Abraham Goldfaden
Encyclopedia
Abraham Goldfaden ;
Abraham Goldfaden ; (born Avrum Goldnfoden; the Romanian
spelling Avram Goldfaden is common; 24 July 1840 in Starokostiantyniv
-
9 January 1908 in New York) was an Russia
n-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays.
Goldfaden is considered the father of the Jewish modern theatre.
In 1876 he founded in Romania
what is generally credited as the world's first professional Yiddish-language
theater troupe. He was also responsible for the first Hebrew-language
play performed in the United States. The Avram Goldfaden Festival of Iaşi
, Romania, is named and held in his honour.
Jacob Sternberg
called him "the Prince Charming
who woke up the lethargic Romanian Jewish culture". Israil Bercovici
wrote that in his works "...we find points in common with what we now call 'total theater'. In many of his plays he alternates prose and verse, pantomime and dance, moments of acrobatics and some of jonglerie, and even of spiritualism..."
). His birthdate is sometimes given as July 12, following the "Old Style"
calendar in use at that time in the Russian Empire
. He attended a Jewish religious school (a cheder
), but his middle class family was strongly associated with the Haskalah
, the Jewish Enlightenment, and his father, a watchmaker, arranged that he receive private lessons in German and Russian. As a child, he is said to have appreciated and imitated the performances of wedding jesters and Brody singers to the degree that he acquired the nickname Avromele Badkhen, "Abie the Jester". In 1857 he began studies at the government-run rabbinical school at Zhytomyr
, from which he emerged in 1866 as a teacher and a poet (with some experience in amateur theater), but he never led a congregation.
Goldfaden's first published poem was called "Progress"; his New York Times obituary described it as "a plea for Zionism
years before that movement developed". In 1865 he published his first book of poetry, Tzitzim u-Ferahim (in Hebrew
); The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1906) says that "Goldfaden's Hebrew poetry... possesses considerable merit, but it has been eclipsed by his Yiddish poetry, which, for strength of expression and for depth of true Jewish feeling, remains unrivaled." The first book of verse in Yiddish was published in 1866, and in 1867 he took a job teaching in Simferopol
. A year later, he moved on to Odessa
(in Ukraine
), where he lived initially in his uncle's house, where a cousin who was a good pianist
helped him set some of his poems to music.
In Odessa, Goldfaden renewed his acquaintance with fellow Yiddish-language writer Yitzkhok Yoel Linetzky
, whom he knew from Zhytomyr and met Hebrew-language
poet Eliahu Mordechai Werbel (whose daughter Paulina would become Goldfaden's wife) and published poems in the newspaper Kol-Mevaser. He also wrote his first two plays, Die Tzwei Sheines (The Two Neighbors) and Die Murneh Sosfeh (Aunt Susie), included with some verses in a modestly successful 1869 book Die Yidene (The Jewish Woman), which went through three editions in three years. At this time, he and Paulina were living mainly on his meagre teacher's salary of 18 rubles
a year, supplemented by giving private lessons and taking a job as a cashier in a hat shop.
In 1875, Goldfaden headed for Munich
, intending to study medicine. This did not work out, and he headed for Lvov/Lemberg
in Galicia, where he again met up with Linetsky, now editor of a weekly paper, Isrulik or Der Alter Yisrulik (which was well reputed, but was soon shut by the government). A year later, he moved on to Chernivtsi
in Bukovina
, where he edited the Yiddish-language daily Dos Bukoviner Israelitishe Folksblatt. The limits of the economic sense of this enterprise can be gauged from his inability to pay a registration fee of 3000 ducats. He tried unsuccessfully to operate the paper under a different name, but soon moved on to Iaşi
on the invitation of Isaac Librescu (1850–1930), a young wealthy communitary activist interested in theatre.
in 1876, Goldfaden was fortunate to be better known as a good poet — many of whose poems had been set to music and had become popular songs — than as a less-than-successful businessman. Nevertheless, when he sought funds from Isaac Librescu for another newspaper, Librescu was uninterested in that proposition. Librescu's wife remarked that Yiddish-language journalism was just a way to starve; she suggested that there would be a lot more of a market for Yiddish-language theater. Librescu offered Goldfaden 100 francs for a public recital of his songs in the garden of Shimen Mark, Grădina Pomul Verde ("the Green Fruit-Tree Garden").
Instead of a simple recital, Goldfaden expanded this into something of a vaudeville
; either this or their first indoor performance later that year in Botoşani
is generally counted as the first professional Yiddish theatre
performance. However, the nature of his cast indicates exactly how nominal it is to choose one performance as "the first": Goldfaden's first actor, Israel Grodner
, was already singing Goldfaden's songs (and others) in the salons of Iaşi.
