The Dissolution of New York's Yiddish Theatrical Museum (1927)
Above:
This is a letter of gratitude Max Weinreich wrote to Jacob Shatzky in 1927 for materials Shatzky sent to him for the Theater Museum. In the letter, Weinreich also alludes to other materials that Shatzky had not yet sent. He also refers to the dissolution of the theater museum in New York City.
A Published Letter to the Founders of the Yiddish Theatrical Museum of New York
This letter is included in the only volume of documents Shatzky managed to publish under the rubric of the Yiddish Theatrical Museum. "Goldfaden Book" included a meticulously edited collection of documents associated with the theater's first days under the stewardship of Goldfaden. A review of his work from the Romanian press published in 1877, bits of Goldfaden's autobiography that were published in various Yiddish periodicals, rare by 1926, around the turn-of-the-century. Shatzky's keen knowledge of historical sources allowed him to pull together these documents, translate them to Yiddish when necessary. With them, he canonized Goldfaden as the central figure in the theater's development. The letter, written by Moyshe Teplitski, an actor who acted under Goldfaden's direction, reflects Shatsky's aspirations to shore up the prestige of Yiddish culture.
The Yiddish Theatrical Museum (1926)
Yiddish Theater Museum
One of the only surviving documents from the Yiddish Theatrical Museum of New York City and the only one revealing the address of its headquarters. A letter from Jacob Shtazky calling for materials for a publication to be put out by the Yiddish Theatrical Museum in New York. Shatzky explains in his letter that a monthly magazine called "Mask" will include historical documents relating to the Yiddish theater. The board of the museum listed on the right include Mark Schweid (see gallery on American Yiddish Theater after 1926) and others, mostly historians and former actors of the Yiddish stage. There is no evidence that an edition of the magazine was ever published.
Letter to Chaim Grade from American Visitor
Grade, Chaim
Letter to Yiddish writer Chaim Grade, a leading member of the Yung Vilne (Young Vilna) literary group, from B. Hariton, a friend in New York who had recently visited the city.
September 29, 1938
Dear Comrade Reb Chaim Grade!
You will please forgive me a thousand times for not writing until now. It’s quite possible that by now you have forgotten even the existence of such a person in the world. But I hope that this short letter will remind you that such a person definitely exists, in a province near New York, with the assurance that I have not forgotten you.
Our conversation in the hotel and also when we were strolling through the Vilna streets and allies was very special for me. Ay! At times I miss you!...
It took me several weeks to rouse myself from my so-called “trip” (don’t read trip-er) and could put aside the work in my school. Today, I’ve come from New York, where I spent five days. On Saturday night, I met with a group from our “Yunge” (how long will they call themselves young?). I told them of the wonders of the Jerusalem of Lithuania. Every one of them asked how Grade, [Abraham] Sutzkever, [Elkhonen] Vogler, Rajzel Zychlinsky and others are doing. Go tell them, those big city suckers! Glantz [Aaron Glanz-Leyeles] talked with me a great deal about you and Sutzkever; he’s a big fan of yours.
Nu, permit me to cut this letter a little bit short. Write me a proper letter, about yourself and the other “boys.”
I assure you that I won’t remain in your debt. [He will write back.]
Tell Shmerke [Kaczerginski] that in the next few days I will write him a separate letter.
Warm regards to everyone, our older comrades [Zalmen] Reyzen, [Max] Weinreich, Zelig Kalmanovitch, and the entire Young Vilna group with their inspirations and those who inspired me…. Shulke Reyzen, [Dovid] Kaplan-Kaplanski, and all Vilna, in general.
More about me in the next letter.
In friendship,
Yours
B. Tz. Hariton [Schenectady]
Hariton, B. Z.
Lithuanian Central State Archives
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
EBYVOC
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
1938
Yiddish
Letter
ya-rg-8000-ap01-f05_60
Mark Schweid and the founding of the Bronx Art Theatre (1930)
Mark Schweid (1891-1969) was one of the most prolific figures to New York City's Yiddish theater and an important cultivator of art theater before going on to direct Yiddish movies.
The founding of "Our Theater" (Undzer Teater), 1923
The theater society Our Theater was founded in 1923 in New York City by such luminaries of the Yiddish theater as Peretz Hirshbein, H. Leivik, and Mendel Elkin. Their mandate was to create and sustain art theater, dramatic studios, and a peiodical, the latter of which was "Tealit," a journal that lasted from 1923 to 1924 and put out only five issues. Our Theater managed to sponsor three important liteary works of theater (1925-1926) included an ensemble production of <em>Day and Night (</em>discussed elsewhere in this gallery). The society and the theater both folded in 1926.
<em>All God's Chillun Got Wings</em> (<em>Shvartse Geto</em>), 1924
This item is a review by Zalmen Reyzen of the Vilna Troupe's adaptation of Eugene O' Neill's <em>All God's Chillun Got Wings, </em>an Expressionist play about miscegenation inspired from an old negro spiritual. Arguably one of O'Neill's most controversial of plays, it starred Paul Robeson in the premiere, in which he portrayed the black husband of an abusive white woman, who, resenting her husband's skin color, destroys his promising career as a lawyer.
<em>Love and Eros</em>, Anton Wildgans
<em>Love and Eros</em> is a four-act play by the Austrian playwright and poet Anton Wildgans (1881-1932). Wildgans’ work mingles expressionism with a focus on daily life.
