon Kobrin’s Yankl Boyle (1916). Kessler performed in all the major Yiddish playhouses in Manhattan — including the Windsor, the People’s, and, especially, the Thalia Theatre, where he was the lead actor for many years (and would later serve as actor– manager). The Second Avenue Theatre, the first Yiddish theater on Second Avenue, was built in 1911 for him and retained his name long after his death. Maurice Schwartz began his New York career in Kessler’s company. Like many, he regarded him as a difficult and hard–to–please director, but always said it was Kessler who taught him about acting. Kessler loved quality drama that offered him meaty roles that suited his great talent, but running a commercial theater also meant

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Miriam Kressyn (1911–1986) Miriam Kressyn grew up in Bialystok, Poland, poor but well educated. She came to the United States with her family in 1923 and settled in Boston, where she studied singing at the New England Conservatory of Music. A visiting Yiddish theater troupe heard her sing and invited her to perform in their chorus. She enjoyed her small roles but had no intention of pursuing theater as a profession and she was preparing to study law at Northeastern University. However, her 1933 marriage to Yiddish actor Hymie Jacobson led Kressyn to embrace the life of an actress and singer. She traveled with her husband’s troupe throughout Europe and Latin America, playing primarily in Yiddish comedies, and she starred opposite Jacobson in several Yiddish films, including Der purimshpieler (1937). Kressyn’s second marriage, to Yiddish matinee idol Seymour Rexite, brought her permanently to New York City, where she continued to perform onstage and recorded a number of Yiddish songs. Like Rexite, Kressyn was also a popular Yiddish radio personality, appearing on “The Forward’s Hour” and hosting her own programs on WEVD for nearly four decades — doing everything

from singing to book reviews to commentating on social issues and world events. Kressyn is also notable for her Yiddish–language adaptations of plays, such as her successful versions of Philip Vordan’s Anna Lucasta and Clifford Odets’s The Flowering Peach. In the 1960s, Kressyn became a professor of Yiddish at Queens College, and also directed the school’s Yiddish theater productions. Unlike many others in the Yiddish theater, Kressyn chose not to perform in English, neither in film nor on Broadway. Of her career she said, “Yiddish is my world.”

of Lyavke Molodeytz and became an overnight sensation. Over the next several years he starred in several operettas at Thomashefsky’s National Theatre, including A Thousand and One Nights (1922). Operetta and light fair was his métier, always enlivened by his exuberant personality, special flair for comedy, and a knack for improvisation. By the end of the 1920s, he was the most popular Yiddish vaudevillian, composing much of his own material and recording more than 80 records in both English and Yiddish, the most famous being “Romania, Romania.” In addition to playing in New York theaters, Lebedev also sang in cafés and nightclubs, and toured throughout the country, helping him gain a national reputation. He was also a star attraction in the Catskills into the 1940s, where he directed a troupe of Yiddish actors in revues and musical comedies.

Aaron Lebedev (1873–1960) A native of Homel, Belarus, then part of the czarist empire, Aaron Lebedev was determined to make a life for himself on the stage. As a youth, Lebedev (sometimes spelled Lebedeff) was a choirboy in his small town’s synagogue, and — to the dismay of his parents, who wanted him to learn a trade — he frequently ran away to nearby cities to perform with Russian theater troupes. He eventually did have some success, opening a dance school in Minsk and performing in operettas. After touring with itinerant Yiddish troupes, he went to Warsaw in 1912, where he gained popularity on the Yiddish stage as “the Lithuanian Comic.” He was mobilized to the Russian army in 1916 and was sent to Harbin, where he entertained army officers. Demobilized after the Russian Revolution, he wandered to Japan, where he and his wife Vera offered “international” concerts. In 1920, while touring in Asia, he received an offer from Boris Thomashefsky to join his National Theatre in New York City. On October 12, 1920, he debuted in New York in Thomashefsky’s production

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Keni Liptzin (1863–1916) Born in the Ukraine, then part of the czarist empire, Liptzin was a grand dame of the early Yiddish theater. She seems to have had a somewhat shady past. It is known that after running away from an arranged marriage, she was discovered in 1880 by Israel Rosenberg, who heard her singing and persuaded her to join his Yiddish theater troupe. Liptzin played opposite Jacob P. Adler in several dramatic plays in London in the mid–1880s, before sailing to America in 1889 to join the burgeoning Yiddish theater there. She reunited with Adler in New York and performed opposite him again, as well as at David Kessler’s Thalia Theatre. Temperamental and beautiful, Liptzin was enterprising as well as talented, and eventually established her own Yiddish theater in New York, her career subsidized

A Gallery of Stars of the American Yiddish Stage

by her husband, a well–to–do publisher. Bessie Thomashefsky wrote that Liptzin was the wealthiest Yiddish actress in New York, always gorgeously dressed and bedecked with expensive jewelry. Liptzin is best remembered for her leading role in Jacob Gordin’s Mirele Efros (1898), a play composed specially for her. It established her reputation as a serious dramatic actress; she also appeared in strong female roles in plays by Leon Kobrin, Emile Zola, and Henrik Ibsen. After her husband’s suicide in 1912, her health and financial situation deteriorated; her only consolation, she said, was the theater. She now had to take roles of little literary merit and continued to act even when gravely ill, at times collapsing on stage. She died six years after her husband. Liptzin is recognized as one of the greatest stars of the early Yiddish stage and as its great tragedienne.

as a comedic actor, touring Russia and Europe, where he made quite a name for himself. Mogulesko came to New York in 1886 with the Finkel troupe and performed at the Romanian Opera Company in the Lower East Side. Mogulesko, who was particularly noted for his many comic characters, continued to put his musical training to good use as well; he composed much of the incidental music for the plays he performed in, and wrote many popular songs (for which he was not always given credit). Abraham Cahan, editor of the Yiddish daily Forward and a Mogulesko fan, wrote that in addition to his great talent, the actor’s personal charm captivated audiences. It was generally agreed that he could turn a shund (trash) piece into a work of art, and that no one could imitate him or take over his roles.

Paul Muni (1895–1967) Sigmund Mogulesko (1864/8?–1914, center) Born in Bessarabia (now Moldova), Mogulesko was one of the founders of the Yiddish theater and one of its greatest stars. Orphaned at a young age, Mogulesko trained with several cantors, and at the age of 14, entered the conservatory in Bucharest, where his outstanding talent was quickly recognized. He took jobs performing for churches, weddings, and with the company of a local opera house. His career as an actor began when Abraham Goldfaden, in search of singers for his theatrical productions, came to the synagogue where Mogulesko sang in the choir and persuaded the young man to join his theater troupe. His early roles in Goldfaden’s plays were secondary and female characters, until Goldfaden created the title role of Schmendrik for him. Mogulesko had remarkable success

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New York’s Yiddish Theater

Muni was born in Lemberg, Galicia (today Lviv, Ukraine) to itinerant Yiddish actors Philip and Sally Weisenfreund. Immigrating to Chicago in 1902, the young Muni, who originally intended to become a violinist, began acting in local Yiddish theaters, developing a masterful hand with stage makeup — at the age of 12, for his first role, he realistically transformed himself into an 80–year–old man. He played in various Yiddish venues, including vaudeville, and caught the eye of Maurice Schwartz who engaged him for his Yiddish Art Theatre in 1918. He quickly rose to play major roles in plays by Sholem Aleichem, Nikolai Gogol, Leonid Andreyev, Romain Rolland, and other important dramatists. Muni made the transition to Broadway in 1926. In his first two Broadway plays, We Americans (1926) by Max Siegel and Four Walls (1927) by Dana

Burnet and George Abbott, he appeared in Jewish parts under the name Muni Weisenfreund. After being signed to Fox Films in 1928, he anglicized his name, changing it to Paul Muni. His acting skills were equally appreciated in Hollywood (he received an Oscar nomination for his first film, The Valiant, in 1929) and throughout the 1930s, Muni split his time between making feature films and performing on Broadway. Muni’s stage roles include his successful turn in Elmer Rice’s Counselor– at–Law (1931), the part of Tevye in Ben Hecht’s Zionist propaganda piece, A Flag Is Born (1946), alongside Celia Adler and Marlon Brando, and his last play, Inherit the Wind (1955), for which he won a Tony. Muni is also well known for his role in films such as Scarface (1932), The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936; he won the Oscar for Best Actor.), The Good Earth (1936), and The Life of Emile Zola (1936).