In fact, another candidate for consideration as the first professional Yiddish theater performance also included Grodner. He sang in a concert in Odessa
in 1873, which also included some of the Goldfaden's songs, although Goldfaden was not personally involved. It appears to have had significant improvised material between songs, although no actual script.
Although Goldfaden, by his own account, was familiar at this time with "practically all of Russian literature", had plenty of exposure to Russian and Polish theater, and had even seen an African American
tragedian, Ira Aldrich, performing Shakespeare
, the performance at Grădina Pomul Verde was only a bit more of a play than Grodner had participated in three years earlier. The songs were strung together with a bit of character and plot and a good bit of improvisation. The performance by Goldfaden, Grodner, Sokher Goldstein
, and possibly as many as three other men went over well. The first performance was either Di bobe mitn einikl (Grandmother and Granddaughter) or Dos bintl holţ (The Bundle of sticks); sources disagree. (Some reports suggest that Goldfaden himself was a poor singer, or even a non-singer and poor actor; according to Bercovici, these reports stem from Goldfaden's own self-disparaging remarks or from his countenance as an old man in New York, but contemporary reports show him to have been a decent, though not earth-shattering, actor and singer.)
After that time, Goldfaden continued miscellaneous newspaper work, but the stage became his main focus.
As it happens, the famous Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu
, then journalist, saw one of their Pomul Verde performances later that summer. He records in his review that the company had six players. (A 1905 typographical error would turn this to a much-cited sixteen, suggesting a grander beginning for Yiddish theater.) He was impressed by the quality of the singing and acting, but found the pieces "without much dramatic interest." [Bercovici, 1998, 58] His generally positive comments would seem to deserve to be taken seriously: Eminescu was known generally as "virulently antisemitic". Eminescu appears to have seen four of Goldfaden's early plays: a satiric
musical revue De velt a gan-edn (The World and Paradise), Der Farlibter Maskil un der Oifgheklerter Hosid (a dialogue between "an infatuated philosopher" and "an enlightened Hasid
"), another musical revue Der sver mitn eidem (Father-in-law and Son-in-Law), and a comedy Fishl der balegole un zain knecht Sider (Fishel the Junkman and His Servant Sider).
, where they lived in a garret and Goldfaden continued to churn out songs and plays. An initial successful performance of Di Rekruten (The Recruits) in an indoor theater ("with loges!" as Goldfaden wrote) was followed by days of rain so torrential that no one would come out to the theater; they pawned some possessions and left for Galaţi
, which was to prove a bit more auspicious, with a successful three-week run.
In Galaţi they acquired their first serious set designer, a housepainter known as Reb Moishe Bas. He had no formal artistic training, but he proved to be good at the job, and joined the troupe, as did Sara Segal, their first actress. She was not yet out of her teens. After seeing her perform in their Galaţi premiere, her mother objected to her unmarried daughter cavorting on a stage like that; Goldstein (unlike Goldfaden and Grodner) was single; he promptly married her and she remained with the troupe. (Besides being known as Sara Segal and Sofia Goldstein, she became best known as Sofia Karp, after a second marriage to actor Max Karp).
After the successful run in Galaţi came a less successful attempt in Brăila
, but by now the company
had honed its act and it was time to go to the capital, Bucharest
.
Avenue, in the heart of the ghetto
), then, once the weather turned warm, at the Jigniţa garden, a pleasant tree-shaded beer garden
on Str. Negru Vodă that up until then had drawn only a neighborhood crowd. He filled out his cast from the great pool of Jewish vocal talent: synagogue cantors
. He also recruited two eminently respectable classically trained prima donna
s, sisters Margaretta
and Annetta Schwartz
.
Among the cantors in his casts that year were Lazăr Zuckermann (also known as Laiser Zuckerman; as a song-and-dance man, he would eventually follow Goldfaden to New York and a long stage career, Moishe Zilberman (also known as Silberman), and Simhe Dinman, but the find, soon to become a stage star, was the 18-year-old Zigmund Mogulescu (Sigmund Mogulesko), an orphan who had already made his way in the world as a singer not only as a soloist in the Great Synagogue of Bucharest, but in cafes, at parties, with a visiting French operetta
company, and even in a church choir. Before his voice changed, he had sung with Zuckerman, Dinman, and Moses Wald in the "Israelite Chorus", performing at important ceremonies in the Jewish community. Mogulescu's audition for Goldfaden was a scene from Vlăduţu Mamei (Mama's Boy), which formed the basis later that year for Goldfaden's light comedy Shmendrik, oder Die Komishe Chaseneh (Shmendrik or The Comical Wedding starring Mogulescu as the almost painfully clueless and hapless young man (later, famously played in New York and elsewhere by actress Molly Picon
); the title is a pun on the Chemical Wedding).