Sambatyon Cabaret Theater
<span>Sambatyon was established in Vilna</span><span> in 1926 but moved to Warsaw several months later. It was made up exclusively of professional performers—Yitskhok Feld, Khane Grosberg (1900–?), Khane Levin </span><span>(1900–1969), Khayim Sandler, and others—under the direction of the actor and director Yitskhok Nożyk (1889–?), who also wrote much of the material; other writers included Der Tunkeler, Der Lustiker Pesimist (Yosef Shimen Goldshteyn), Moyshe Nudelman, S. Kornteyer (189?–194?), and Bontshe (Avrom Rozenfeld; 1884–1941/42). Nożyk aimed to offer a popular audience an alternative to American Yiddish and European operetta </span><a href="http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Operetta"></a><span>fare, staging well-known Yiddish songs and writing comical and melodramatic sketches. But Sambatyon also performed more literary and “experimental” material; for several months, the poet Yisroel Shtern</span><a href="http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Shtern_Yisroel"></a><span> was its literary director. Under various names and with varying personnel, the company performed in Warsaw and toured Poland until the end of 1929, when it disbanded.</span>
Variety Shows or KLEYNKUNST
The Vilna Troupe in New York with <em>The Dybbuk</em>, 1926
While <em>The Dybbuk</em> would be translated into many languages, its greatest success was on the Yiddish-language stage. During the Vilner Troupe's tour across Europe between 1922 and 1927, it remained the pinnacle of their repertoire. On seeing the Vilna Troupe's Dybbuk performance in Vienna, famous theater director Max Reinhardt said, "Das ist nicht theater, das ist ein Gottes Dienst." On September 1, 1921, the play had its American premiere in the New York Yiddish Art Theatre of Maurice Schwartz. Celia Adler, Bar Galilee, Schwartz, and Julius Adler appeared as Leah, Khanan, Azriel, and the Messenger. It ran for several months.
The Dybbuk Tours Europe
This article (undated) is a first-person acount by the director Dovid Herman of his experience directing The Dybbuk in Oslo, Norway. In 1927, the actor and theater pioneer Agnes Mowinckel (1875-1963), ran the Balkongen Theater, a short-lived avant-garde theater located in Oslo. After attending a performance of The Dybbuk in Berlin Mowinckel traveled to Poland to track down Herman and invite him to direct a version of The Dybbuk, presumably in Norwegian. The Norwegian actress and singer Ragnihold Caroline Monrad (1879-1950) played the lead role of Leah. The article does not specify the time of this performance. Since the Balkongen Theater lasted on two years—from 1927-1928—we know that sometime during these two years Herman introduced The Dybbuk to Norwegian audiences!
The Azazel Cabaret Theater
It is unclear when the Azazel Cabaret Theater was founded, with some historical sources claiming that it was founded as early as 1918. It was the brainchild of the cabaret performers Ola Lilit (1906-) and her husband Władysłav Godik (1906-1980). The Biblical word "Azazel" refers to the destination of the goat released into the desert on Yom Kippur by the High Priest. The second goat is sacrificed. But the word Azazel is also the name of a fallen angel (mentioned in the Book of Enoch) where it is written in Chapter 10 verse 8: "<span><span>The whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him is ascribed all sin." Eventually, Lilit and Godik settled in the Unites States. The celebrated actor </span></span>Josef Strugacz also acted and directed in Azazel. He was born in Odessa in 1893, the son and grandson of cantors and sang in synagogue choirs but also attended gymnasium and acted in Russian amateur theater groups. <br /><br /><br /><span><span>Azazel made use of texts by Peretz and Sholem Aleichem </span><span>as well as contemporary material written by Moyshe Broderzon, Itsik Manger, Alter Kacyzne, </span><span>Y. M. Nayman, Der Tunkeler (Yoysef Tunkel</span><a href="http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Tunkel_Yoysef" title="Tunkel, Yoysef"></a><span>), Yankev Oberzhanek (1891–1943), and Moyshe Nudelman (1905–?). The cabaret quickly became very popular, especially among artists and intellectuals, Jewish and occasionally Polish as well. Particularly celebrated was a number called the “Azazel-Shimmy,” by Broderzon and Kon, and Godik’s bagel-seller skit. The latter was related to efforts by Warsaw police to rid the streets of unlicensed bagel vendors. By 1927, however, financial difficulties forced the company to go on tour and to disband soon after. </span></span>
Esther-Rachel Kaminska, Yiddish Actor Extraordinaire
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Perhaps Esther-Rachel's greatest cultural significance was as a pioneer of literary Yiddish theater. In 1905, for instance, when official restrictions waned, she began to perform a new kind of play from the artistic repertoire championed by the Warsaw-based herald of literary Yiddish, Y. L. Peretz (1852-1915). Kaminska staged dramatic works by the most literary dramatists of her day, including Sholem Aleichem (1859-1915), Jacob Gordin, David Pinsky (1872-1959), and the Polish-Jewish writer-director Mark Arnsteyn (Arnsztejn) (1879-1943). She also performed some of the earliest translations into Yiddish of such writers as Maxim Gorky (1868-1936), Stanisław Przybyszewski (1868-1927), and Henryk Ibsen (1828-1906). </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In 1907, with the collaboration of Arnsteyn, Esther-Rachel's husband, Avrom-Yitskhok Kaminski, founded the Literary Troupe. This was the first company to turn away from the classics of the operetta composer Avrom Goldfaden, who had laid the theater's cornerstone, and to dedicate itself to the new literary repertoire. The company toured the Russian Empire from 1908 to 1909; its two engagements in St. Petersburg were acclaimed in the Russian liberal press. According to her daughter, Ida, Esther-Rachel eschewed the pathos and posing of many of her contemporaries who were nurtured on the "great repertoire." Instead, she favored acting that was "natural and simple." Performances in the eponymous matriarch roles like Mirele (by Gordin) Serkele (by Ettinger), and Mother Courage (by Bertolt Brecht) led to her canonization by adoring audiences as "Di Mame Ester-Rokhl," the mother of the Yiddish theater.</span></p>
Bas Sheva
<em>Bas Sheva</em> is a four-character opera composed by Henech Kon with a libretto by Moyshe Broderzon. It focuses on the relationship between King David and his desire for Bath Sheba, married when he falls in love with her at first sight (in the Book of Samuel 2). Their son Solomon later rises to be king after David and builds the Temple in Jerusalem. But David and Bas Sheva have a baby before Solomon that dies at childbirth, a punishment for David's sin of sending Bas Sheva's husband to the front lines of battle--to certain death--in order to free her to become his wife. The opera explores this lesser-known narrative, especially through the eyes of Bas Sheva's character.<br /><br /><em>Dovid un Bas Sheva</em> premiered on May 24, 1924 at the Kaminska Theater in Warsaw under the direction of Dovid Herman. Lacking strings and other elements that would give it its full operatic dimension--nothwithstanding its cast of only four--Kon played the piano sang base and a chamber version of the Shnur Choir participated. In <em>Literarishe bleter, </em>Alter Kacyzne declared that the opera achieved "a great purity of expression."
