Yiddish theatre

European Jewish drama had its origin in the late Middle Ages, when dancers, mimics, and professional jesters entertained at wedding and Purim celebrations. Amateur Jewish actors began performing door to door during the Purim holiday. Their verse plays combined Bible stories and references to contemporary matters. By the 16th century these plays, with their interpolated songs and free use of improvisation, were being performed in Yiddish. During the late 18th century, proponents of the Jewish Enlightenment in Berlin wrote short plays that expressed their ideology. Russian Jewish intellectuals of the mid-19th century wrote Yiddish plays that were seldom performed.

Starting in the late 19th century, the Yiddish theatre became famous for its music, especially in the plays of Abraham Goldfaden, as well as for its remarkable dramatic works by authors such as Jacob Gordin, David Pinski, S. Ansky (Solomon Zanvel Rapoport), H. Leivick (Leyvik Halpern), Peretz Hirshbein, Sholem Asch, and Leon Kobrin. Goldfaden has been called the father of Yiddish theatre. Following his lead, there have been many important Yiddish playwrights, both in the tradition of serious, art theatre and in the realm of popular (or shund) theatre. In addition, prominent authors such as Sholem Aleichem and Peretz wrote for the stage, and other classic fictional works were adapted for stage performances.

The beginning of professional Yiddish theatre is usually dated to 1876, when Goldfaden, a former schoolteacher and journalist, joined forces with two traveling musicians to present his own two-act musical sketch in a tavern in Romania. The little play was well received, and Goldfaden went on to found a professional Yiddish theatre in Iaşi, Romania, where he was then living. Over the next decade he produced plays that were widely performed and subsequently published. Like the rival groups that soon appeared, Goldfaden’s troupe toured constantly, performing in theatres and cafés; his performances relied heavily on the elements of song, slapstick, and spectacle. Among his most popular plays were Di tsvey Kuni-Leml, sometimes entitled Di beyde Kuni-Leml (first performed 1880, published 1887; “The Two Kuni-Lemls”), Di kishefmakherin (first performed 1880, published 1887; “The Sorceress”), and Bar Kokhba (first performed 1883, published 1887). After the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, conditions became harsher for Jews, and Yiddish theatre was banned from Russia in 1883. Goldfaden followed the mass immigration to North America and attempted to stage his plays in New York in 1887. He was never prosperous, but in 1907 his final play, Ben Ami, was well received in New York under the direction of Boris Thomashefsky, one of the leading actor-directors on the Second Avenue stage.

Another notable playwright, Jacob Gordin, had a strong literary background in Russian and western European literature. He emigrated in 1891 from Russia to the United States, where he wrote more than 70 plays, some of which were published and some of which were successfully staged in Russian, English, and other languages. Many of his works were based on European models by authors such as Franz Grillparzer, Gotthold Lessing, Victor Hugo, Israel Zangwill, and Maxim Gorky. One example is Gordin’s impressive, grandiose Got, mentsh, un tayvl (first performed 1900, published 1903; “God, Man, and Devil”), influenced by Goethe’s Faust. He also authored Der yudisher kenig Lear (performed 1892, published 1907; “The Jewish King Lear”) and Mirele Efros (1898; sometimes called Di yidishe kenigin Lear, “The Yiddish Queen Lear”). While emulating Goethe and Shakespeare, Gordin initiated a more serious literary period in Yiddish theatre and competed with the ongoing low theatre (shundteater) that was heavily based on exaggeration, light songs, and comic routines (shtick).

Peretz Hirshbein tried his hand at short avant-garde plays such as Eynzame veltn (first published in Hebrew, 1905; in Yiddish, 1906; “Solitary Worlds”) as well as more traditional dramas. His Tkies kaf (1908; “The Vow”) anticipated S. Ansky’s Der dibek, discussed below. Hirshbein’s first naturalistic play about provincial Jewish life was Di puste kretshme (1913; “The Deserted Inn”). Among several works about Jews in the countryside, his most enduring achievement was Grine felder (1916; “Green Fields”), which dramatizes a yeshiva boy’s decision to leave his Talmudic studies and return to a more wholesome, provincial life.

In 1918 Maurice Schwartz founded the above-mentioned Yiddish Art Theatre. In addition to his directorial success, Schwartz became the most highly esteemed actor of the Yiddish stage, and the theatre became the training ground of a generation of actors. Among the names associated with it is that of Muni Weisenfreund, later known in motion pictures as Paul Muni.