This recruiting of cantors was not without controversy: Cantor Cuper (also known as Kupfer), the head cantor of the Great Synagogue, considered it "impious" that cantors should perform in a secular setting, to crowds where both sexes mingled freely, keeping people up late so that they might not be on time for morning prayers.
While one may argue over which performance "started" Yiddish theater, by the end of that summer in Bucharest Yiddish theater was an established fact. The influx of Jewish merchants and middlemen to at the start of the Russo-Turkish War had greatly expanded the audience; among these new arrivals were Israel Rosenberg
and Jacob Spivakovsky, the highly cultured scion of a wealthy Russian Jewish family, both of whom actually joined Goldfaden's troupe, but soon left to found the first Yiddish theater troupe in Imperial Russia.
Goldfaden was churning out a repertoire – new songs, new plays, translations of plays from Romanian, French, and other languages; in the first two years, he wrote 22 plays, and would eventually write about 40 – and while Goldfaden was not always able to retain the players in his company once they became stars in their own right, he continued for many years to recruit first-rate talent, and his company became a de facto training ground for Yiddish theater. By the end of the year, others were writing Yiddish plays as well, such as Moses Horowitz
with Der tiranisher bankir, (The Tyrannical Banker) or Grodner with Curve un ganev, (Prostitute and Thief), and Yiddish theater had become big theater, with elaborate sets, duelling choruses, and extras to fill out crowd scenes.
Goldfaden was helped by Ion Ghica
, then head of the Romanian National Theater to legally establish a "dramatic society" to handle administrative matters. From those papers, we know that the troupe at the Jigniţa included Moris Teich, Michel Liechman (Glückman), Lazăr Zuckermann, Margareta Schwartz, Sofia Palandi, Aba Goldstein, and Clara Goldstein. We also know from similar papers that when Grodner and Mogulescu walked out on Goldfaden to start their own company, it included (besides themselves) I. Rosenberg, Y. Spivakovsky, P. Şapira, M. Banderevsky, Anetta Grodner, and Rosa Friedman.
Ion Ghica was a valuable ally for Yiddish theater in Bucharest. On several occasions he expressed his favorable view of the quality of acting, and even more of the technical aspects of the Yiddish theater. In 1881, he obtained for the National Theater the costumes that had been used for a Yiddish pageant on the coronation of King Solomon, which had been timed in tribute to the actual coronation of Carol I of Romania
.
Goldfaden wrote that this attitude put him "pure and simply at war with the public". His stage was not to be merely "...a masquerade. No, brothers. If I have arrived at having a stage, I want it to be a school for you. In youth you didn't have time to learn and cultivate yourself... Laugh heartily if I amuse you with my jokes, while I, watching you, feel my heart crying. Then, brothers, I'll give you a drama, a tragedy drawn from life, and you, too, shall cry – while my heart shall be glad." Nonetheless, his "war with the public" was based on understanding that public. He would also write, "I wrote Di kishefmakhern (The Witch
) in Romania, where the populace – Jews as much as Romanians – believe strongly in witches." Local superstitions and concerns always made good subject matter, and, as Bercovici remarks, however strong his inspirational and didactic intent, his historical pieces were always connected to contemporary concerns.
Even in the first couple of years of his company, Goldfaden did not shy away from serious themes: his rained-out vaudeville in Botoşani had been Di Rekruten (The Recruits), playing with the theme of the press gang
s working the streets of that town to conscript
young men into the army. Before the end of 1876, Goldfaden had already translated Desolate Island by August von Kotzebue
; thus, a play by a German aristocrat and Russian spy became the first non-comic play performed professionally in Yiddish. After his initial burst of mostly vaudevilles and light comedies (although Shmendrik and The Two Kuni-Lemls were reasonably sophisticated plays), Goldfaden would go on to write many serious Yiddish-language plays on Jewish themes, perhaps the most famous being Shulamith
, also from 1880. Goldfaden himself suggested that this increasingly serious turn became possible because he had educated his audience. Nahma Sandrow suggests that it may have had equally much to do with the arrival in Romania of Russian Jews at the time of the Russo-Turkish War, who had been exposed to more sophisticated Russian language
theater. Goldfaden's strong turn toward almost uniformly serious subject matter roughly coincided with bringing his troupe to Odessa
.