Translations on the American Yiddish Art Stage
Mark Arnshteyn (1879-1943)
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Playwright and theater director Mark Arnshteyn was celebrated in both the Polish and Yiddish-language theater worlds. He was most influential in the world of entertainment with his play </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Singers</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, which was the model for the first American talkie, Samuel Raphaelson's (1894-1983) </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Jazz Singer</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the Polish world, he used the pseudonym Andrzej Marek. His extended family included a Yiddish actress, Roze Arnshteyn, and a Polish poet, Franciszka Arnsztajnowa. He was educated in both Jewish and Polish schools and, at an early age, began publishing literature and criticism in both the Yiddish and Polish press. A disciple of Stanisław Przybyszewski (1868-1927), considered the “high priest” of Polish modernism, Arnshteyn launched his theater career by writing Polish plays on Jewish themes for the Warsaw stage. These included </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Wieczna bajka</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Eternal Story</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">; 1901), a one-act drama about working-class life; and the popular </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Pieśniarze </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Singers</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">; 1902), based on the legendary life of a nineteenth-century Vilna cantor said to have been destroyed by his success on the Warsaw opera stage. Arnshteyn translated these plays into Yiddish respectively titled </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Dos eybike lid </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Eternal Song</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">) and </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Der vilner balebesl</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Little Vilna Householder</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">). They were frequently staged by Yiddish companies throughout the world. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Inspired by a group of theater reformers centered around the Yiddish writer Y. L. Peretz (1852-1915), Arnshteyn in 1905 became the first modern stage director of Yiddish theater. He worked with the Esther-Rachel Kaminska Troupe in its early efforts at “literary” theater as well as with groups of young amateurs who laid the foundations for Yiddish dramatic theater during the interwar period. In those years, Arnshteyn was also a pioneer in the Polish film industry, directing features based on Yiddish dramatic productions. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Between 1912 and 1924, Arnshteyn directed and wrote for Yiddish theater in Russia, England, and the Americas. Returning to Poland, he translated and directed a number of celebrated Yiddish plays for the Polish stage, including S. An-ski’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Der dibek</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Dybbuk</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">) in 1925 and H. Leivik’s (1880-1962) </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Der goylem</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Golem</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">) in 1928. The latter, produced in the Warsaw Circus Arena, marked the first use of a circular stage in the history of Polish theater. Though critically acclaimed, these productions inspired controversy, including accusations in the Yiddish press that they undermined Yiddish theater and encouraged Jewish assimilation. Apparently stung by these accusations, Arnshteyn withdrew to Łódź, where he worked during the 1930s. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Arnshteyn excelled with the nonverbal elements of stagecraft: the spectacular and the painterly. His career was unique among Polish Jewish artists for its devotion to works in both Yiddish and Polish. His dream, Arnshteyn declared, was to build a bridge between Polish and Jewish societies on the basis of dramatic art.</span></p>
<br />
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Information pulled from Michael Steinlauf’s “Polish-Jewish Theater: The Case of Mark Arnshteyn.”</span></p>
<em>The Dybbuk</em> on the Polish Stage (1925)
The Polish premiere of <em>The Dybbuk</em> was less well-received than the Yiddish version, though this seemed to be largely due to the fact that by 1925, the theatre-going community was already well- or overly-saturated with the production. In <em>Der Moment</em>, the theater critic known as Karlinius found it to be significant at least from the Jewish perspective - because he saw it as the first serious Jewish production on the Polish stage that calls into question Polish stereotypes of Jewish characters - and in fact says at one point that the play choice is not so important as the dynamic staging and characterization of Jews it offers, in which Jews "cease to be merely ethnographic or exotic." Here, the critic Jakub Appenszlak (later, the accomplished Polish-Jewish writer), also reviewed the production favorably in the Polish-language Jewish periodical, <em>Nowi Preszglad</em>.
Ararat
Young Theater (Yung Teater)
<strong>Young Theater</strong> was an experimental studio founded by Michał Weichert (see directors) in Warsaw in 1929 to teach theater to budding actors with working-class backgrounds. Weichert experimented with the staging of its works, especially in decentralizing it. He organized "stages" throughout the hall or venue and among audience members. He used lighting to indicated which stage the audience should pay attention to at a given time.<br /><br />Below is an interview with Weichert clipped from an unidentified Soviet Yiddish newspaper in 1929. The occasion of his visit was a theater festival in Moscwo in which he and his troupe participated.