Influenced in part by I.L. Peretz’s artistic reworking of Hasidic stories, S. Ansky wrote the most famous play in the Yiddish theatre repertoire, Der dibek (written 1914, first performed 1920; The Dybbuk). Originally written in Russian, it is also known as Tsvishn tsvey veltn (“Between Two Worlds”). Ansky had conducted serious ethnographic expeditions, and his play combines Hasidic folk traditions with vivid character portrayals, bringing together folkloristic motifs—in particular, possession by a disembodied spirit—and psychological depth. Der dibek was under consideration by Konstantin Stanislavsky’s Moscow Art Theatre (founded in 1898), but Ansky was unable to arrange for any performance of Der dibek during his lifetime. Ansky wrote that Der dibek is “a realistic play about mystics”; only the character of the Messenger did he “intentionally portray with mystical traits…following the advice—or, more accurately, the demand—of Stanislavsky.” After the author’s death in 1920, Der dibek became the most important play in the repertoire of the Warsaw-based Vilna Troupe as well as (in Hebrew) of Habima, a Hebrew theatre troupe in Moscow.

H. Leivick (pseudonym of Leyvick Halpern), who was born in Belorussia (now Belarus), spent several years imprisoned for political activities and immigrated to the United States in 1913. While he worked as a wallpaper hanger in New York, he was associated with the avant-garde literary group called Di Yunge (“The Young”). Like Peretz, he referred back to folklore and Jewish mysticism, as in his powerful dramatic poem Der goylem (1921, but not performed in Yiddish until 1927; The Golem). He later wrote other dramatic poems centring on the longing for a better world. His realistic plays, often set in sweatshops, treated similar themes. His first play to be performed, Shmates (1921, published 1922; “Rags”), enjoyed a long run at the Yiddish Art Theatre; he wrote a similar play titled Shop (1926–27). Illness and exile were among his central themes; he also wrote biblical plays such as Sodom (1937) and In di teg fun Iyov (1953; “In the Days of Job”).

Yiddish theatre flourished most remarkably in New York, Warsaw, and the Soviet Union, but it also emerged everywhere Yiddish speakers settled—in countries such as Argentina, South Africa, and New Zealand. The New York Folksbiene (“People’s Stage”) performed continuously after its formation in 1915. It began as the merger of several amateur groups, but the group later hired professional actors. At the turn of the 21st century, Yiddish plays are still performed in many cities other than New York, including Montreal, Tel Aviv (Israel), Warsaw, and Bucharest (Romania).

In the 1930s, Yiddish films brought many stage classics to the screen, such as adaptations of Der dibek, Tkies kaf, and Grine felder in 1937. Other noteworthy Yiddish films based on major fictional works include Onkl Moses (1930), Tevye (1939), and Fishke der krumer (1939; “Fishke the Lame”; also known as Di klyatshe, “The Nag”), released with English subtitles as The Light Ahead.

The achievements of Yiddish literature

Some of the central achievements of Yiddish literature may be understood in terms of orality and intertextuality. These characteristics are linked to the social reality of Yiddish language usage. For most of its history, Yiddish was the vernacular of Ashkenazic Jews, while Hebrew was more important as the text-based language of religious life and study. Hence Yiddish has always been particularly well suited to conveying everyday speech.

At the heart of classic Yiddish literature is the oral-style narrative voice (Russian skaz) that is a common feature of works by S.Y. Abramovitsh and Sholem Aleichem. The monologues of Sholem Aleichem epitomize the success of Yiddish fiction in creating the illusion of speech. Yet his most popular monologist, Tevye, continually resorts to Hebrew phrases. Because educated Yiddish readers also knew Hebrew, intertextual allusions to Hebrew writing have been a distinctive resource in Yiddish literature. The combination of folksiness and scriptural references typifies, for example, some of Itsik Manger’s best verse.

A modernist trend emerged in the circle of I.L. Peretz and contributed a more compressed narrative style as well as symbolist drama. There were some remarkable innovative voices, such as that found in the avant-garde works by David Bergelson. For the most part, however, Yiddish literature was not written for an elite literary audience but for a broader readership—until the Holocaust.