Goldfaden was both a theoretician and a practitioner of theater. That he was in no small measure a theoretician – for example, he was interested almost from the start in having set design seriously support the themes of his plays – relates to a key property of Yiddish theater at the time of its birth: in general, writes Bercovici, theory ran ahead of practice. Much of the Jewish community, Goldfaden included, were already familiar with contemporary theater in other languages. The initial itinerary of Goldfaden's company – Iaşi, Botoşani, Galaţi, Brăila, Bucharest – could as easily have been the itinerary of a Romanian-language troupe. Yiddish theater may have been seen from the outset as an expression of a Jewish national character, but the theatrical values of Goldfaden's company were in many ways those of a good Romanian theater of the time. Also, Yiddish was a German dialect which became a well-known language even among non-Jews in Moldavia
(and Transylvania
), an important language of commerce; the fact that one of the first to write about Yiddish theater was Romania's national poet, Mihai Eminescu
, is testimony that interest in Yiddish theater went beyond the Jewish community.
Almost from the first, Yiddish theater drew a level of theater criticism comparable to any other European theater of its time. Bercovici cites a "brochure" by one G. Abramski, published in 1877. Abramski described and gave critiques of all of Goldfaden's plays of that year, discussed what a Yiddish theater ought to be, speculated that this might be a moment comparable to the Elizabethan era
for English theater, noted the many sources of this emerging form (ranging from Purim plays to circus
pantomime
), praised the strong female roles, but criticized where he saw weaknesses: a male actor unconvincingly playing the mother in Shmendrik, or the entire play Di shtume kale (The Mute Bride) — a play apparently written to accommodate a pretty, young actress who was too nervous to deliver her lines — saying of it that the only evidence of Goldfaden's authorship was his name.
in Ukraine
, which was then part of Imperial Russia. The timing was opportune: the end of the war meant that much of his best audience were now in Odessa rather than Bucharest; Rosenberg had already quit Goldfaden's troupe and was performing the Goldfadenian repertoire in Odessa.
With a loan from Librescu, Goldfaden headed east with a group of 42 people, including performers, musicians, and their families. After the end of the Russo-Turkish War he and his troupe travelled extensively through Imperial Russia, notably to Kharkov (also in Ukraine), Moscow, and Saint Petersburg
. Jacob Adler
later described him at this time as "a bon vivant", "a cavalier", "as difficult to approach as an emperor". He continued to turn out plays at a prolific pace, now mostly serious pieces such as Doctor Almasada, oder Die Yiden in Palermo (Doctor Almasada, or The Jews of Palermo), Shulamith
, and Bar Kokhba, the last being a rather dark operetta about Bar Kokhba's revolt
, written after the pogrom
s following the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II
, as the tide turned against Jewish emancipation.
As it happens, a Frenchman
named Victor Tissot happened to be in Berdichev when Goldfaden's company was there. He saw two plays – Di Rekruten, first premiered in Botoşani, and the later Di Shvebleh (Matches), a play of intrigue. Tissot's account of what he saw gives an interesting picture of the theaters and audiences Goldfaden's troupe encountered outside of the big cities. "Berdichev," he begins, "has not one cafe, not one restaurant. Berdichev, which is a boring and sad city, nonetheless has a theatrical hall, a big building made of rough boards, where theater troupes passing through now and then put on a play." Although there was a proper stage with a curtain, the cheap seats were bare benches, the more expensive ones were benches covered in red percale. Although there were many full beards, "there were no long caftans, no skullcaps." Some of the audience were quite poor, but these were assimilated Jews, basically secular. The audience also included Russian officers with their wives or girlfriends.
In Russia, Goldfaden and his troupe drew large audiences and were generally popular with progressive Jewish intellectuals, but slowly ran afoul of both the Czarist government and conservative elements in the Jewish community. Goldfaden was calling for change in the Jewish world:
A call like this might be a bit ambiguous, but it was unsettling to those who were on the side of the status quo. Yiddish theater was banned in Russia starting September 14, 1883 as part of the anti-Jewish reaction following the assassination of Czar Alexander II
. Goldfaden and his troupe were left adrift in Saint Petersburg. They headed various directions, some to England, some to New York City, some to Poland, some to Romania.
now dominated Yiddish theater in Romania, with about ten lesser companies competing as well. Mogulescu was a towering figure in Bucharest theater at this point, lauded on a level comparable to the actors of the National Theater, performing at times in Romanian as well as Yiddish, drawing an audience that went well beyond the Jewish community.