‘30s, Rexite’s repertoire was entirely Jewish, ranging from liturgical songs to popular Yiddish tunes. He performed in upscale New York nightspots, including the Casino de Paris on 54th Street, and enjoyed great success in such Yiddish operettas as The Rabbi’s Melody and The Jewish Girl. He also appeared in the first Yiddish talkie, Mayn yidishe mame (My Yiddish Mama, 1930) and in the film Motl the Operator (1939). His popularity grew exponentially when he took to the airwaves in the 1940s — at one point starring in 18 half– hour Yiddish radio shows per week. Miriam Kressyn, Rexite’s wife and a successful Yiddish actress in her own right, helped to diversify his material, translating everything from pop hits to show tunes into Yiddish for him to perform on the air. In his later years, Rexite served as president of the Hebrew Actors' Union.

Ludwig Satz (1891–1944) Seymour Rexite (1908–2002) Seymour Rexite (originally spelled Rechtzeit) was a singing sensation, beloved for his Yiddish interpretations of American popular standards, which he performed in a smooth, sweet tenor. In 1920, Rexite emigrated from Poland to America with his father, who was a cantor, and his brother Jack, but immigration regulations prevented his mother and sisters from joining them. When a congressman arranged for the “singing wunderkind” to perform for President Calvin Coolidge, Rexite used the opportunity to plead for the reunification of his family; he sang a song written by Jack — “Bring Me My Mother from the Other Side” — that persuaded the White House to grant entry visas to his family overseas. Throughout the 1920s and

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Born in Lemberg, Galicia (today Lviv, Ukraine), Satz started as a cantor’s backup singer. At the age of 15, he joined an itinerant Yiddish troupe where he made his debut in Jacob Gordin’s God, Man, and Devil. He formed his own theater company in Galicia in 1909, and in 1912–13 performed in London’s Yiddish theater. With the outbreak of World War I, he immigrated to America, where he performed with several prominent Yiddish theaters in New York alongside Jacob P. Adler, Jacob Ben–Ami, and other greats. Satz was predominantly known for his excellence as a comic actor — critic Alexander Woollcott dubbed him the “Charlie Chaplin of the Yiddish stage.” Satz also found success in English–language vaudeville and on Broadway, where he played Abe Potash in the immensely successful

A Gallery of Stars of the American Yiddish Stage

Potash and Perlmutter (1926). In addition, he wrote and recorded dozens of Yiddish songs and appeared in a few Yiddish films. In 1942, he appeared in a revival of Goldfaden’s operetta Bar Kokhba, a story about a Jewish revolt against the Romans, at the Civic Opera House in Chicago, where he famously wore a toothbrush mustache and a Hitler–like hairdo. In later years he toured extensively, appearing in Yiddish plays and musicals in South America and Europe.

Rudolph Schildkraut (1862–1930)

Menasha Skulnik (1892–1970) Born in Warsaw, Poland, Skulnik reportedly ran away from his home at the age of 10 to join a traveling circus. Landing in America in 1905, Skulnik began his stage career with small parts in numerous Yiddish musical comedies. His stage persona tended toward the shlemiel, earning him a reputation as “Second Avenue’s favorite nitwit.” (The title of a popular operetta in which he appeared, The Wise Fool, encapsulates his stage career.) Skulnik starred in several Broadway shows, including Sylvia Regan’s The Fifth Season (1953), Clifford Odets’s The Flowering Peach (1954), Neil Simon’s Come Blow Your Horn (1963), and Harold Rome’s The Zulu and the Zayde (1965). In addition to his stage performances, Skulnik was also the voice of Uncle David on The Goldbergs, a popular radio program of the 1930s and ‘40s.

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New York’s Yiddish Theater

Rudolph Schildkraut gave his birthplace as Istanbul, though it was claimed by others that he was actually born in Galatz, Romania, where his mother and stepfather ran a small hotel. In his teens, Schildkraut left school and joined a barebones group of itinerant players. He made his way to Vienna and appeared in small parts in the city’s Burgtheater while studying acting with Friedrich Mitterwurzer. When his teacher died in 1900, Schildkraut moved to Hamburg, Germany, and joined the newly established Deutsches Schauspielhauses as a lead actor. His 1903 interpretation of King Lear garnered him enormous praise and an invitation from the great director Max Reinhardt to join his Neues Theater in Berlin. Schildkraut made theater history with his 1905 portrayal of Shylock in Reinhardt’s production of The Merchant of Venice. The impact of his performance, deemed by actor Fritz Kortner a “monument to the art of acting,” was enormous. Shylock became the signature role of Schildkraut’s prolific and multi–lingual theater career. He also originated the role of Yekel Tchaftchovich in the world premiere of Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance, produced in German by Reinhardt. He also left his mark in plays by Ibsen, Shakespeare, Friedrich Schiller, and Knut Hamsun, and appeared in several German silent films. Schildkraut was a heavy gambler. In 1910, he found himself on the brink of financial ruin, and accepted an offer to appear in German productions in the United States. He began his New York career at the German– language Irving Place Theatre, but was lured away to the Yiddish stage by an extravagant contract offer from

Boris Thomashefsky. His first appearance in Yiddish was in Ikele Mazik, soon followed by The Merchant of Venice. The critics and the public were agog, and Schildkraut was heralded as the greatest Yiddish actor. In 1914, at the outset of World War I, he returned to Germany, but came back to New York in 1920 and rejoined the Yiddish theater, reviving his famous vehicles: Leo Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata, Asch’s God of Vengeance, Ikele Mazik, and The Merchant of Venice. In 1923, he made his English–language debut in a production of God of Vengeance, a show that became a cause célèbre following obscenity charges and the arrest of the entire cast and crew. He continued to perform on both the Yiddish and English stages, and in 1925, he invested in a small Yiddish house in the Bronx, which he renamed the Schildkraut Theatre. Its first production was Bronx Express by Osip Dymow. The modernistic parody of Jewish life in New York proved a phenomenal success, but the small theater could not sustain itself after this smash hit, and Schildkraut accepted an offer from Hollywood to film His People (1925). His next film role as the High Priest Caiaphas in Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings (1927), greatly aggravated American Jews, but he retorted that he took the part to cover the losses he incurred at his theater. Schildkraut’s son Joseph (1896–1964) was a well–known stage and movie actor whose signature role was Otto Frank in the Broadway production, and the subsequent film, of The Diary of Anne Frank. Joseph wrote about his father in the memoir My Father and I (1959).

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Bessie Thomashefsky (1873–1962) Born in the Ukraine, young Bessie came with her family to the United States in 1879, eventually settling in Baltimore, Maryland. She was just 14 years old when she first met her future husband, the 19–year–old Boris Thomashefsky, while he was performing in her town. A few years later, Bessie joined the Thomashefsky Players; she quickly found success as an actress, particularly in the greenhorn roles that Boris composed for her and a sensational turn as Salome in a Yiddish translation of Oscar Wilde’s 1891 play. The Thomashefskys became “megastars” says grandson Michael Tilson Thomas, a noted composer, and they “were subject to adulation and relentless scrutiny.” After separating from her husband in 1911 (The couple married in 1891 and never officially divorced), Bessie Thomashefsky continued to pursue an independent career in the theater. She took over management of the People’s Theatre in 1915 and renamed it after herself. Her theater troupe was notable for focusing on important social issues of the day, particularly those affecting women.

A Gallery of Stars of the American Yiddish Stage

Acknowledgments It gives me great pleasure to thank the friends and colleagues who contributed to the making of this book. First and foremost I wish to express my gratitude to Stefanie Halpern, my assistant and doctoral student. Her incomparable intelligence, dedication, and organizational skills have been instrumental in the creation of this catalog and the exhibition it accompanies. I am particularly grateful to the individuals who worked in the Yiddish theater and to the family members of artists who are no longer with us for opening their hearts and graciously sharing with us memories and artifacts. Their reminiscences appear throughout this book. I wish to single out Marc Aronson, son of Boris Aronson, for allowing us to reproduce his father’s brilliant stage designs, including works never seen before; David S. Buchholz and Audrey H. Waxman, son and daughter–in–law of the late Nat Norbert, Jewish puppeteer par–excellence, who shared with us important items from their personal collection; Mary Anne Beale, who lent us her Serge Soudeikin stage painting; Dr. Phil Brown, president of the Catskills Institute and professor of sociology and health sciences at Northeastern University, who allowed us to reproduce precious Catskill Institute materials; Louise Hirschfeld, wife of the late Al Hirschfeld whose illustrations have been etched in the memory of all theater lovers, and David Leopold, the Hirschfeld Foundation's creative director; Charlotte Goldstein, a veteran of the Yiddish stage who began her theater career in 1932 in the Yiddish Art Theatre production of Yoshe Kalb; and Mike Burstyn, son of Pesach Burstein and Lilian Lux, and a noted performer in his own right. The archive of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research was our treasure island. Every visit led to the discovery of new gems: handwritten manuscripts, photos, artwork, costumes, statues, puppets, posters, pins and ribbons, make–up kits and feathers. Thank you Jonathan Brent, executive director of YIVO, for your cooperation. Special kudos go to Fruma Mohrer, senior archivist; Leo Greenbaum, accessions archivist / bund archivist; Gunnar Berg, project archivist; Vital Zajka, information manager in the Archives, Photo Archives & Library; and Krysia Fisher, formerly senior curator at YIVO.