Habimah's <em>The Dybbuk</em> in Hebrew
The Habimah theater troupe mounted their version of <em>The Dybbuk</em> in their resident city of Moscow in 1922, two years after its Yiddish-language premiere. The Hebrew poet Hayim Nachman Bialik translated it.<br /><br />When first approached to do the translation, Bialik was reluctanct. On reading The Dybbuk, he found that it was not in keeping with the spirit of building a new highbrow text-based culture that believed and sought himself to pursue. Instead, he told An-ski, the play made him out to be a garbage collector "who collects scraps of folklore and peices them together." Perhaps out of a sense of regret for his harsh public criticism of An-ski, Bialik agreed to to do the translation in 1916. He drew from Yiddish and Russian versions of the play and so it diverges, although minimally, from the Yiddish version. An-ski loved the translation. When Bialik observed rehearsal of the play by Habimah, he changed his mind about it, finding it to be wonderful. Meanwhile, the Moscow Art Theater delate the staging of <em>The Dybbuk </em>because they found it too sad fo an audience that sought out entertainment and distraction during the instability brought on by the Revolution. The Russian Revolution would force Stanislavsky to abandon the project entirely. <br /><br />The preeminent Russian director Yevgeny Vakhtangov (1883-1922) directed the production (even though he did not speak Hebrew) with the assistance of the Polish-Yiddish theater director Marek Arnshteyn. The Russian-Jewish composer Yoel Engel composed the music.
Ida and Zygmunt Donate the Theater Museum to YIVO in Vilna (1927)
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The collections of the Esther-Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum grew considerably in a very short time. In 1927, Ida and Zygmunt donated the museum to YIVO (then known as the Yiddish Scientific Institute and located in Vilna). This led to Yiddish theater becoming one of the institute's important priorities. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Max Weinreich (1894-1969), one of YIVO's founders, sought to expand the Esther-Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum Collection by soliciting donations of materials from associates around the world, as well as from the general public. In particular, Weinreich sought out ephemera collected by Jacob Shatzky (1893-1956) to the Yiddish Theatrical Museum that he had established a year earlier in New York. Among the items he sent was the letter Shatzky wrote to potential contributors to his soon-defunct museum on "Yiddish Theatrical Museum" letterhead. Weinreich actively cultivated the growth of the museum until the outbreak of World War II. <br /><br />Above:<br /></span>This is an undated part of an inventory of the items in the museum. In a 1929 article she published in YIVO's inhouse newspaper <em>Yedies</em>, the theater museum's archivist, Fanny Epstein, boasted an inventory of 1,200 items, of which 400 had been placed on exhibit. The museum would continue expanding over the course of the following ten years, until the outbreak of the war.</p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;"> </span></p>
Cyankali, 1931
<span style="font-weight: 400;">First performed in its original German in the Berlin Lessing Theatre by a group of young actors, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cyankali</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> became one of the most controversial plays of the 1920’s. Its author, Friedrich Wolf, an Expressionist playwright and medical doctor,wrote the play to protest the law against abortion. In 1928, Wolf joined the Communist Party and published a volume of essays entitled </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Art as a Weapon</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, and Cyankali was the first of them. The play's production led to Wolf’s arrest and subsequently caused a sensation from New York to Tokyo and from Moscow to Paris. And, while the play was outlawed in some countries, </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Cyankali</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> was produced in Poland in both Polish and Yiddish, the Yiddish-language version being produced by the writer and director Moyshe Lipman.</span>
Michał Weichert (Mikhl Vaykhert, 1890-1967)
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Michał Weichert (Mikhl Vaykhert, pictured in the above article on the right) was a theater director, historian, critic, and communal activist. Born in Podhajce in eastern Galicia and raised in Stanisławów, Weichert received his education at heder and in Polish schools. He attended law and humanities programs at universities in Lwów, Vienna (receiving his J.D. in 1916), and Berlin; in the latter city, he studied avant-garde theater with the preeminent German director Max Reinhardt. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In 1918, Weichert settled in Warsaw. Weichert directed plays for leading Yiddish dramatic companies, including the Vilner Trupe. Among his productions were his own dramatization of Sholem Asch’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Sanctification of the Name,</span></i> <i><span style="font-weight: 400;">1928 </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Kiddush ha-Shem</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">), </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Shylock </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Shaylok</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, 1929), Arn Zeitlin’s contemporary historical drama </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">City of Jews</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Yidn-shtot</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, 1929), and Moyshe Lifshits’s comedy </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">A Tale of Hershele Ostropolyer </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">A mayse mit Hershele Ostropolyer</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, 1930). Focusing on Jewish themes, Weichert’s productions were staged in an epic style that used lighting, music, and stage design to create a coherent theatrical vision. Frequent collaborators were the composer Henekh Kon (1890-1972) and the visionary stage designer Władisław Weintraub (1891-1942) (pictured left). </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In the 1920s, Weichert organizeda theater technium in Warsaw. The graduates, idealistic youth committed to political activism and experimental art, became the core of Yung-teater (Young Theater), which Weichert directed from 1932 to 1939. Yung-teater dramatized favorite themes of the international Left, including the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti and the Scottsboro trial. Weichert also produced plays based on Yiddish literary works that were acclaimed in the Yiddish and Polish press for their energy and innovation. Often staged in tight spaces, the productions featured sequences of rapidly changing scenes, briefly illuminated, sometimes simultaneously, and staged on every side of the audience. Through these techniques, the audience was to be provoked to abandon neutrality and act on the plays’ lessons. The company came under continuous government pressure to alter its activist repertoire; in 1937, it was forced to move to Vilna and change its name to Nay-teater (New Theater), under which it performed until 1939.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In an interview published in the newspaper , Weichert commented thus on his acting studio:</span></p>