Goldfaden seems, in Bercovici's words, to have lost "his theatrical elan" in this period. He briefly put together a theater company in 1886 in Warsaw
, with no notable success. In 1887 he went to New York (as did Mogulescu, independently). After extensive negotiations and great anticipation in the Yiddish-language press in New York ("Goldfaden in America", read the headline in the January 11, 1888 edition of the New Yorker Yiddishe Ilustrirte Zaitung), he briefly took on the job of director of Mogulescu's new "Rumanian Opera House"; they parted ways again after the failure of their first play, whose production values were apparently not up to New York standards. Goldfaden attempted (unsuccessfully) to found a theater school, then headed in 1889 for Paris
, rather low on funds. There he wrote some poetry, worked on a play that he didn't finish at that time, and put together a theater company that never got to the point of putting on a play (because the cashier made off with all of their funds [Adler, 1999, 262 commentary]). In October 1889 he scraped together the money to get to Lvov
, where his reputation as a poet again came to his rescue.
Nonetheless, Iacob Ber Ghimpel, who owned a Yiddish theater there, was glad to have a figure of Goldfaden's stature. Goldfaden completed the play he'd started in Paris, Rabi Yoselman, oder Die Gzerot fun Alsas ("Rabbi Yoselman, or The Alsatian Decree"), in five acts and 23 scenes, based on the life of Josel of Rosheim
. At this time he also wrote an operetta Rothschild and a semi-autobiographical play called Mashiach Tzeiten (Messiah Times) that gave a less-than-optimistic view of America.
Kalman Juvelier, an actor in Ber Ghimpel's company, credited Goldfaden's brief time in Lvov as greatly strengthening the caliber of performance there, working with every actor on understanding his or her character, making sure that the play was more than just a series of songs and effects, respected by all.
Buoyed by his success in Lvov, he returned to Bucharest in 1892, as director of the Jigniţa theater. His new company again included Lazăr Zuckermann; other players were Marcu (Mordechai) Segalescu, and later Iacob Kalich, Carol Schramek, Malvina Treitler-Löbel and her father H. Goldenbers. Among his notable plays from this period were Dos zenteh Gebot, oder Lo tachmod (The Tenth Commandment, or Thou Shalt Not Covet), Judas Maccabaeus, and Judith and Holfernes and a translation of Johann Strauss
's Gypsy Baron.
However, it was not a propitious time to return to Romania. Yiddish theater had become a business there, with slickly written advertisements, coordinated performances in multiple cities using the same publicity materials, and cutthroat competition: on one occasion in 1895, a young man named Bernfeld attended multiple performances of Goldfaden's Story of Isaac, memorized it all (including the songs), and took the whole package to Kalman Juvilier, who put on an unauthorized production in Iaşi. Such outright theft was possible because once Ion Ghica headed off on a diplomatic career, the National Theater, which was supposed to adjudicate issues like unauthorized performances of plays, was no longer paying much attention to Yiddish theater. (Juvilier and Goldfaden finally reached an out-of-court settlement.)
Cutthroat competition was nothing to what was to follow. The 1890s were a tough time for the Romanian economy, and a rising tide of anti-Semitism made it an even tougher time for the Jews. One quarter of the Jewish population emigrated, with intellectuals particularly likely to leave, and those intellectuals who remained were more interested in politics than in theater: this was a period of social ferment, with Jewish socialists
in Iaşi starting Der Veker (The Awakener).
Goldfaden left Romania in 1896; soon Juvilier's was the only active Yiddish theater troupe in the country, and foreign troupes had almost entirely ceased coming to the country. Although Lateiner, Horowitz, and Shumer kept writing, and occasionally managed to put on a play, it was not a good time for Yiddish theater – or any theater – in Romania, and would only become worse as the economy continued to decline.
Goldfaden wandered Europe as a poet and journalist. His plays continued to be performed in Europe and America, but rarely, if ever, did anyone send him royalties. His health deteriorated – a 1903 letter refers to asthma
and spitting up blood – and he was running out of money. In 1903, he wrote Jacob Dinesohn from Paris, authorizing him to sell his remaining possessions in Romania, clothes and all. This gave him the money to head once more to New York in 1904.
to raise a pension for Yiddish poet Eliakum Zunser
, even worse off than himself because he had found himself unable to write since coming to America in 1889. Shortly afterwards, he met a group of young people who had a Hebrew language association at the Dr. Herzl
Zion Club, and wrote a Hebrew-language play David ba-Milchama (David in the War), which they performed in March 1906, the first Hebrew-language play to be performed in America. Repeat performances in March 1907 and April 1908 drew successively larger crowds.
He also wrote the spoken portions of Ben Ami, loosely based on George Eliot
's Daniel Deronda
. After Goldfaden's former bit player Jacob Adler
— by now the owner of a prominent New York Yiddish theater — optioned and ignored it, even accusing Goldfaden of being "senile", it premiered successfully at rival Boris Thomashefsky
's People's Theater December 25, 1907, with music by H. Friedzel and lyrics by Mogulescu, who was by this time an international star.