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Acknowledgments

In addition to YIVO, I thank the following institutions who made materials available to us: the Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, Hunter College Libraries, Hunter College of the City University of New York, the American Jewish Historical Society, the Yiddish Artists and Friends Actors Club, the Yiddish Theatrical Alliance, the New York Public Library, Southern Illinois University, and the Library of Congress. I offer my gratitude to the dedicated team of the Museum of the City of New York: Susan Henshaw Jones, Ronay Menschel director; Sarah M. Henry, deputy director and chief curator; and Phyllis Magidson, curator of costumes and textiles. I have worked most closely with Autumn Nyiri, manager of curatorial affairs, and Becky Laughner, curatorial associate. Autumn and Becky, thank you! It’s been a pleasure working with you! I also thank Lilly Tuttle, assistant curator, who directed us when this project took its first steps, and Morgen Stevens–Garmon, theater archivist at MCNY, who runs a truly exemplary operation. I also thank David Y. Chack, president of the Association for Jewish Theatre; Corey Breier, president of the Yiddish Artists and Friends Actors Club and the Yiddish Theatrical Alliance; Julio Luis Hernandez– Delgado, associate professor, head, Archives and Special Collections at Hunter College Libraries; Esther Brumberg, senior curator for Collections at the Museum of Jewish Heritage; David Leopold, archivist, the Al Hirschfeld Foundation; and Benoit Sapiro of the Galerie Le Minotaure, Paris, France. I am indebted to Tim Oliver for his editorial corrections and especially for his friendship. I am grateful to the Jewish Theological Seminary, my home institution, for granting me some teaching relief time so I could devote more of myself to the completion of this project. I thank Urshula Barbour and Paul Carlos of Pure+Applied Design Studio for designing the exhibition and this beautiful book. This book is dedicated to my granddaughter, Zoe Nahshon, born December 22, 2015.

Edna Nahshon

Contributors Arnold Aronson is a professor of theater at Columbia University and writes frequently about scenography. He is co–editor of the journal Theatre and Performance Design and his most recent book is Ming Cho Lee: A Life in Design (2014). Hasia Diner is the Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History at New York University. She is the author of numerous books on American Jewish and immigration history, particularly Lower East Side Memories: The Jewish Place in America (2002) and most recently, Roads Taken: The Great Jewish Migration to New Worlds and the Peddlers Who Led the Way (2015). Stefanie Halpern is a doctoral candidate in Jewish literature at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Her dissertation, “Crossing Over from the Yiddish Rialto to the American Stage,” deals with the intersection of the Yiddish and English–language stages in America. Her article “Kate Bateman: Sanitizing the Beautiful Jewess” appeared in the Drama Review, and her “A Meeting of Life and Death: Ritual and Performance at the Ohel,” appeared in the Journal of Ritual Studies. Barbara Henry teaches at the University of Washington, Seattle, in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, and at the Stroum Jewish Studies Center. She is the author of Rewriting Russia: Jacob Gordin’s Yiddish Drama (2011), and co–editor, with Joel Berkowitz, of Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business (2012). Edna Nahshon is professor of Jewish theater and drama at the Jewish Theological Seminary and senior associate at Oxford University's Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. In her work, she focuses on the multiple aspects of the nexus of Jews and theater. Her books include Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Art and Politics of the Artef, 1925–1940 (1998); From the Ghetto to the Melting Pot: Israel Zangwill's Jewish Plays (2005); Jews and Shoes (2009); Jewish Theatre: A Global View (editor/ contributor, 2009); Jews and Theater in an Intercultural Context (editor/contributor 2012); and Stars, Strikes and the Yiddish Stage: The Story of the Hebrew Actors' Union 1899–2005 (companion catalog to YIVO exhibition,

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Contributors

2009). Her latest book (co–authored with Prof. Michael Shapiro), titled Wrestling With Shylock: Jewish Responses to ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press in 2016. Edward Portnoy teaches in the Jewish Studies Department at Rutgers University and serves as the academic advisor at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Nahma Sandrow is the author of Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater (1977–1996). She has published books and articles about Yiddish and other theaters, and translated Yiddish plays. She wrote librettos for the opera Enemies, A Love Story and the musical comedy Kuni–Leml, both based on Yiddish material. Alisa Solomon is a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Her most recent book is Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of 'Fiddler on the Roof' (2013). Judith Thissen is associate professor of film history at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She is a specialist of immigrant Jewish leisure culture in New York City in the early 20th century. This research has been widely published in international journals and numerous anthologies including The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (2008) and Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance and Show Business (2012). She recently co–edited Contemporary Culture: New Directions in Art and Humanities Research (2013) and Cinema beyond the City: Small–town and Rural Film Culture in Europe (forthcoming 2016). Joshua S. Walden is a member of the musicology faculty of the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Sounding Authentic: The Rural Miniature and Musical Modernism (2014) and editor of Representation in Western Music (2013) and The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Music (2015). He received the ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thomson Award for his 2014 article “The ‘Yidishe Paganini’: Sholem Aleichem’s Stempenyu, the Music of Yiddish Theatre, and the Character of the Shtetl Fiddler,” in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association.

Endnotes Introduction: From the Bowery to Broadway 1 “The Jewish King Lear,” The New York Dramatic Mirror, February 16, 1901, 15. 2 Harold Clurman, “Ida Kaminska and the Yiddish Theatre,” Midstream 14, no. 1 (January 1968): 36. 3 Melech Epstein, Profiles of Eleven: Profiles of Eleven Men Who Guided the Destiny of an Immigrant Society and Stimulated Social Consciousness among the American People (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965), 146. 4 Tickets cost from a quarter to a dollar. See Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870–1914 (1962; reprint, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978), 133. 5 “The East Side World: Notes and Comments,” The Jewish Messenger, December 12, 1902, 6. 6 When Abraham Goldfaden died in 1908, 75,000 people participated in the procession, the largest such event to date on the Lower East Side. For Adler’s funeral, see “Jacob Adler Buried; East Side Mourns,” The New York Times, April 1, 1926, 17. For Thomashefsky’s, see “Thomashefsky is Mourned by 30,000 at Rites,” New York Herald Tribune, July 12, 1929, 16A. The Lower East Side was keen on mass funerals. See chapter 3, “The Rites of Community,” in Arthur Goren, The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 48–82. 7 John Corbin, “Topics of the Drama,” The New York Times, April 26, 1903, 25. 8 “Acting on the East Side,” The New York Dramatic Mirror, February 5, 1910, 5. 9 “Chinese Help for Jews,” The New York Times, May 12, 1903, H3.

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10 In 1905, Morrison also appeared on the Yiddish stage in such German dramas as Gutskow’s Uriel Acosta, Schiller’s The Robbers, and Brachvogel’s Narciss and Madam de Pompadour. In his later years, Yiddish audiences lost interest in such linguistically hybrid performances, and Yiddish actors were disinclined to perform with Morrison in his German repertoire. 11 Molly Picon, with Jean Bergantini Grillo, Molly! An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 35. 12 Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 203. 13 Annie Pollard and Daniel Soyer, Emerging Metropolis (New York: New York University Press), 117. 14 “Russian Refugees,” The American Hebrew, August 18, 1882, 4. The HEAS was founded in New York on November 27, 1881, by German Jews and operated until 1884. It ran shelters for recent Jewish immigrants at Castle Garden and was criticized for its imperious attitude toward Eastern European Jewish immigrants. 15 Quoted in Jacob Adler, A Life on the Stage — A Memoir, Translated with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld (New York: Applause Theatre Books, 2001), 318. 16 See http://www.jta.org/1928/03/14/ archive/jewish-population-ingreater-new-york-numbers-1728000jewish-communal-survey-shows. 17 In 1927, there were still 24 theaters that offered Yiddish productions across America: 11 in New York, 4 in Chicago, 3 in Philadelphia, and 1 each in Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, and St. Louis.

