The cover of the Polish-Jewish illustrated periodical from March 1926 that featured an image from the third act of S.Y. Ansky'sThe Dybbukas it was performed in Hebrew by Habimah Theater in Warsaw. In 1917, Ansky discussed a first staging of the play…

A manuscript of a comic operetta that was staged in Nahum Lipovski's People's Theater before the advent of Independent Poland. The manuscript has several stamps attesting to the permission for its performance granted by the Russian government.…

This is a membership card of Kalmen Ebel, a performer active in the Yiddish theater in the 1920s. The union was established in 1919, in the wake of the protection of minorities worked into the post-WWI Treaty of Versailles. "It was understood not…

A program for a performance of an operetta calledA Happy Night adapted in Yiddish (source unknown). It featured the actressBetty (nee Borisova)Kompanyets Rabinovitsh (b.1900), Aharon Poliakov (b.1891), and Leon Rabinovitsh (1886-1960).

YIVO grew the holdings of their Theater Museum Collection into a virtual treasure trove of historical information. It grew to include items from Yiddish-language performance that predate the establishment of the Yiddish theater as a modern form, as…

This is an English-language program from a visit from Yiddish Band Company, a cabaret group based in Warsaw. The troupe visited New York in 1938. The detailed program, one of the only surviving of its kind, gives us insight into its performances,…

Dovid Herman was born in Warsaw, Poland, into a well-off Hasidic family. His father was an antiques dealer. He studied in religious primary school and in synagogue study hall, but at the age of fifteen he interrupted his studies and became an…

During the shloshimfollowing the death of Esther-Rachel Kaminska, her daughter Ida and her Ida's husband Zygmunt Turkov worked to create a museum in the apartment of the late actress. Theshloshim(literally,thirty) are days of mourning reserved for…