He died in New York City in 1908. At the time of his death, the New York Times called him not only "the Yiddish Shakespeare", but "both a poet and a prophet", and added that "...there is more evidence of genuine sympathy with and admiration for the man and his work than is likely to be manifested at the funeral of any poet now writing in the English language in this country." An estimated 75,000 attended his funeral procession from the People's Theater in the Bowery
to Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn
.
In November 2009 Goldfaden was the subject of postage stamps issued jointly by Israel and Romania.
. Some of his earliest poetry was Zionist avant la lettre and one of his last plays was written in Hebrew; several of his plays were implicitly or explicitly Zionist (Shulamith set in Jerusalem, Mashiach Tzeiten?! ending with its protagonists abandoning New York for Palestine
); he served as a delegate from Paris to the World Zionist Congress in 1900. Still, he spent most of his life (and set slightly more than half of his plays) in the Pale of Settlement
and in the adjoining Jewish areas in Romania, and when he left it was never to go to Palestine, but to cities such as New York, London or Paris. This might be understandable when the number of his potential Jewish spectators in Palestine in his time was very small.
Abraham Goldfaden ; (born Avrum Goldnfoden; the Romanian
Romanian language
Romanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
spelling Avram Goldfaden is common; 24 July 1840 in Starokostiantyniv
Starokostiantyniv
Starokostiantyniv is a city in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast of western Ukraine. Serving as the administrative center of the Starokostiantynivsky Raion , the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast...
-
9 January 1908 in New York) was an Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays.
Goldfaden is considered the father of the Jewish modern theatre.
In 1876 he founded in Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
what is generally credited as the world's first professional Yiddish-language
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
theater troupe. He was also responsible for the first Hebrew-language
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
play performed in the United States. The Avram Goldfaden Festival of Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
, Romania, is named and held in his honour.
Jacob Sternberg
Jacob Sternberg
Yankev Shternberg was a Yiddish theater director, teacher of theater, playwright, avant-garde poet and short-story writer, best known for his theater work in Romania between the two world wars.Shternberg grew up in the northern Bessarabian shtetl of...
called him "the Prince Charming
Prince Charming
Prince Charming is a stock character who appears in a number of fairy tales. He is the prince who comes to rescue of the damsel in distress, and stereotypically, must engage in a quest to liberate her from an evil spell...
who woke up the lethargic Romanian Jewish culture". Israil Bercovici
Israil Bercovici
Israil Bercovici was a Jewish Romanian dramaturg, playwright, director, biographer, and memoirist, who served the State Jewish Theater of Romania between 1955 to 1982; he also wrote Yiddish-language poetry.-Biography:...
wrote that in his works "...we find points in common with what we now call 'total theater'. In many of his plays he alternates prose and verse, pantomime and dance, moments of acrobatics and some of jonglerie, and even of spiritualism..."
Youth and early manhood
Goldfaden was born in Starokonstantinov (Russia; present day UkraineUkraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
). His birthdate is sometimes given as July 12, following the "Old Style"
Julian calendar
The Julian calendar began in 45 BC as a reform of the Roman calendar by Julius Caesar. It was chosen after consultation with the astronomer Sosigenes of Alexandria and was probably designed to approximate the tropical year .The Julian calendar has a regular year of 365 days divided into 12 months...
calendar in use at that time in the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
. He attended a Jewish religious school (a cheder
Cheder
A Cheder is a traditional elementary school teaching the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language.-History:...
), but his middle class family was strongly associated with the Haskalah
Haskalah
Haskalah , the Jewish Enlightenment, was a movement among European Jews in the 18th–19th centuries that advocated adopting enlightenment values, pressing for better integration into European society, and increasing education in secular studies, Hebrew language, and Jewish history...
, the Jewish Enlightenment, and his father, a watchmaker, arranged that he receive private lessons in German and Russian. As a child, he is said to have appreciated and imitated the performances of wedding jesters and Brody singers to the degree that he acquired the nickname Avromele Badkhen, "Abie the Jester". In 1857 he began studies at the government-run rabbinical school at Zhytomyr
Zhytomyr
Zhytomyr is a city in the North of the western half of Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Zhytomyr Oblast , as well as the administrative center of the surrounding Zhytomyr Raion...
, from which he emerged in 1866 as a teacher and a poet (with some experience in amateur theater), but he never led a congregation.