New York’s Yiddish Theater

18 “Five Yiddish Theaters Close,”New York Herald Tribune, March 2, 1932, 10. 19 These included the Prospect Theater in the Bronx, the Hopkinson in Brownsville, the National, and the Folks on the East Side. 20 Alfred Kazin, Starting Out in the Thirties (Boston: Vintage Books, 1965), 80, 82. Quoted in Jonathan B. Krasner, “The Interwar Family and American Jewish Identity in Clifford Odets’s Awake and Sing!” Jewish Social Studies 13, no. 1 (Fall 2006): 6. 21 George Ross, “On the Horizon: Where Yiddish Theater Lives On,” Commentary 15 (November 1953): 472. 22 Skulnik had a successful career on Broadway. After The Fifth Season (1953), he starred in Odets’s The Flowering Peach (1955), Julie Berns and Irving Elman’s Uncle Willie (1956), Florence Lowe and Caroline Francke’s The 49th Cousin (1960), and Howard Da Silva and Felix Leon’s The Zulu and the Zaida (1965). 23 Robert Brustein, “Riding the Second– Avenue–to–Broadway Express: American Theater’s Debt to Yiddish Stage,” Forward, March 23, 2001, 1. 24 Brustein, “Riding.” Chapter 1: Yiddish New York 1 Originally written in English for McClure’s Magazine (1913), the novel is considered by many as America’s premier immigrant novel. Abraham Cahan, the author, was editor of the Jewish daily Forward from 1903 to 1946. 2 In 1919, the Warheit was absorbed by the Tog, a daily established at the end of 1914, which peaked at a circulation of 81,000 in 1916. The Tog merged with the Der Morgn Journal in 1953.

Chapter 2: Popular Yiddish Theater: Music, Melodrama, and Operetta 1 Abraham Z. Idelsohn, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development (1929; reprint Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1992), 453. 2 Joseph Rumshinsky, “Di music in idishn teater,” Di Idishe Muzikalishe Velt, March 1923, 22–23. Chapter 3: Jacob Gordin: The Great Reformer 1 Yakov Mikhailovich [Jacob Gordin], “Fel’eton. Po nashim yuzhnym palestinam,” Odesskie novosti, March 11, 1887; Ivan Kolyuchii [Jacob Gordin], “Progulka po Elisavetgradu,” Elisavetgradskii vestnik, January 29, 1889. 2 Jacob Gordin, “Erinerungen fun Yankev Gordin: Vi azoy ikh bin gevorn a dramaturg?” in Di idishe bine, ed. Khonen Minikes (New York; J. Katzenelenbogen, 1897), vol. 1, unpaginated. 3 Ibid. 4 Leon Kobrin, Erinerungen fun a yidishn dramaturg: A fertl yorhundert yidish teater in amerika (New York: Komitet far kobrins shriftn, 1925), vol. 1, 123. 5 N. [Jacob Gordin], “Evreiskie siluety: Syupriz,” Knizhki nedeli no. 10 (October, 1885): 35–65. Chapter 4: Path–Breakers and Superstars Jacob P. Adler and the Formation of a Theatrical Dynasty 1 Louis Lipsky, “Acting and Jacob P. Adler,” The Jewish Exponent, May 8, 1903, 7. 2 Louis Lipsky, “Three ‘Helden’ of Yiddish Stage,” The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger, September 14, 1917, 502. 3 Ibid.

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4 Lipsky, “Acting and Jacob P. Adler.” 5 Lipsky, “Three ‘Helden’ of Yiddish Stage.” 6 “The Yiddish ‘Broken Hearts,’” The New York Times, September 23, 1903, 5. 7 “Mailbag: Luther Adler,” The New York Times, March 10, 1985, H8. 8 http://backstage.blogs.com/ blogstage/2008/02/to-get-whereyo.html. Boris Thomashefsky: Matinee Idol of the Yiddish Stage 1 Abraham Cahan, The Education of Abraham Cahan (New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969). 2 “Thomashefsky and Regina Zuckerberg Are at Republic,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 26, 1921, 4. 3 “At the Play: Attractions of the Week,” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 25, 1899, 34. 4 “Thomashefskys Still Apart, Though Yiddish Tetrazinni’s Husband Settles His Suit,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 25, 1923. 5 “Yiddish Musical Comedy Is Broadway’s Latest,” New–York Tribune, September 5, 1923, 8. 6 “Thomashefsky, Yiddish Actor, Dies,” Brooklyn Eagle, July 10, 1939, 11. 7 “Schwartz and Thomashefsky to Play on English Stage in Fall,” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, July 16, 1931. Molly Picon: Darling of Second Avenue 1 Molly Picon, with Eth Clifford Rosenberg, So Laugh a Little (New York: Julian Messner, 1962), 15. 2 Ibid., 109. 3 Molly Picon, with Jean Bergantini Grillo, Molly! An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980), 25, 35.

4 5 6 7

Ibid., 27. Ibid., 44. Ibid., 45. Warren Hoffman, The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009), 69. 8 Joshua S. Walden, “Leaving Kazimierz: Comedy and Realism in the Yiddish Film Musical Yidl mitn Fidl,” Journal of Music, Sounding and the Moving Image, 3, no. 2 (Autumn 2009): 159–93. 9 Hoffman, Passing Game, 70. Chapter 5: Maurice Schwartz and the Yiddish Art Theater Movement 1 Cited in David S. Lifson, The Yiddish Theatre in America (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965), 313. 2 The first production was followed by Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession (September 25), Botvinik’s Baylke Marionetke (September 24), Gordin’s Sappho (October 4), Gutskow’s Uriel Acosta (October 7), and Schiller’s The Robbers (October 14). 3 The Yiddish name of the new company was Nayer Idisher Teater (New Yiddish Theater); its English name was Jewish Art Theatre. According to Lifson, Ben–Ami refused to use the term “art” in the Yiddish title, arguing that it was a designation that had to be earned. 4 At the Guild, he directed Youth by Max Halbe and The Treasure by David Pinski, with Celia Adler as Tillie. 5 Arthur Miller, “Concerning Jews Who Write,” Jewish Life 2, no. 5 (1947): 7–10. 6 Rebecca Drucker, “The Jewish Art Theatre,” Theatre Arts Magazine 4, no. 3 (July 1920): 223.

7

Other notable productions of the theater were Hirschbein’s Green Fields, Hauptmann’s Lonely Lives, Pinski’s The Dumb Messiah, Sven Lange’s Samson and Delilah, Przybyweski’s Joy, Asch’s Servitors and With the Current, and Dymov’s Bronx Express, the theater’s greatest success. 8 Brooks Atkinson, “Theatrical Drama: Maurice Schwartz Is Playing an Imaginative Story,” New York Times, December 18, 1932, X3. Chapter 6: Yiddish Political Theater: The Artef 1 Lines are from 15 Minute Red Revue, cited in Morgan Y. Himelstein, Drama Was a Weapon (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 12. 2 The Forward, the community’s major newspaper, which in 1930 had a circulation of 175,000, spoke for socialists and centrists; the Freiheit had a circulation of 64,000. 3 Alexander Mukdoyni, “Baym Toyer,” Morgn Journal, December 12, 1928. 4 Kulbak was a Soviet Yiddish writer who in 1937 was arrested and murdered in Stalin’s purges. The Artef was not aware of this when his play was staged. 5 Cobb’s first wife was Yiddish theater and film actress Helen Beverley. Chapter 7: Yiddish Theater and the Transformation of American Design 1 No relation to the author. 2 Frank Rich with Lisa Aronson, The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987), 32. 3 David S. Lifson, The Yiddish Theatre in America (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965), 522. 4 Harry Salpeter, “The Jewish Art Theatre,” The Jewish Forum 2, no. 11 (December 1919): 1318. 5 Ludwig Lewisohn, “The Jewish Art

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6 7

8 9

10

11 12

13

14 15 16

17

18

Theatre,” The Nation, December 13, 1919, p. 747. He was credited as Alexander Chertoff. The company was founded in 1911 by Yakov Meth and Avraham Groper (sometimes spelled Gropper). Quoted in Rich, 9. Aleksandr Tairov, Notes of a Director, trans. William Kuhlke (Miami: University of Miami Press, 1969), 109. John Mason Brown, “The Gamut of Style.” Theatre Arts Monthly, February 1927, 91. Ibid., 90. The New York Times, February 14, 1926. Unser Teater failed after one and a half seasons, and the space was taken over by actor Rudolph Schildkraut. Rich and Aronson cite this as the first production at the new theater (p. 38). However, the website Museum of Family History, which lists credits for most of the Yiddish Art Theatre productions, cites Tevye the Milkman (August 29, 1926) as the first production. Boruch Aranson is listed as part of the “Art Department.” The Tenth Commandment opened November 11. Quoted in Rich, 38. Ibid. David Burliuk, “Borukh Aronson’s teater–oysshtelung.” Der Hammer 3, no. 1 (January 1928): 62. Quoted in Boris Aronson, Der Yiddish Teater (Paris and Tel Aviv: Galerie Le Minotaure, 2010). Lee Simonson, “Russian Theory in the American Theater” [Review of Boris Aronson et l’Art du Théâtre], The Nation, June 12, 1929, 718. Mordecai Gorelik, New Theatres

