The Golden Epoch of Yiddish Theatre in America: A Brief Historical Overview
By Edna Nahshon
Abraham Goldfaden (1840 - 1908)
The Yiddish theater was the great cultural passion of the immigrant Jewish community in the United States. It was the theater, Harold Clurman noted in 1968 that “even more than the synagogue or the lodge, became the meeting place and the forum of the Jewish community in America between 1888 and the early 1920s.”
The Yiddish theater was a new phenomenon in Jewish life. It came into being in 1876 in Iasi, Romania, and arrived in New York six years later. This novel form of entertainment quickly took hold; within less than a decade, New York turned into the undisputed world capital of the Yiddish stage. Supported by a constantly growing Yiddish-speaking immigrant population (nearly 3.5 million Jews settled in the United States between 1881 and 1925), the New York Yiddish rialto was brimming with energy. It produced celebrated stars, generated a wealth of dramatic material, and presented a rich spectrum of productions ranging from sentimental melodramas and quasi-historical operettas to sophisticated experiments inspired by the latest trends of the European, particularly the Russian, stage.
Although always in the hands of private entrepreneurs the American Yiddish theater was a genuine people’s institution insofar as its appeal was not limited to any one socioeconomic group. It was attended by rich and poor, educated and illiterate, observant and free-thinking. Statistical data attests to its popularity. In 1927, two years after mass immigration had reached a virtual halt, there were 24 Yiddish theaters across America, 11 of them in New York, 4 in Chicago, 3 in Philadelphia, and 1 each in Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, and St. Louis. Some 10 years later, during the 1937-1938 season, when the Yiddish theater in America was well past its prime, it was estimated that 1.75 million tickets to Yiddish shows were sold in New York City alone. Such sales meant that every Yiddish-speaking adult in the city saw an average of more than three Yiddish shows per year, an impressive figure unmatched by any other ethnic group in America.
In order to understand the development of the Yiddish theater in the United States, however, it is imperative to consider its East European roots. Professional entertainment, even on a modest scale, was introduced into Jewish life only after secularization and urbanization had begun to change traditional Jewish life. Music was the only performing art for which Jews could boast of having skilled personnel. Music also provoked the least protest because of its nonrepresentational character. Hence, it was only natural that the earliest modern Jewish performers were itinerant minstrels. The first such group, the Broder Zinger, originated, as its name indicates, in the Polish town of Brody. By the mid-nineteenth century, its members began to travel across the towns and villages of Eastern Europe, presenting their comic songs and ballads to working-class audiences. As this kind of entertainment became popular, the number of such musicians increased. Some began to introduce bits of dialogue and to use some makeup and props to add continuity and dramatic flavor to their musical numbers.
These rudimentary theatrics finally evolved into a cohesive, albeit crude, performance in 1876, when Abraham Goldfaden (1840–1908), a Russian intellectual known for his popular tunes and lyrics, joined forces with Israel Gradner, a Broder singer performing in a Jassy tavern on the eve of the Russo- Turkish War. Goldfaden imposed a simple dramatic framework on Gradner’s musical material and created a genre that has been compared to Italian commedia dell’arte because it combined a fixed scenario with improvised dialogue and stage business. The successful Goldfaden enlarged the troupe and began to produce full-fledged musical plays, some of which—The Witch (1879), The Two Kuni Lemls (1880) and Shulamith (1880)—have become classics of the Jewish stage and have been frequently revived in the original as well as in Hebrew and English translations. Known as the Father of the Yiddish Theater, Goldfaden was a man of many talents who produced, wrote, composed, directed, and designed the sets of his own productions. However, in a world of wandering troupes with little regard for copyright laws, he also suffered from his own phenomenal success: actors who were initiated into the stage by him, including Gradner, frequently opted to leave the master’s majestic rule and to found their own competing traveling companies whose main repertoire consisted of Goldfaden’s original plays.
In 1883, following the assassination of Czar Alexander II, the Russian government proclaimed a series of anti-Jewish laws, including the prohibition of Yiddish theatrical productions, throughout the Russian empire. Because anti-Semitism and the depressed economic conditions that afflicted Jewish communities in other East European countries were not conducive to theatrical activity, the young actors and fledgling playwrights of the new Yiddish stage joined the great migration to the West. London became the new, though temporary, center of the Yiddish stage.
Unfortunately, the poor immigrant community of the East End could not support this influx of Jewish thespians. The latter were also hampered by the fierce opposition of the Anglo-Jewish establishment and by the strict fire-safety rules of the municipal authorities. The freedom to flourish without such constraints was to be found in the Golden Land, particularly in New York, soon to become the largest Jewish urban center in the world.
EDNA NAHSHON is assistant professor of Hebrew at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She is the author of Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Art and Politics of the Artef, 1925-1940 (Greenwood, 1998). Dr. Nahshon has contributed entries to the American National Biography, theEncyclopedia of the Modern Middle East, and written the entry on Yiddish theater for Jewish American History and Culture. Her work was included in Yiddish Language and Culture, Then and Now. She is currently the historical adviser to the television project, "The Life and Death of the Federal Theatre" produced by the Educational Film Center and Multi-Media Consultants. Dr. Nahshon studied at Tel Aviv University and Columbia University. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University. She is an Editorial Board Member of All About Jewish Theater.