Goldfaden's first published poem was called "Progress"; his New York Times obituary described it as "a plea for Zionism
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
years before that movement developed". In 1865 he published his first book of poetry, Tzitzim u-Ferahim (in Hebrew
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
); The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1906) says that "Goldfaden's Hebrew poetry... possesses considerable merit, but it has been eclipsed by his Yiddish poetry, which, for strength of expression and for depth of true Jewish feeling, remains unrivaled." The first book of verse in Yiddish was published in 1866, and in 1867 he took a job teaching in Simferopol
Simferopol
-Russian Empire and Civil War:The city was renamed Simferopol in 1784 after the annexation of the Crimean Khanate to the Russian Empire by Catherine II of Russia. The name Simferopol is derived from the Greek, Συμφερόπολις , translated as "the city of usefulness." In 1802, Simferopol became the...
. A year later, he moved on to Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
(in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
), where he lived initially in his uncle's house, where a cousin who was a good pianist
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
helped him set some of his poems to music.
In Odessa, Goldfaden renewed his acquaintance with fellow Yiddish-language writer Yitzkhok Yoel Linetzky
Yitzkhok Yoel Linetzky
Yitzkhok Yoel Linetzky was a Yiddish language author and early Zionist. Sol Liptzin characterized him as "a master of the picturesque vitriolic phrase." [Liptzin, 1972, 46]-Life:...
, whom he knew from Zhytomyr and met Hebrew-language
Hebrew language
Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
poet Eliahu Mordechai Werbel (whose daughter Paulina would become Goldfaden's wife) and published poems in the newspaper Kol-Mevaser. He also wrote his first two plays, Die Tzwei Sheines (The Two Neighbors) and Die Murneh Sosfeh (Aunt Susie), included with some verses in a modestly successful 1869 book Die Yidene (The Jewish Woman), which went through three editions in three years. At this time, he and Paulina were living mainly on his meagre teacher's salary of 18 rubles
Russian ruble
The ruble or rouble is the currency of the Russian Federation and the two partially recognized republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Formerly, the ruble was also the currency of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union prior to their breakups. Belarus and Transnistria also use currencies with...
a year, supplemented by giving private lessons and taking a job as a cashier in a hat shop.
In 1875, Goldfaden headed for Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
, intending to study medicine. This did not work out, and he headed for Lvov/Lemberg
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
in Galicia, where he again met up with Linetsky, now editor of a weekly paper, Isrulik or Der Alter Yisrulik (which was well reputed, but was soon shut by the government). A year later, he moved on to Chernivtsi
Chernivtsi
Chernivtsi is the administrative center of Chernivtsi Oblast in southwestern Ukraine. The city is situated on the upper course of the River Prut, a tributary of the Danube, in the northern part of the historic region of Bukovina, which is currently divided between Romania and Ukraine...
in Bukovina
Bukovina
Bukovina is a historical region on the northern slopes of the northeastern Carpathian Mountains and the adjoining plains.-Name:The name Bukovina came into official use in 1775 with the region's annexation from the Principality of Moldavia to the possessions of the Habsburg Monarchy, which became...
, where he edited the Yiddish-language daily Dos Bukoviner Israelitishe Folksblatt. The limits of the economic sense of this enterprise can be gauged from his inability to pay a registration fee of 3000 ducats. He tried unsuccessfully to operate the paper under a different name, but soon moved on to Iaşi
Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
on the invitation of Isaac Librescu (1850–1930), a young wealthy communitary activist interested in theatre.
Iaşi
Arriving in Iaşi (Jassy)Iasi
Iași is the second most populous city and a municipality in Romania. Located in the historical Moldavia region, Iași has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Romanian social, cultural, academic and artistic life...
in 1876, Goldfaden was fortunate to be better known as a good poet — many of whose poems had been set to music and had become popular songs — than as a less-than-successful businessman. Nevertheless, when he sought funds from Isaac Librescu for another newspaper, Librescu was uninterested in that proposition. Librescu's wife remarked that Yiddish-language journalism was just a way to starve; she suggested that there would be a lot more of a market for Yiddish-language theater. Librescu offered Goldfaden 100 francs for a public recital of his songs in the garden of Shimen Mark, Grădina Pomul Verde ("the Green Fruit-Tree Garden").
Instead of a simple recital, Goldfaden expanded this into something of a vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
; either this or their first indoor performance later that year in Botoşani
Botosani
Botoșani is the capital city of Botoșani County, in northern Moldavia, Romania. Today, it is best known as the birthplace of many celebrated Romanians, including Mihai Eminescu and Nicolae Iorga.- Origin of the name :...
is generally counted as the first professional Yiddish theatre
Yiddish theatre
Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; naturalist drama; expressionist and...
performance. However, the nature of his cast indicates exactly how nominal it is to choose one performance as "the first": Goldfaden's first actor, Israel Grodner
Israel Grodner
Israel Grodner was one of the founding performers in Yiddish theater. A Lithuanian Jew who moved at the age of 16 to Berdichev, Ukraine, Russian Empire, the Broder singer and actor was in Iaşi, Romania in 1876 when Abraham Goldfaden recruited him as the first actor for what became the first...