New York’s Yiddish Theater

for Old (New York: Samuel French, 1940), 307. Gorelik applied this term to much of the work of the Yiddish Art Theatre as a whole. 19 The New York Times, October 13, 1934. 20 A colleague in the design department there was Hans Sondheimer, who would go on to become technical director and lighting designer for the New York City Opera. Chapter 9: Yiddish Vaudeville: Entertaining the Crowd and Early Yiddish Vaudeville 1 Gerald Bordman and Thomas S. Hischak, eds., The Oxford Companion to American Theatre, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford, 2004), 637. The French word vaudeville is traced to either pastoral ballads from the valley of the River Vire or urban folksongs, voix de ville (voices of the city). 2 “Yiddish Actors at Odds,” The Washington Post, September 3, 1905, A8. 3 “Where Vaudeville Bills Are Given in Yiddish,” The New York Times, December 28, 1902, 23. 4 “‘Coon’ Songs in Yiddish at East Side Music Halls,” The New York Times, April 12, 1903, 28. 5 “Di yidishe kontsert hols,” Warheit, December 8, 1905. For comparison, legitimate Yiddish playhouses charged 50 cents to a dollar for balcony and orchestra seats, while patrons who were willing to climb to the top gallery paid 25 cents. 6 Bernard Gorin, Di geshikhte fun yidshen teater, vol. 2 (New York: Literarisher Ferlag, 1918), 179–180. 7 Paul Klapper, “The Yiddish Music

8

9

10

11

12

13

Halls,” University Settlement Studies 2, no. 4 (1906): 19–23. Reprinted in Barbara Henry and Joel Berkowitz, eds., Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012), 195–198. See, for instance, the biographies of Maurice Tuchband, Isidore Lillian, Jenny Atlas, Charlie Cohen, and Ella Wallerstein in Zalmen Zylbercweig, ed., Leksikon fun yidishn teater, 6 vols. (New York: Hebrew Actors’ Union of America, 1931–1967). Detroit Journal, Bella Baker clipping file, Billy Rose Theater Collection, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center, n.d. Idid., p. 20. This chapter is partly based on previous publications, particularly Judith Thissen, “Liquor and Leisure: The Business of Yiddish Vaudeville,” in Henry and Berkowitz, Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage; and Thissen, “Film and Vaudeville on New York’s Lower East Side,” in The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times, eds. Barbara Kirshenblatt–Gimblett and Jonathan Karp (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). References to the Yiddish– language sources and archival materials cited herein can be found in these articles. For a detailed analysis, see Nina Warnke, “Immigrant Popular Culture as a Contested Sphere: Yiddish Music Halls, the Yiddish Press, and the Processes of Americanization,” Theatre Journal 48, no. 3 (1996): 321–335. Mark Slobin, Tenement Songs: The Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1996), chap. 5. “The Yiddish Theatre,” The New York Clipper, February 15, 1912, 7.

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Endnotes

Chapter 10: Borscht Belt Entertainment 1 Leo Rosten, The New Joys of Yiddish (New York: Crown Publishers, 2001), 45–46. Originally published by McGraw–Hill (1968). 2 David Rogoff, “Don’t Call It ‘The Borscht Belt,’” The New York Times, May 9, 1965, SM48. 3 Eileen Swift, “The Catskills: 100 Years of Mothering,” Newsday, May 13, 1973, D15. 4 Rosten, 409–410. 5 Sander Vanocur, “Mel Brooks, the Eternal Tummler,” The Washington Post, July 29, 1975, B1. 6 Available from http://www.loc.gov/ exhibits/danny-kaye-and-sylviafine/index.html. 7 Phil Brown, Catskill Culture: A Mountain Rat’s Memories of the Great Jewish Resort Area (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 112–113. 8 Jared Brown, Moss Hart: A Prince of the Theater (New York: Back Stage Books, 2006), 31. 9 “Borscht Belt Now, a Big Talent Outlet, AFA and AFM Take Notice,” Variety, May 4, 1938, 1. 10 Quoted in Myrna Katz Frommer and Harvey Frommer, It Happened in the Catskills (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991), 188. 11 “New York’s ‘Borscht Belt’ Vies for Bigger Share of Tourist $,” The Hartford Courant, June 7, 1964, 8F. 12 “Borscht Belt Hullabaloo,” The New York Times, July 1, 1965, 36. Chapter 11: Tevye’s Travels: From Yiddish Everyman to American Icon 1 “The Colbert Report,” Comedy Central, Broadcast September 22, 2009. 2 Sholem Aleichem, letter to Jacob Adler, 1914, quoted in Y.D. Berkowitz, Undzere rishoynim:

3

4

5

6

zokhroynes–dertzeylungen vegn sholem aleichem un zayn dor, 5 vols. (Tel Aviv: Farlag Hamnorah, 1966), vol. 3, 91. Yehoash (Solomon Blumgarten), eulogy for Sholem Aleichem, delivered at the Educational Alliance on May 15, 1916, and excerpted in Der Groyser Kundes, May 19, 1916, quoted in YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, “Sholem Aleichem in America: The Story of a Culture Hero,” catalog for YIVO exhibition, May 17, 1990 to March 15, 1991. Edna Nahshon, Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Art and Politics of the Artef, 1925–1940 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988), 47. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). Interview with Joseph Stein, June 27, 2007. Repeated in almost every interview about Fiddler Stein ever gave.

Selected Bibliography Berkowitz, Joel. Shakespeare on the American Yiddish Stage. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2002. Berkowitz, Joel, ed. Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches. London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2003. Berkowitz, Joel and Barbara J. Henry, eds. Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2012. Bordman, Gerald, and Thomas S. Hischak, eds. The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford, 2004. Brown, Jared. Moss Hart: A Prince of the Theater. New York: Back Stage Books, 2006. Brown, Phil. Catskill Culture: A Mountain Rat’s Memories of the Great Jewish Resort Area. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003. Brown, Phil, ed. In the Catskills: A Century of the Jewish Experience in “The Mountains.” New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Cahan, Abraham. The Education of Abraham Cahan. New York: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969. Cahan, Abraham. The Rise of David Levinsky. 1917. Reprint, CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2004. Clurman, Harold. The Fervent Years: The Story of the Group Theatre and the Thirties. New York, A. A. Knopf, 1945. Diner, Hasia R. Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Doroshkin, Milton. Yiddish in America: Social and Cultural Foundations. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1969. Frommer, Myrna Katz, and Harvey Frommer. It Happened in the Catskills. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991. Goldman, Philip, ed. The Purim Anthology. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1949. Gorelik, Mordecai. New Theatres for Old. New York: Samuel French, 1940. Goren, Arthur. The Politics and Public Culture of American Jews. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

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New York’s Yiddish Theater

Gottlieb, Jack. Funny, It Doesn’t Sound Jewish. New York: State University of New York Press, in association with The Library of Congress, 2004. Hapgood, Hutchins. The Spirit of the Ghetto. New York: Schocken Books, 1966. Hart, Moss. Act One: An Autobiography. New York, Random House, 1959. Heinze, Andrew. Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the Search for American Identity. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Henry, Barbara J. Rewriting Russia: Jacob Gordin’s Yiddish Drama. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2011. Himelstein, Morgan Y. Drama Was a Weapon. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1963. Hoberman, J. Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film between Two Worlds. New York: Museum of Modern Art: Schocken Books, 1991. Hoffman, Warren. The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009. Howe, Irving. The World of Our Fathers: The Journey of the East European Jews to America and the Life They Found and Made. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. Idelsohn, Abraham Z. Jewish Music: Its Historical Development. 1929. Reprint, Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1992. Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Roots Too: White Ethnic Revival in Post–Civil Rights America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. Kaplan, Beth. Finding the Jewish Shakespeare: The Life and Legacy of Jacob Godin. Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 2007 Kazin, Alfred. Starting Out in the Thirties. Boston: Vintage Books, 1965. Kosak, Hadassa. Cultures of Opposition: Jewish Immigrant Workers, 1881–1905. New York: State University of New York Press, 2000. Landis, Joseph C. Memoirs of the Yiddish Stage. Flushing, N.Y.: Queens College Press, 1984. Lifson, David S. The Yiddish Theatre in America. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1965.