<p><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">In 1929, I renewed the activity of my drama school that had existed from 1922-24, a school that had instructed a gallery of distinguished actors. Thew new studio took on as its task not only prepare actors for Yiddish theater but also a specific Yiddish artistic approach . I assembled thirty young people, mostly working-class. For a three-year period with fanatical devotion, we studied diverse theatrical studies. </span></i></p>
<p> </p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Information pulled from Jeffrey Veidlinger’s “From Boston to Mississippi” in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Eds. Joel Berkowitz and Barbara Henry.</span></p>
Jakub Rotbaum (Yankev Rotboym), 1901-1994
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Rotbaum, Jewish theatrical director and painter, was born in Wroclaw. He was the older brother to Lia (Lisa) Rotbaum, a choreographer and director whose name also recurs in the programs of the Esther-Rokhl Kaminska Collection. After high school, he attended the School of Decorative Arts, The School of Fine Arts and the Film School in Warsaw. In 1923, he went to Berlin to study painting and met with the Vakhtangov Theatre. He made his directorial debut in 1925, acting as an assistant director in Warsaw’s Azazel cabaret theater, and the following year "The Post Office" also in Warsaw. In 1928, Rotbaum was commissioned by a private Jewish film producer from New York to direct a documentary film on Jewish life in the small towns and villages of Poland. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While in Moscow in the same year, Rotbaum completed drama studies and, in particular, focused on the workings and directing methods of the famous Soviet theatre of Meyerhold Tairow and Stanisławski. After returning from Moscow in 1929, Rotboym began his professional career staging Eugene O'Neill plays with the famed Vilna Troupe. During this time in Europe, many productions he directed were filled with dramatic conflicts that seemed to evolve from the sociopolitical themes of the day. In 1930, he directed the troupe in a number of successful productions including a Yiddish translation of </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">All God’s Chillun’ Got Wings </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">by Eugene O'Neill. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">From 1930 to 1938, Rotbaum devoted much time to his other passion, painting, and he organized exhibitions of his own work in many Polish cities (Warsaw, Łódź, Katowice, Lublin, Vilno, Kovno, Róvne, Gdańsk, and others). His work comprised characteristic portraits: Jewish, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, peasant-types and a large collection of theatrical portraits (the majority from the Jewish theatre), such as that of Itzik Manger (1901-1969) and Nahum Zemach, founder of "Habima”, Shlomo Mikhoels (1890-1948) and many others. Throughout his life, Rotbaum continued to paint the Jewish faces he remembered from his youth; this work received numerous awards. </span></p>
<span style="font-weight: 400;">In 1938, Jakub Rotbaum directed a few Yiddish shows at the then avant-garde Jewish theater P. I. A. T., or </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Parizer yidisher avant garde Teater</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. In 1940 he was invited by Yiddish great Maurice Schwartz to direct his Yiddish Art Theatre troupe in three plays: Sholem Aleichem's </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Sender Blank</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, Sholem Asch’s </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Uncle Moses </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Onkl Mozes</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">), and Bergelson's </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">We Want to Live</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> (</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Mir viln lebn</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">).</span>
c. 1933
Kultur lige stamps
Culture
Fundraising stamps for the Kultur-lige organization
c 1930
<strong>Ida Kaminska and Zymunt Turkov donate the Ester-Rokhl Kaminska Theater Museum to the newly-established YIVO Institute in Vilna by 1927.</strong>
Mississippi, 1935
Commissioned by the avant-garde director Michal Weichert, Leib Malach's <em>Mississippi</em> recounts the story of the "Scottsboro Boys" of Alabama, falsely accused of rape in 1931.First staged in Warsaw in 1935, Weichert staged the action among theater-goers throughout the theater space on two-level platforms that emphasized the power dynamic between whites and blacks in America. Spotlights were used to shift the action…and even parallel conversations took place on different sides of the performance space.<br /><br />Although devoid of any Jewish themes, Mississippi is, nonetheless, an original Yiddish play. It was written by L. Malakh (Leybl Zaltsman, 1894-1936), a poet and playwright. Born to a Hasidic father, Malakh left his home province of Radom and eventually reached Warsaw before working as a wallpaper hanger, a baker's apprentice, and painter. He eventually began publishing poetry. Malakh's plays were produced in New York and in Argentina where he was active in the 1920s. There, he wrote a controversial play about female prostitution and another play, T<em>he Maid of Ludmir</em>, a play about <span>Hannah Rochel Verbermacher, famous as the only woman in the three-hundred-year history of Hasidism to function as a rebbe—or charismatic leader—in her own right. <em>The Maid of Ludmir</em> was mounted successfully. Besides <em>Mississippi </em>and <em>The Maid of Ludmir</em>, Malakh gained a literary reputation for his drama <em>The Dregs </em>(<em>Opfal</em>) about Warsaw's Jewish underworld and his controversial depiction of a brothel in Argentina (in <em>Ibergus</em>) that publicly criticized and provoked the lords of the prostitution industry in Buenos Aires. </span><br /><br /><em>Mississippi w</em>as staged in Warsaw in early 1935 and hundreds of times thereafter at various theaters in Poland, Israel, and the Americas. While the Scottsboro Trial of 1928 played out in the state of Alabama, the playwright thought it best to set the play in Mississippi, a name still closely associated with the American South. A direct reference to The Scottsboro Boys might have been considered a flagrant reference to a cause that was then embraced by the International Left and a red flag on the part of Polish authorities. Henoch Kon composed original music for the production. <br /><br /><br />Reviewing the play in <em>Literarishe Bleter</em>, Nakhmen Mayzel wrote, "<em>L. Malakhs succeeds in representing a piece of history in an interesting play, and... invokes the tragedy of the cursed negro question in America and through it, the entirety of the cruelty, the lyingness (lignershkayt), and hypocrisy of the bourgeois society with its "morals" and "ethics" which it uses against an entire race."</em>
<strong>He</strong>,<strong> She, and I: An Erotic, Futuristic, Cubist Play, A Kaleidoscope in One Act </strong>by Korntayer, theater program
A program for an evening that featured a production of <strong>Fishke the Lame</strong>, an adaptation of the nineteenth-century novel by Mendele Moykher-Seforim, and <strong>He, She, and I </strong>by a playwright, operetta-composer, and dramaturg known only as S. Korntayer. Active in the literary Yiddish theater in the 1920s and 1930s, Korntayer and his family were killed by the Nazis and most of his work was unpublished and lost in the chaos of war. Korntayer translated Shakespeare's <strong>Othello</strong> for the Yiddish stage and also wrote original work (including the one showcased here) for various Yiddish theater companies. A suriving copy of Korntayer's <strong>He, She, and I</strong> has not yet been recovered, but its title points to the experimental orientation of the theater. This production was staged in the People's Theater in Vilna.