The Yiddish theater was a new phenomenon in Jewish life. It came into being in 1876 in Iasi, Romania, and arrived in New York six years later. This novel form of entertainment quickly took hold; within less than a decade, New York turned into the undisputed world capital of the Yiddish stage. Supported by a constantly growing Yiddish-speaking immigrant population (nearly 3.5 million Jews settled in the United States between 1881 and 1925), the New York Yiddish rialto was brimming with energy. It produced celebrated stars, generated a wealth of dramatic material, and presented a rich spectrum of productions ranging from sentimental melodramas and quasi-historical operettas to sophisticated experiments inspired by the latest trends of the European, particularly the Russian, stage.
Although always in the hands of private entrepreneurs the American Yiddish theater was a genuine people’s institution insofar as its appeal was not limited to any one socioeconomic group. It was attended by rich and poor, educated and illiterate, observant and free-thinking. Statistical data attests to its popularity. In 1927, two years after mass immigration had reached a virtual halt, there were 24 Yiddish theaters across America, 11 of them in New York, 4 in Chicago, 3 in Philadelphia, and 1 each in Baltimore, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, and St. Louis. Some 10 years later, during the 1937-1938 season, when the Yiddish theater in America was well past its prime, it was estimated that 1.75 million tickets to Yiddish shows were sold in New York City alone. Such sales meant that every Yiddish-speaking adult in the city saw an average of more than three Yiddish shows per year, an impressive figure unmatched by any other ethnic group in America.
In order to understand the development of the Yiddish theater in the United States, however, it is imperative to consider its East European roots. Professional entertainment, even on a modest scale, was introduced into Jewish life only after secularization and urbanization had begun to change traditional Jewish life. Music was the only performing art for which Jews could boast of having skilled personnel. Music also provoked the least protest because of its nonrepresentational character. Hence, it was only natural that the earliest modern Jewish performers were itinerant minstrels. The first such group, the Broder Zinger, originated, as its name indicates, in the Polish town of Brody. By the mid-nineteenth century, its members began to travel across the towns and villages of Eastern Europe, presenting their comic songs and ballads to working-class audiences. As this kind of entertainment became popular, the number of such musicians increased. Some began to introduce bits of dialogue and to use some makeup and props to add continuity and dramatic flavor to their musical numbers.
These rudimentary theatrics finally evolved into a cohesive, albeit crude, performance in 1876, when Abraham Goldfaden (1840–1908), a Russian intellectual known for his popular tunes and lyrics, joined forces with Israel Gradner, a Broder singer performing in a Jassy tavern on the eve of the Russo- Turkish War. Goldfaden imposed a simple dramatic framework on Gradner’s musical material and created a genre that has been compared to Italian commedia dell’arte because it combined a fixed scenario with improvised dialogue and stage business. The successful Goldfaden enlarged the troupe and began to produce full-fledged musical plays, some of which—The Witch (1879), The Two Kuni Lemls (1880) and Shulamith (1880)—have become classics of the Jewish stage and have been frequently revived in the original as well as in Hebrew and English translations. Known as the Father of the Yiddish Theater, Goldfaden was a man of many talents who produced, wrote, composed, directed, and designed the sets of his own productions. However, in a world of wandering troupes with little regard for copyright laws, he also suffered from his own phenomenal success: actors who were initiated into the stage by him, including Gradner, frequently opted to leave the master’s majestic rule and to found their own competing traveling companies whose main repertoire consisted of Goldfaden’s original plays.
In 1883, following the assassination of Czar Alexander II, the Russian government proclaimed a series of anti-Jewish laws, including the prohibition of Yiddish theatrical productions, throughout the Russian empire. Because anti-Semitism and the depressed economic conditions that afflicted Jewish communities in other East European countries were not conducive to theatrical activity, the young actors and fledgling playwrights of the new Yiddish stage joined the great migration to the West. London became the new, though temporary, center of the Yiddish stage.
Unfortunately, the poor immigrant community of the East End could not support this influx of Jewish thespians. The latter were also hampered by the fierce opposition of the Anglo-Jewish establishment and by the strict fire-safety rules of the municipal authorities. The freedom to flourish without such constraints was to be found in the Golden Land, particularly in New York, soon to become the largest Jewish urban center in the world.
EDNA NAHSHON is assistant professor of Hebrew at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She is the author of Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Art and Politics of the Artef, 1925-1940 (Greenwood, 1998). Dr. Nahshon has contributed entries to the American National Biography, theEncyclopedia of the Modern Middle East, and written the entry on Yiddish theater for Jewish American History and Culture. Her work was included in Yiddish Language and Culture, Then and Now. She is currently the historical adviser to the television project, "The Life and Death of the Federal Theatre" produced by the Educational Film Center and Multi-Media Consultants. Dr. Nahshon studied at Tel Aviv University and Columbia University. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies from New York University. She is an Editorial Board Member of All About Jewish Theater.