Lipsky, Louis. Tales of the Yiddish Rialto: Reminiscences of Playwrights and Players in New York’s Jewish Theater in the Early 1900s. New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1962. Kessner, Thomas. Beyond the Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. McGilligan, Patrick, and Paul Buhle. Tender Comrades. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997. Nahshon, Edna, ed. Jews and theater in an intercultural context. Leiden; Boston: Brill Publishers, 2012. Nahshon, Edna. Stars, Strikes and the Yiddish Stage: The Story of the Hebrew Actors’ Union 1899–2005. New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, 2009. Nahshon, Edna. Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Art and Politics of the ARTEF, 1925–1940. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998. Picon, Molly, with Eth Clifford Rosenberg. So Laugh a Little. New York: Julian Messner, 1962. Picon, Molly, with Jean Bergantini Grillo. Molly! An Autobiography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980. Polland, Annie, and Daniel Soyer. Emerging Metropolis: New York Jews in the Age of Immigration, 1840–1920. New York: New York University Press, 2012. Rich, Frank, with Lisa Aronson. The Theatre Art of Boris Aronson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. Rischin, Moses. The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870–1914. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. Rosten, Leo. The New Joys of Yiddish. 1968. Reprint, New York: Crown Publishers, 2001. Sandrow, Nahma. Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theatre. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Schoener, Allon. Portal to America: The Lower East Side, 1875–1920. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967. Slobin, Mark. Tenement Songs: The Popular Music of the Jewish Immigrants. Urbana: University of Illinois Press 1982. Smith, Wendy. Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre in America, 1931–1940. New York: Vintage Books. 2013. Snyder Robert W. The Voce of the City, Vaudeville and Popular Culture in New York. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

321

Selected Bibliography

Sorin, Gerald. The Jewish People in America. Vol. 3 of A Time for Building: The Third Migration, 1880–1920. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Williams, Jay. Stage Left. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974.

Index Adler, Jacob P., 12, 18, 20-21, 22, 23, 28, 30, 31, 90, 93, 104-16, 105, 10809,248, 279, 286, 290, 309 Adler, Celia, 110, 112, 113, 115, 155 Adler, Luther, 110, 112, 117, 190, 296 Adler, Sarah, 110, 113, 117, 304 Adler, Stella, 32, 46, 112, 114, 116, 117, 181, 190 Aleichem, Sholem. See Sholem Aleichem Alexander, Crown Prince of Jerusalem, 70 The Andrews Sisters, 42 Ansky, S., 48, 96, 158, 196 Aristocrats, 184-85, 186, 292 Aronson, Boris, 25, 37, 38, 158-60, 16263, 169, 170-71, 196, 197, 200, 201, 202-14, 203, 204-05, 207, 209-13, 215, 220-21, 284-85, 287-89, 296, 297 Artef, 22, 38, 48, 158, 162-63, 176-90, 177, 179, 181, 183, 184-85, 187, 191, 292, 295, 319(6n4) Asch, Sholem, 41 At the Gate (Baym toyer), 177, 180 Atkinson, Brooks, 166, 182, 186 Atlantic Garden Theatre, 14, 244 Awake and Sing!, 40, 112, 116, 181, 208 Bagels and Yox, 269, 270, 274 Baker, Belle, 69, 126, 250-52, 251 Bar Kokhba, 17, 68, 312 The Beggar of Odessa, 106 “Bei Mir Bistu Shein,” 40 Bern, Mina, 71, 304, 304 Ben-Ami, Jacob, 36, 110, 153, 154, 155, 156, 304, 304 The Big Win, 200,000, or The Big Winner (Dos groyse gevins), 186, 187, 292, 295 blackface, 83, 139, 241 Borscht Belt, 44, 258-74, 294 Borscht Capades, 273, 274 Bowery, 12, 15, 18, 32, 33, 34, 248, 254 Bowery Garden, 24, 26 Broadway 12, 36, 37, 40, 42, 46, 82, 83, 97, 106, 110, 112, 124, 126, 130, 139, 160, 182, 190, 198, 200, 208, 214, 220, 221, 254, 266, 273, 274, 292, 294, 296, 298, 300, 301, 302-03, 304-13

322

Broder Singers, 66, 68 Broken Hearts, 106 Bronx Express, 158, 206, 208, 209, 216, 313 Brooks, Mel, 44, 262 The Brothers Ashkenazi (Di brider Ashkenazi), 38, 153, 214, 296 Brustein, Robert, 44 Buloff, Joseph, 71, 112, 173, 305, 305 Burstein, Pesach, 46, 62, 71, 306-07, 306 Caesar, Sid, 44 Café Crown, 37, 215 Café Royal, 37, 37, 255 Cantor, Eddie, 268, 275 Cantorial music, 66, 68, 73, 82 cantors, 66, 70, 73, 82, 310, 311 Carnovsky, Morris, 37 Casa Valentina, 274 Catch Me If You Can, 274 Catskills, 40, 123, 233, 258-74, 259, 312 Brickman Hotel, 266, 268 Concord Resort Hotel, 260, 263, 272 Flagler Hotel, 266 Kutsher’s Hotel, 272 Nevele Country Club, 260, 264 Paul’s Hotel, 266 White Roe Lake Hotel, 265, 266 Catskills on Broadway, 274 Chinese theater, 18 Circus Girl, 132, 134, 135, 136-37 Clurman, Harold, 10, 116 Condell, Heinz A., 216-17, 218, 219 Conversations with My Father, 44 Crossdressing, 49, 49, 134, 138, 173, 274 Das pintele yid (The Essential Spark of Jewishness), 122, 125 Dassin, Jules, 22, 112, 180, 190 Day and Night (Tog un nakht), 158, 159, 196, 197, 206, 207 daytshmerish, 30, 88, 228 Didjah, Belle, 211, 273, 306, 306 Dirty Dancing, 274 “Donna, Donna,” 24 The Dybbuk, 46, 110, 186, 228, 229, 230, 236, 237, 304 Dymow, Osip, 38, 110, 158, 209 “Eli, Eli”, 69, 251 Ellstein, Abraham, 130

New York’s Yiddish Theater

English-language stage, 16, 22, 29, 32, 46, 88, 118, 176, 182, 190, 196, 208, 214, 218 Epstein, Jacob, 13 The Family Carnovsky, 166, 218 Fiddler on the Roof, 42, 112, 128, 208, 214, 278, 284-85, 287, 288-89, 296, 297, 298-99, 300, 301, 302-03 The Fifth Season, 42, 312 The Final Balance, 158, 159, 206, 207 The Flagler Scandals of 1929, 266 Folksbiene/National Yiddish Theater, 44, 168, 322n19 A Forsaken Nook (Farvorfn vinkel), 154, 304 Forward (daily), 35, 56, 58, 118, 225, 230, 252, 254, 319(6n2); building, 57 Friedsell, Louis, 66 Garden Theatre, 156, 198 The Gardener’s Dog, 157, 199, 200 Garment industry, 42, 56, 58, 59; strikes, 155, 190 German-language theater, 18, 22, 317 Gersten, Berta, 99, 101, 127, 153, 306, 306 God, Man, and Devil (Got, mentsh un tayvl), 30, 92, 94, 96, 101, 212, 214, 306, 308 God of Vengeance, 36, 39, 41, 46, 308, 312-13 Golden Boy, 112, 116, 267, 268 The Golden Bride (Di goldene kale), 80 Goldfaden, Abraham, 22, 24, 26, 33, 49, 68-70, 71, 310, 317n6 Goldstein, Jennie, 38, 101, 307, 307 Gordin, Jacob, 19, 30, 86-101, 87, 89, 91¸104, 248, 308, 310 Gorelik, Mordecai, 212-13, 214, 220, 319(7n18) Grand Theatre, 14, 15, 32, 43, 45, 75, 107 Grossinger, Jennie, 40, 260, 268 Grossinger’s (Grossinger Hotel and Country Club), 260, 264, 266-67, 272 Group Theatre, 10, 40, 112, 116, 176, 190, 192, 200, 208, 268 Hapgood, Hutchins, 13, 16 Hard to Be a Jew, 280-81, 292 Hart, Moss, 266, 275 Having Wonderful Time, 274