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Yiddish
document
<strong>THE KETTLE: the Satirical Theater Troupe of the Land of Israel, leaflet</strong>
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
1928
Hebrew
Box #79
Habimah's <em>The Dybbuk</em><em>,</em> on the cover of <em>Our Illustrated Review</em>
The cover of the Polish-Jewish illustrated periodical from March 1926 that featured an image from the third act of S.Y. Ansky's <em><strong>The Dybbuk</strong></em> as it was performed in Hebrew by Habimah Theater in Warsaw. In 1917, Ansky discussed a first staging of the play in Moscow by the famous Russian director Stanislavski but that idea collapsed under political forces. Ansky died suddlenly in 1920 in Warsaw, and within a month of death, The Vilna Troupe performed the play in Yiddish for the first time in Warsaw. Ansky had viewed a reading of the play, but never lived to see a full-blown production. In little time, it became a sensation, first in Yiddish, than in other languages and on stages throughout the world.
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1926
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Polish
<strong>Yiddish Theater in Russia before 1919. </strong>The Four Who Were Lost: Comic Operetta in 3 Acts by Dr. Soapbubble, c. 1914 and 1917.
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. Figures like Lipovski and Esther-Rokhl Kaminska were known for their ability to navigate government officials and secure permission to perform their shows.
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YIVO Institute of Jewish Research
1914, 1917
Yiddish and Russian
<strong>The Happy Night, </strong> program
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
The Golem
<p>"The Jewish Frankenstein," t<em>he Golem,</em> describes a rabbi in seventeenth-century Prague who creates a living statue to protect his community from harm. By the time Leivik wrote this play in 1921, he was living in the United States. He was born in Chervyen, Belarus, the oldest of nine children in a traditional home. Leivik joined the Jewish Bund in 1905 and was arrested in 1906 by the Russian authorities and sentenced to four years of forced labor and permanent exile in Siberia. He was smuggled out of Siberia and to America in 1913 where he wrote poetry and drama for several Yiddish dailies. The Golem was first staged in Hebrew in 1925 by Habimah in Moscow and some of the same participants put on a Yiddish version through the theater studio "Free Art" (Fraykunst), also in Moscow, in 1927.</p>
<p>The second professional production was produced in Polish in Lublin's City Theater using Mark Arnshteyn's translation.<em>The Golem</em> enjoyed most play during the interwar period in Polish in Poland. This production also played in Lodz (Municipal Theatre), Grodno, and Bialystok. In</p>
<p><span face="Arial" size="2" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">1928, for instance, it played Warsaw's Circus (a venue of 2500 seats) where it was </span><span face="Arial" size="2" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">performed twenty-six times.</span></p>
<p><span face="Arial" size="2" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">The third Polish production was by a Marek on 27 June 1928 in Lodz's Municipal Theatre, where the play was performed a long time with great success. Later the play in Polish also was performed in the municipal theatres of Grodno and Bialystok. </span><span face="Arial" size="2" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: small;">Featured here is a photograph of an unidentified theatrical production of the play and a review of MarK Arnshteyn (1879-1943)'s production. </span></p>
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Box92167.jpg
<strong>Membership card to the Professional Yiddish Actors' Union of Poland</strong>
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 simply as a guild, but as a "spiritual creative" ("gaystik sheferishn") organization. Exemplary of the creative struggles of the Jews in interwar Poland
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
1929
<strong>Guest appearance by the famous actors, Borisova , Poliakov and Rabinovitsh, program</strong>
A program for a performance of an operetta called <em>A Happy</em> Night adapted in Yiddish (source unknown). It featured the actress<em> </em>Betty (nee Borisova)Kompanyets Rabinovitsh (b.1900), Aharon Poliakov (b.1891), and Leon Rabinovitsh (1886-1960).
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Yiddish and Polish
The Theater Museum Collection as a Time Capsule of Jewish Life
<span style="font-weight: 400;">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 well as documents spanning a wide geographic range, including North America, Europe, South Africa, South America, and even Cairo, Egypt.<br /><br />Theater poster from a production of Shalom Asch's <em>Der gloybn</em> (Faith) in Argentina, 1925.<br /></span>
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
1925
Yiddishe Bande Troupe in NYC, advertisement
Songs
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, including skits that lamented and challenged the current political climate. A skit called “Two Nazis Smell a Plot” satirizes Nazi Germany while “VIENNA -Then-Now-???” laments the Anschluss or annexation of Austria by Hitler that took place the same year.
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Dovid Herman, director
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 activist socialist. From 1906, he was active in the realm of improving Yiddish theater which, through his work over the course of thirty years, he established at the highest artistic level. In 1903 he organized a drama circle which, in 1907, staged Peretz’s It’s Burning (S'brent) and Sister (Shvester), Sholem Aleichem’s Mazl tov, and Sholem Asch’s With the Current (Mitn shtrom). He was also involved with Hirshbeyn’s theater (1908) as a director and actor. For a time he lived in Vienna where he, alongside the director Egon Brekher, organized a troupe and staged the works of Dovid Pinski, Asch, and Peretz in German.
