Yiddish theatre

The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; naturalist drama; expressionist and modernist plays.

At its height, its geographical scope was comparably broad: from the late 19th century until just before World War II, professional Yiddish theatre could be found throughout the heavily Jewish areas of Eastern and East Central Europe, but also in Berlin, London, Paris, Buenos Aires and New York City.

[2] Nonetheless, various types of performances, including those of cantors, preachers, jesters, and instrumental musicians, were a part of Eastern European Jewish life long before the formal advent of Yiddish theatre.

[3] Bercovici suggests that, as with ancient Greek drama, elements of dramatic performance arose in Jewish life as an artistic refinement of religious practice; he highlights references in the Bible to dance, music, or song, especially in the Psalms (Hebrew tehillim, or songs of praise), where some of the headings refer to musical instruments, or to singing in dialogue, either between parts of the choir, or between the choir and the leader of the ritual (Hebrew menatseach).

Al-Harizi's work contained dialogues between believer and heretic, man and wife, day and night, land and ocean, wisdom and foolishness, avarice and generosity.

Shows up to present day productions pull influence from these experiences, creating a concrete picture of Yiddish themes and tenets seen in Jewish theatre.

However, in later times, the Romanian Orthodox Christmas tradition of Irozii — minstrel shows centered around the figure of Herod the Great (Rom: Irod), which were the origin of Romanian-language theatre — definitely influenced Purim plays and vice versa.

Meistersinger Hans Sachs' many plays on Old Testament topics were widely admired by the Jews of the German ghettos, and from the 16th century through the 18th, the biblical story of Esther was the most popular theatrical theme in Christian Europe, often under the Latin name Acta Ahasuerus.

Besides some 19 amateur Yiddish-language theatrical troupes in and around Warsaw in the 1830s, there was also, according to one contemporary source, a professional company that in 1838 performed before a receptive audience of both Jews and Gentiles a five-act drama Moses, by a certain A. Schertspierer of Vienna, with "well-drawn characters and good dramatic situations and language.

"[12][13] The same source relates that this theatre had among its patrons a number of Russian military officers, including one general who was considered a "protector" of it – a circumstance that suggests the difficulties it faced.

Abraham Baer Gottlober's Decktuch, like Ettinger's Serkele, was written between 1830 and 1840, but published much later; Israel Aksenfeld (died c. 1868) wrote several dramas in Yiddish, which were probably not staged in his lifetime.

Another early Yiddish dramatist was Joel Baer Falkovich (Reb Chaimele der Koẓin, Odessa, 1866; Rochel die Singerin, Zhytomyr, 1868).

[17] Another current that led equally to professional Yiddish theatre was a tradition resembling that of the troubadours or Minnesänger, apparently growing out of the music associated with Jewish weddings, and often involving singers who also functioned as cantors in synagogues.

The first records of the early Brodersänger or Broder singers are the remarks of Jews passing through Brody, which was on a major route of travel, generally disapproving of the singing of songs when no particular occasion called for music.

[28] Writing of Sigmund Mogulesko's troupe in Romania in 1884, and probably referring to the plays of Moses Horowitz and Joseph Lateiner, Moses Gaster wrote that Yiddish theatre "represents scenes from our history known by only a tiny minority, refreshing, therefore, secular memory" and "shows us our defects, which we have like all men, but not with a tendency to strike at our own immorality with a tendency towards ill will, but only with an ironic spirit that does not wound us, as we are wounded by representations on other stages, where the Jew plays a degrading role.

Israel Rosenberg's troupe (which later had a series of managers, including Goldfaden's brother Tulya, and which at one point split in two, with one half led by actor Jacob Adler) gave Russia's first professional Yiddish theatre performance in Odessa in 1878.

[32] What seemed, for a time, a boundless future in Russia was cut short by the anti-Jewish reaction following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II; Yiddish theatre was banned, under an order effective September 14, 1883.

In addition to the serious artistic efforts of the art theaters, cabaret flourished in Poland during the interwar period, combining musical performances with standup comedy.

The most celebrated practitioners of this kind of performance were Shimen Dzigan and Yisroel Shumacher, who began their lifelong Yiddish comedy career at the theater Ararat in Łódź in 1927.

Michal Weichert's Yung-teater was particularly known for political engagement, staging an attention-getting avant-garde performance of the play Boston, by Bernhard Blum, about the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, in 1933.

Over the next few decades, successive waves of Yiddish performers arrived in New York (and, to a lesser extent, in Berlin, London, Vienna, and Paris), some simply as artists seeking an audience, but many as a result of persecutions, pogroms and economic crises in Eastern Europe.

[42] Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, amateur theatrical companies presented Yiddish productions in New York City, leading to regular weekend performances at theatres such as the Bowery Garden, the National and the Thalia, with unknowns such as Boris Thomashefsky emerging as stars.

But I do have complaints, though I do not know to whom, that my dear Jewish child is growing up to be a coarse, un-Jewish, insolent boor, and I expect that some day I will be cursed for that very thing that I brought into the world...

Here in America ... it has thrown all shame aside and not only is it not learning anything, it has forgotten whatever good it used to know.”"[48]“In February 1902, Jewish builder and philanthropist Harry Fischel bought a piece of land of about 10,000 square feet, at the south corner of Grand and Chrystie Streets with the intention to erect on the site a theatre for Yiddish performances.”[49] At the time of the opening of the Grand Theatre in New York (1903), New York's first purpose-built Yiddish theater, the New York Times noted: "That the Yiddish population is composed of confirmed theatregoers has been evident for a long time, and for many years at least three theatres, which had served their day of usefulness for the English dramas, have been pressed into service, providing amusement for the people of the Ghetto.

This theatrical expansion eastward, which had begun slowly in the 1890s because of the great need in Eastern Europe to fill the vacuum of repertoire, turned into a conscious American export item during the 1910S.

At that time, the immigrant community in New York as a whole, and the Yiddish theatre in particular, had matured, and they were confident enough of their power and unique status to begin to actively seek acknowledgement, accolades, and financial gain beyond the local and regional spheres.

In the early years of immigration, Eastern Europe had served as a necessary recruitment pool to feed the American Yiddish theatre with new stage talent; shortly before World War I, it began to provide new audiences and marketing possibilities for the creative energies that had gathered in New York.

While pre-war Yiddish theatre in Argentina had bordered on burlesque, shortly after World War I Thomashefsky and others brought their companies to Buenos Aires for the off-season when New York theaters were closed for the summer (the Argentine winter).

Many of the surviving Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim emigrated to Israel, where many assimilated into the emerging Hebrew-language culture, since Yiddish was looked down upon and Zionists promoted Hebrew as a language of Jewish unity.

One of Alan Menken's first musicals, the c.1974 Dear Worthy Editor, was based on the letters-to-the-editor of Jewish-American newspaper Jewish Daily Forward, featuring the struggles of Eastern-European Jews from the turn of the century as they tried to assimilate while hold onto their culture.