Hebrew Actors’ Union, 23, 23, 32, 39, 180, 240, 311 Hebrew Emigrant Aid Society (HEAS), 24, 317(n14) Hirschbein, Peretz, 154, 156, 304 Holiday Theatre, 269, 270 Homeless (On a heym), 92, 107, 114 Hurwitz, Moshe, 26, 28, 70, 72, 250 Idelsohn, Abraham Z., 68 The Idle Inn, 155, 156, 198, 304 International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU), 58, 189, 190 Irving Place Theatre, 22, 75, 152, 155, 156, 196 jazz, 80-83 The Jazz Singer, 82, 83 Jessel, George, 83, 268 Jewish Art Theatre, 38, 110, 155, 156, 159, 198, 304, 318(5n3) The Jewish Heart (Dos yidishe harts), 26, 72, 74, 77, 80, 308 The Jewish King Lear (Der yidisher kenig Lir), 10, 12, 15, 30, 37, 90, 92, 93, 104 Jim Kooperkop, 158, 162-63 The Jolly Orphan, 129, 132 Jolson, Al, 82, 83 Kalich, Bertha, 30, 97, 308-09, 308 Kalich, Jacob, 22, 130 Kaye, Danny, 265, 266, 267, 269 Kessler, David, 28, 34, 66, 152, 309-10, 309 King Solomon, 17, 28 Kohansky, Alexander S., 45 The Komediant, 48, 306 Kol Nidre, 17, 82 Kressyn, Miriam, 71, 310, 310, 316 The Kreutzer Sonata (Di Kreyster sonata), 30, 86, 90, 92, 97, 307, 313 Kushner, Tony, 48 Lateiner, Joseph, 26, 28, 70, 72, 242 Liptzin, Keni, 30, 92, 98, 309-10, 309 Lebedeff (Lebedev), Aaron, 35, 44, 67, 309, 309 Leivick, H., 156, 180 Leve, Sam, 42, 191 Lewis, Jerry, 233, 259 Libin, Zalmen, 106, 154 Lower East Side, 12, 16, 24, 32, 34, 37, 48, 52, 54, 55, 58, 59, 124, 228, 242, 248, 317(n6)

323

Index

Lux, Lillian, 46, 62, 305-06, 305 Maiori, Antonio, 18 Mazel Tov, Molly, 133, 218, 219 Margulies, Donald, 41, 46 melodrama, 26, 28, 30, 45, 70, 72, 80, 106, 242, 244, 266, 307 The Merchant of Venice, 18, 104, 108-09, 166, 168, 312-13 Miller, Arthur, 40 The Miracle of the Warsaw Ghetto, 219 Mirele Efros (Di yidishe kenigen Lir oder Mirele Efros), 30, 87, 90, 98-99, 101, 306, 310 Mogulesko, Sigmund, 30, 49, 49, 66, 88, 308, 313-14, 313 Morrison, Morris (Moritz), 18, 317(n10) Mostel, Zero, 112, 296, 298-99, 301 Muni, Paul, 130, 310-11, 310 “My Yiddishe Mama”, 241 National Theatre, 13, 34, 35, 73, 74, 110, 279, 311 Ochs, Michael, 80 Odets, Clifford, 40, 190 operetta, 22, 24, 26, 28, 33, 35, 45, 49, 67, 68-70, 72, 78, 80, 92, 118, 122, 158, 244, 250, 316, 318 Oppenheim, Tom, 46, 116 Oriental Theatre, 26, 28 The Orphans, 24 Othello, 16, 18, 122 patriotn, 12 Peer Gynt, 70 People’s Theatre, 10, 12, 18, 29, 31, 77, 119, 248, 286, 318 Perl, Arnold, 294 Picon, Molly, 22, 38, 49, 49, 71, 128-39, 129, 131, 135, 136-37, 139, 219 Pins and Needles, 58, 186, 188-89 Pinski, David, 96, 156 Potash and Perlmutter, 36, 312 Praeger, Regina, 17 The Price, 44, 305 Public Theatre, 34, 74 Purim, 66, 228 The Rabbi’s Temptation, 67 Racov, Nakhum, 16 ragtime, 80, 241, 242 Recruits, 182, 183, 186, 214 Red, Yellow, and Black, 158

Regan, Sylvia, 42 Reinhardt, Max, 22, 156, 218, 312 revue, 45, 146, 186, 188-89, 208, 244, 261, 266, 269, 270-71, 273, 274 Rexite, Seymour, 71, 308, 311, 311 Rischin, Moses, 12 The Rise of David Levinsky (1917), 52, 317(1n1) Roman, Freddie, 274 Romanian Opera Company, 26, 28, 310 Romeo and Juliet, 16, 202 Rosten, Leo, 258, 262 Rozanko, Vera, 78 Rumshinsky, Joseph, 66, 68, 82, 134 Russian Yiddish Opera Company (Karp– Silberman Company), 26, 33 The Sacrifice of Isaac (Akedas Yitkhok), 70 satire, 177, 184, 228, 230 Satz, Ludwig, 36, 75, 249, 311-12, 312 Schildkraut, Rudolph, 18, 22, 36, 38, 41, 126, 156, 158, 20, 209, 214, 312-13, 312 Schneider, Benno, 162, 179, 183, 184, 18687, 191 Schwartz, Maurice, 22, 32, 34, 38, 110, 116, 152-72, 153, 161, 167, 173, 196, 200, 206, 208, 214, 290, 291, 292, 293, 296, 305, 306, 309 Second Avenue, theater district, 23, 32, 34, 37, 130, 312 Second Avenue Theatre, 23, 34, 131, 132, 136-37, 139, 308 Secunda, Sholom, 10, 24, 40, 66, 255, 274 A Serious Man, 46 Shaikevitch (Schomer), Nokhem Meyer, 72, 86 Shakespeare, William, 16, 18, 90, 104, 122, 312 Shulamith, 24, 33, 68 Sholem Aleichem, 278-98, 283 Show Boat, 81, 266, 267 Shylock, 18, 104, 106, 108-09, 166, 167, 317 Shylock and His Daughter, 166, 167 Siberia, 30, 90, 104, 308 Simon, Mae, 243, 244, 245, 253 Sinatra, Frank, 43, 128 Singer, I.J., 38, 160, 166, 218 Skulnik, Menasha, 38, 42, 43, 130, 318, 318 Solomon’s Trial, 28

Index Solotaroff, Moi, 177, 179, 183, 184, 187, 214 Soudeikin, Serge, 157, 199, 200 The Spirit of the Ghetto, 13 Stanislavsky, Konstantin, 112, 116, 152, 186 The Tenth Commandment, 38, 158, 169, 170-71, 173, 201, 202, 203, 206, 210 Terrace Garden Theater (Lexington Avenue Opera House), 33, 33 Tevya, 291, 293 Tevya and His Daughters, 294 Tevye the Milkman (Tevye der milkhiker), 290; character, 282; film version, 292 Thalia Theatre, 12, 15, 16, 17, 29, 41, 53, 308, 309, 312 Thomashefsky, Bessie, 77, 312, 318 Thomashefsky, Boris, 18, 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 31, 34, 44, 66, 69, 81, 88, 110, 11827, 127, 248, 279, 286, 310, 311, 317 Three Little Businessmen, 124, 126 Tolstoy, Leo, 32, 92, 110, 317 Tucker, Sophie, 126, 241, 268 tummler, 229, 262 Turn Hall, 24 The Two Kuni-Lemls, 24, 68 Uriel Acosta, 186, 191, 317(n10) Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 16, 29, 29 Unser Teater, 38, 156, 158, 159, 196, 197, 201, 202, 204-05, 206, 207, 221 The Valiant, 314 Valliere, Jennie, 22 vaudeville, 40, 44, 49, 240-55, 246, 324n1 Vega, Lope de, 157, 160, 199, 200 Vogel, Paula, 48 Wallach, Eli, 37 Windsor Theatre, 12, 16, 18, 26, 93, 189, 250, 308 The Witch (Di Kishufmakherin), 24, 49, 68, 70 Wohl, Herman, 66 Yankele, 49, 131, 132 Yiddish Art Theatre, 11, 23, 24, 34, 45, 94-95, 110, 116, 152-173, 196, 199, 201, 202, 206, 210, 212-13, 214, 215-16, 218, 224, 280-81, 290, 292, 296, 304, 305, 306, 310, 318(5n7), 319(7n13)

324

Index

Yiddish art theater movement, 38, 110, 152-69, 198, 218, 304 Yiddish Folks Theatre, 74, 101, 219 Yidl mitn fidl, 49, 130, 134 Yinglish, 40, 233, 258, 269 Yoshe Kalb, 38, 45, 160, 161, 164-65, 166, 186, 200 Zangwill, Israel, 13 Zeifert, Moshe, 16, 122 Zolotarevsky, Isidore, 29