After returning to Russia, Herman, together with Peretz and Dr. A. Mukdoni, founded the first Yiddish drama school in Poland. Over the years 1907-1917, he was a teacher of Yiddish language and literature and Jewish history in a Polish Jewish high school in Warsaw. In later years, he directed a range of fine dramatic works. Herman was instrumental in staging An-ski's The Dybbuk. His direction of it later became a standard part of the repertoire of the Yiddish and Hebrew stage. He was also the founder and, for a time, the director of the revue theater “Azazel” in Warsaw. He became especially well-known for his interpretation of Peretz's The Golden Chain (Di Goldene keyt). Herman died in 1937. His wife donated his extensive personal archive to the YIVO Institute shortly after his death.
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Opening of the Esther-Rachel Kaminska Museum
<span style="font-weight: 400;">During the <em>shloshim</em> following 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. The <em>shloshim</em><em> (literally, </em>thirty) are days of mourning reserved for the living to accomplish study and good deeds for the sake of the safe journey of the recently deceased. According to an article published in the Yiddish daily <em>Der moment</em>, besides the photographs, costumes, and other ephemera that was part of Esther-Rachel's personal collection, Ida and Zygmunt also collected additional items from fellow actors. The article also notes that in the middle of the room stood the bed on which Esther-Rachel had died. Placed on it was the bronze death mask that was made of her face before she was buried.</span><br /><br />Above is the notice Ida and Zygmunt published in newspapers to attract visitors to the museum.
The Duke (Der Dukus) or Righteous Convert, 1925
The extraoridnary talent, Alter-Sholem Kacyzne (Yiddish, Katsizne, 1885-1941) is best known for his photographs. As a photographer working in Poland for the New York-based Forward newspaper, he became one of the most important documentarians of pre-war Jewish. Born in Vilna to a working class family, Kacyzne attended <i>heder</i> and also Russian-language Jewish elementary school. In 1910, attracted to the work and figure of Y.L. Peretz, Kacyzne moved to Warsaw where he opened a photography studio and wrote and published in Yiddish. K. began writing for the Yiddish stage after he completed An-ski’s unfinished play <i>Tog un Nakht</i> (Day and Night)Kacyzne was also a writer of prose and drama. He explained that he was drawn to an aristocratic gentile who converts to Judaism in his play <em>Dukus or Righteous Convert (</em>recently translated into English)<em> </em>, not so much as a personal story but as a social story that could illuminate the background of the Jewish community. Other plays of his include <i></i><i>Shvartsbard</i> about Sholem Schwartzbard who assassinated the Ukrainian nationalist Symon Petliura in 1926, and <i>Ester</i>, about a young Jewish woman revolutionary. He also contributed to a Yiddish adaptation of Ben Jonson’s <i>Volpone</i>, that enjoyed particular success in the early twenties in an adaption by Stefan Zweig.
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
<strong>THE VILNA TROUPE,</strong> newspaper coverage and program
The Vilna Troupe was a network of theater troupes (of 250 actors) that grew from a single troupe (of 15 actors) that formed in German-occupied Vilna during World War One. It was one of a number of troupes during this period that sought to produce literary Yiddish theater instead of the melodramatic and commercial fare that drove the industry. The Vilna Troupe claimed the attention of some of the most important theater figures of its day including George Bernard Shaw, David Belasco, and Sarah Bernhardt. They were the first to perform S.Y. Ansky's The Dybbuk, and toured as many as sixty cities a year throughout the world.
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
The Collection: a Wealth of Jewish History
<em> </em>
The Museum Collection is distinctive for its vast quantity of newspaper clippings of reviews and interviews, and programs and playbills that provide detailed information about the social and cultural life of Polish Jewry from the late 19th century to the eve of World War II.
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
1925
The Death of Esther Rachel Kaminska
In <em>My Life, My Theater, </em>Ida Kaminska writes movingly about her mother's failing health and their final performance together shortly before Esther-Rachel died. In the play, Jacob Gordin's <em>Mirele Efros</em>, Esther-Rachel played Mirele and Ida, her daughter-in-law Sheyndele:<br /><br /><strong>During the second act I had to say to Mirele (that is, to my mother), "Do you think a person can live forever?" but I could not utter the final part of the question. I got as far as "Do you think..." but the rest of the line remained stuck in my throat, Seeing this, my mother did not let me finish and replied, "I know what you mean. Don't worry. I know that a person cannot live forever." At the end of the act my mother embraced me: "My poor sweetheart, you couldn't say those words. But don't worry. Everything is all right, and I feel well."</strong><br /><br />This was Esther-Rachel's final performance: she died from cancer at the age 56 in December 1925. The news of her death brought forth a flood of emotions in Poland, as expressed in this particularly elaborate hand-written and illuminated note of sympathy: <br /><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Vlatslavek Handworkers' Union<br /></span>Presented in commemoration of Esther-Rachel Kaminska, as arranged by the Vlatslavek Dramatic Union</strong></div>
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<p style="text-align: left;"><strong>No more is Esther-Rachel Kaminska, Mother of the Yiddish Theater. She fought for the people, She created (art) for the people and She died for the people. <br /><br />Your monument is the love of Yiddish theater that you planted in the productive Jewish masses.<br /><br /></strong>After she died, a death mask was made of her face, as was the fashion among celebrities. Her body was buried in Warsaw's Jewish cemetery with an elaborate monument created by the accomplished Jewish sculptor Joseph Rubinlicht. Only the gravestone of the great Yiddish writer Y.L. Peretz was bigger.</p>
Moyshe Broderzon, 1890-1956
Moshe Broderzon was born in Moscow the grandson of the Hasidic master, Rebbe Itsikl Raskin. When his family was exiled from Moscow, Broderzon settled with his grandfather in Łódź and was brought up going to kheyder and became a bookkeeper. He spent WWI and the Revolution in Moscow. Broderson sought to create a new vocabulary for the expression of modern Jewish art that was multi-faceted. He sought to integrate decorative arts, performance, music, word, and text. He insisted that Yiddish culture have a relationship with culture beyond Yiddish while at the same time he advocated the cultivation of Yiddish culture’s “internal cultural impulses.” Along with Weichert, he was one of the founders of the modernist Yiddish group Young Yidish and published Expressionistic "dramaletn" or small dramas:<em> A Snow Dance</em> (<em>A shney-tants</em>) and <em>Tsungalungn, a</em> marionette performance, and wrote and directed for the experimental marionette theater <em>Ararat.</em>
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
<div style="text-align: left;">MATERIALS RELATED TO VARIOUS PRODUCTIONS OF <strong>SHABTAI TSVI </strong></div>
Various items relating to a play about the historical figure Shabtai Tsvi who lived in the seventeenth century.