325

Index

Photography Credits © The Al Hirschfeld Foundation. www.AlHirschfeldFoundation.org: 43 top left, 299 Album of Yiddish Theatre by Zalme(n) Zylbercweig (New York: Farlag Elisheva, 1927): 101 all, 119 right, 127 top, 177, 293, 317 Archives & Special Collections, Hunter College Libraries, Hunter College of The City University of New York: 114 left Collection of American Jewish Historical Society: 75 all, 77 right, 115, 249 top Courtesy Aronson Family Collection: 287, 288, 289 Courtesy Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations: 83 right, 123 left, 219 top Courtesy Catskills Institute: 263 top, 263 bottom, 264 top, 264 bottom, 265 bottom, 267 top left, 267 top right Courtesy Community Service Society of New York and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University: 53 Courtesy Corey Brier, Yiddish Artists and Friends Actors Club: 20, 131 right, 135 bottom, 139 top left, 259 bottom, 295 top Courtesy David and Audrey Buchholz, in memory of Nat Norbert: 235 all, 237 all Courtesy Eric Krasner, The Mickey Katz Project: 273 all Courtesy Forward Association: 39 bottom right and left, 41, 49 left, 318 Courtesy Henry Sapoznik: 247 Courtesy Library of Congress, Music Division: 27, 47, 68 right, 68 left, 77 left, 97, 125, 265 top, 267 bottom, 269 top Courtesy Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary: 25

326

Courtesy Galerie Le Minotaure: 169 all, 170 all, 173, 197 all, 199, 201 bottom, 203 all, 204, 207 bottom, 209 top, 209 middle, 210 all, 215 top, 284 Courtesy Seth Bogdanove: 60 Courtesy Special Collections Research Center, Morris Library at Southern Illinois University Carbondale: 212, 213, 220 Courtesy The Dorot Jewish Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations: 93 Courtesy YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York: 39 top, 67, 71, 73, 74, 81, 85, 87, 91, 94, 98 inset, 111 all, 123 right, 127 bottom, 140–49, 155 right, 157, 159 top left, 162, 164 all, 165, 181, 191, 216 top, 217, 225, 226–27, 229 top, 229 bottom, 231 all, 243 all, 245, 253 all, 279, 291, 312 Hapgood, Hutchins, The Spirit of the Ghetto: Studies of the Jewish Quarter of New York; with drawings from life by Jacob Epstein (New York; London: Funk and Wagnalls, 1902): 13 Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division: 17 (LC–USZC4–4621), 51 (LC–DIG– ggbain–12864), 59 bottom (LC– DIG–ppmsca–05641), 63 (LC–DIG– ggbain–12864) Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, National Child Labor Committee Collection: 57 top (LC–DIG–nclc–03863), 59 top (LC–DIG–nclc–04455) Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, WPA Poster Collection: 177 bottom (LC–USZC2– 5468) Museum of the City of New York, Byron Company Collection, Gift of Percy Byron: 45 (93.1.1.308), 107 (41.420.32), 108 (41.420.184), 120 (41.420.673) Museum of the City of New York, Broadway Productions Collection: 191 (F2013.41.5583), 297 (F2013.41.2375), 300 (F2013.41.268)

New York’s Yiddish Theater

Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mr. Albert Fenn: 98 all (1973. 73.41.23 and 73.41.24) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Miss Anne Seymour, Photo by White Studio ©The New York Public Library: 119 left (39.240.152) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mrs. Anna Skulnik: 43 bottom (70.78.9G), 318 (70.78.9D) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Annette Margules: 249 bottom (75.29.19) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Berta Gersten: 99 (70.155.1A) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Belle Didjah Ehrenreich: 211 all (80.148.22, 80.148.16 and 80.148.9), 307 (80.148.18) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mr. Ben Bonus: 310 (X2011.7.5) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Blair Davis: 23 top (2013.3.2.32), 57 bottom (2013.3.1.386) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mrs. Boris Volynsky: 89 (65.71) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Carl Van Vechten, used with permission of the Van Vechten Trust: 37 (X2010.8.683) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Celia Adler Forman: 113 left (66.35.23), 117 (66.35.24) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Dr. Charles A. Perera, M.D.: 55 top left (X2011.34.4383) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Fela Biro: 184 (79.2.4) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Frank S. D’Alessandro: 305 (79.63.9) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Garrison P. Sherwood: 308 (36.440.445) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Harold Friedlander: 275 all (68.80.1113 and 68.80.3245)

Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mr. Harry Bender: 179 bottom (70.34.78) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of the Hebrew Actors Union: 83 left (66.33.5) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Henry Rubinlicht: 159 top right (69.132), 207 top (X2012.7.368) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Jacob Ben–Ami: 219 bottom (X2012.7.356) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Jacob Bleifer: 159 bottom right (70.34.76) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mrs. Jacob Greenberg, Photo by White Studio ©The New York Public Library: 209 bottom (71.104.2) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of L. Arnold Weissberger: 114 right (67.32.158) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Lisa Aronson, Photo by White Studio ©The New York Public Library: 201 top (81.151.8) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Manya Gendel: 79 (84.142.1) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Max Eisen: 315 (74.131.6D) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mrs. Menasha Skulnik: 9 (76.55), 43 top right (76.55) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mrs. Meta Solotaroff Goldin: 183 bottom (70.85.8) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Michael Gorrin: 48 (70.76.6), 179 top (70.76.50), 187 bottom (70.76.53), 193 top (70.76.52), Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mina Bern Bonus: 305 (84.106.11) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Miss Miriam Kressyn: 311 (67.31.5), 314 (X2012.7.351), 313 (67.31.23), 316 (X2012.7.147)

327

Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Miss Molly Picon and Mr. Jacob Kalich: 103 (69.134.3), 129 (69.134.3), 132 all (69.134.30 and 69.134.60), 133 all (69.134.73 and 69.134.105), 135 top (69.134.6) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of the Picons: 49 right (85.117.2) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Dr. Robert Drapkin: 55 bottom (84.180.7) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mr. Ron Bernstein: 302 (65.59.16) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Sam Leve: 188 (71.75.16) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mr. Seymour Rexite: 105 (X2012.7.110) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Sylvia Kessler Newman: 309 (66.22.4) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of the Estate of Sophie Tucker: 241 (66.60.16) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Thomas Calvin Linn, Jr.: 306 (41.443.307) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Trio Press, courtesy of Hebrew Actors’ Union: 23 right (70.34.108), 293 bottom (X2012.7.109) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Vera Rosanko Rosenberg: 65 (78.55.13), 78 (78.55.13) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Mrs. William A. Brady: 29 (50.200.1042) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research: 161 left (65.78.17), 161 right (65.78.15), 167 (X2012.7.426) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of the Zunser–Shomer family: 19 (X2012.7.322), 113 right (X2012.7.69) Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Zvee Scooler: 153 top (70.77.41)

Photography Credits

Museum of the City of New York, The J. Clarence Davies Collection: 14 (29.100.870), 15 (29.100.810) Museum of the City of New York, The John Bennewitz Collection: 269 bottom (80.103.239), 270 (80.104.1.1090), 305 (80.103.1458) Museum of the City of New York, Theatre And Music Collection Purchase Courtesy Of The William Penn Foundation: 31 all (75.200.12 and 75.200.6) Museum of the City of New York, purchase with funds from the Mrs. Elon Hooker Acquisition Fund: 55 top right (40.140.31) Museum of the City of New York, Yiddish Theater Collection: 35 (70.34.32), 132 (85.117.1), 136 (70.34.52), 139 top right (X2011.7.7), 139 bottom (X2011.7.23), 153 bottom (F2012.63.112), 155 left (F2012.63.276), 261 (f2015.63.25), 280 (F2012.63.405), 301 (77.110.10– .13), 307 (F2012.63.137), 308 (F2012.63.456) Museum of Jewish Heritage — A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, New York, New York: 215 bottom (Gift of the Estate of Same Leve in honor of Lottie L. Weiss), 216 bottom (Gift of Seymour Cohn and Pearl C. Miller in honor of Elias A. Cohen’s Tranquility Camp), 259 top (Gift of Leo and Marilyn Rozman) Photograph by John Halpern: 7, 11 Public domain: 283

Copyright Published on the occasion of the exhibition New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway. Copyright © 2016 Museum of the City of New York. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Published by Columbia University Press, in association with the Museum of the City of New York. Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup.columbia.edu Museum of the City of New York 1220 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10029 Designed by Pure+Applied Set in Eksell Display, Heroine Pro, & Ludwig Printed in Canada Library of Congress Control Number: 2015958268 ISBN 978-0-231-17670-5 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-231-54107-7 (e-book) Cover illustration: Spectators in front of the Grand Theatre. Photograph by Byron Co., 1905. References to website (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the editor nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.