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Mississippi
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
An-ski and Yiddish Actors
<p>While An-ski had every intention of seeing <em>The Dybbuk</em> on the boards during his lifetime, history and politics interrupted. During World War I (1914-1919), An-ski spent a significant amount of time collecting funds for the relief effort and distributing food and relief to Jewish victims of the war. During these years, he continued to hone his play and test it on private audiences. He secured government permission from the Russian censor, and communicated with directors at the Moscow Art Theater about its production.</p>
<p>He also had close ties with actors of the Vilna Troupe pictured here with An-ski not long before he died. (An-ski is standing, fourth from left, among the actors of the Troupe including Dovid Herman, standing left, Alter Kacyzne, directly to An-ski's right, Sonia Alomis, middle in white shirt near An-ski, Leyb Kadison, seated right, and Mazo, seated middle). The Vilna Troupe, formed in Vilna during the last days of World War I, would be the first to perform the play. </p>
<p><br /> But An-ski himself would not see it in a professional and public production. An-ski died on November 8, 1920 and was buried next to his spiritual partner, the Yiddish writer Y.L. Peretz, in Warsaw's Jewish Cemetery. </p>
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
Alyssa Quint
The Life of Esther-Rachel Kaminska
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This theater museum collection’s namesake is Esther-Rachel (Ester-Rokhl) Kaminska. Esther-Rachel’s reputation was marked by her far-reaching talent as a preeminent Yiddish actor, the maternal presence she projected to her fellow actors and admirers, and the hurdles she overcame in putting on Yiddish theater in the Russian Empire. Esther-Rachel was born in 1870 in a </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">shtetl</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> called Porozovo, Grodno Province, the seventh and final child of an aging cantor and ritual slaughterer and his wife. According to her memoirs, Esther-Rachel always had an ear for song--from those sung by yeshiva students to those of the peasants. She dreamed of life in the big city, where some of her siblings had already gone. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In 1885, at the age of fifteen, she reached Warsaw. There, her older brother introduced her to Yiddish theater's foremost pioneer, Avrom Goldfaden (1840-1908). Goldfaden, a Russian-Jewish intellectual, theater impresario, and composer, had negotiated permission to stage Yiddish theater--mostly operettas--with the Russian government in 1878. Most of these performances by Goldfaden and, eventually, competing impresarios, were staged in Odessa, now in the Ukraine, as well as in Moscow and St. Petersburg. <br /><br />By 1883, however, the Russian government banned the Yiddish theater once again. The effect of the ban was to push Yiddish theatrical activity westward into Polish lands, away from the city and into towns, with some activity in Warsaw. Soon after Goldfaden and Kaminska’s fateful meeting, Goldfaden gave up on Yiddish theater in the Russian Empire. Kaminska, however, did not. Over the following eight years, Kaminska performed intermittently in Warsaw and in small towns while supporting herself with a range of small jobs, such as cigarette-rolling, umbrella-making, and shoe-shining. </span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In 1893, she joined a troupe that performed regularly in Warsaw's El Dorado Theater. It was here that she quickly moved her way from chorister to lead, the first of which was the character of Mirele in Goldfaden's play </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Sorceress</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. Those around her immediately recognized her stage presence and vocal talent. For the following ten years, Kaminska played three Goldfaden characters again and again: Mirele in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Sorceress,</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Dinah in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Bar-kokhve</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, and Esther in </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">Ahashverus</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">. By the turn of the century, Kaminska and her husband and troupe manager, Avrom-Yitskhok Kaminska (1867-1918), broadened the Yiddish theatrical repertoire with dramatic offerings from the American Yiddish playwright Jacob Gordin (1853-1909) and materials they themselves translated into Yiddish. For instance, in 1903, they produced Maxim Gorky's best-known play </span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Lower Depths </span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">(1901).</span></p>
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While a range of legal obstacles and government prohibitions to the production of Yiddish-language performance were in place until World War I, Esther-Rachel, in collaboration with other persevering pioneers of Yiddish theater, continued to perform. She, alongside others, worked to reform Yiddish theater according to the highest standards of European drama. As Esther-Rachel grew more ambitious, her renown grew beyond Yiddish-speaking audiences. Her fame unlocked opportunities to perform in more prestigious venues within the Russian Empire, as well as even an invitation to perform in America, where she traveled in 1909. At this point, she was the most acclaimed Yiddish actress in the world.</span></p>
<strong><em>Our Beliefs </em></strong>(<em>Unzer Gloyben</em>) 1925.
Program for a production of Sholem Asch's 1915 play <em><strong>Our Beliefs</strong></em> (<em>Unzer gloyben</em>), directed by S. Toltchinsky.
A playbill of a Yiddish theater production at the Liga Cultural Israelita, Porto Alegre
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YIVO Institute for Jewish Research
1925 Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Portuguese and Yiddish