, was already singing Goldfaden's songs (and others) in the salons of Iaşi.
In fact, another candidate for consideration as the first professional Yiddish theater performance also included Grodner. He sang in a concert in Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
in 1873, which also included some of the Goldfaden's songs, although Goldfaden was not personally involved. It appears to have had significant improvised material between songs, although no actual script.
Although Goldfaden, by his own account, was familiar at this time with "practically all of Russian literature", had plenty of exposure to Russian and Polish theater, and had even seen an African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
tragedian, Ira Aldrich, performing Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, the performance at Grădina Pomul Verde was only a bit more of a play than Grodner had participated in three years earlier. The songs were strung together with a bit of character and plot and a good bit of improvisation. The performance by Goldfaden, Grodner, Sokher Goldstein
Sokher Goldstein
Mike Goldstein , first name also spelled Suher, Suray, ukas, or mikey boy, was a singer and actor, one of the founding performers in Yiddish theater...
, and possibly as many as three other men went over well. The first performance was either Di bobe mitn einikl (Grandmother and Granddaughter) or Dos bintl holţ (The Bundle of sticks); sources disagree. (Some reports suggest that Goldfaden himself was a poor singer, or even a non-singer and poor actor; according to Bercovici, these reports stem from Goldfaden's own self-disparaging remarks or from his countenance as an old man in New York, but contemporary reports show him to have been a decent, though not earth-shattering, actor and singer.)
After that time, Goldfaden continued miscellaneous newspaper work, but the stage became his main focus.
As it happens, the famous Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...
, then journalist, saw one of their Pomul Verde performances later that summer. He records in his review that the company had six players. (A 1905 typographical error would turn this to a much-cited sixteen, suggesting a grander beginning for Yiddish theater.) He was impressed by the quality of the singing and acting, but found the pieces "without much dramatic interest." [Bercovici, 1998, 58] His generally positive comments would seem to deserve to be taken seriously: Eminescu was known generally as "virulently antisemitic". Eminescu appears to have seen four of Goldfaden's early plays: a satiric
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
musical revue De velt a gan-edn (The World and Paradise), Der Farlibter Maskil un der Oifgheklerter Hosid (a dialogue between "an infatuated philosopher" and "an enlightened Hasid
Hasidic Judaism
Hasidic Judaism or Hasidism, from the Hebrew —Ḥasidut in Sephardi, Chasidus in Ashkenazi, meaning "piety" , is a branch of Orthodox Judaism that promotes spirituality and joy through the popularisation and internalisation of Jewish mysticism as the fundamental aspects of the Jewish faith...
"), another musical revue Der sver mitn eidem (Father-in-law and Son-in-Law), and a comedy Fishl der balegole un zain knecht Sider (Fishel the Junkman and His Servant Sider).
The search for a theater
As the season for outdoor performances was coming to a close, Goldfaden tried and failed to rent an appropriate theater in Iaşi. A theater owner named Reicher, presumably Jewish himself, told him that "a troupe of Jewish singers" would be "too dirty". Goldfaden, Grodner, and Goldstein headed first to BotoşaniBotosani
Botoșani is the capital city of Botoșani County, in northern Moldavia, Romania. Today, it is best known as the birthplace of many celebrated Romanians, including Mihai Eminescu and Nicolae Iorga.- Origin of the name :...
, where they lived in a garret and Goldfaden continued to churn out songs and plays. An initial successful performance of Di Rekruten (The Recruits) in an indoor theater ("with loges!" as Goldfaden wrote) was followed by days of rain so torrential that no one would come out to the theater; they pawned some possessions and left for Galaţi
Galati
Galați is a city and municipality in Romania, the capital of Galați County. Located in the historical region of Moldavia, in the close vicinity of Brăila, Galați is the largest port and sea port on the Danube River and the second largest Romanian port....
, which was to prove a bit more auspicious, with a successful three-week run.
In Galaţi they acquired their first serious set designer, a housepainter known as Reb Moishe Bas. He had no formal artistic training, but he proved to be good at the job, and joined the troupe, as did Sara Segal, their first actress. She was not yet out of her teens. After seeing her perform in their Galaţi premiere, her mother objected to her unmarried daughter cavorting on a stage like that; Goldstein (unlike Goldfaden and Grodner) was single; he promptly married her and she remained with the troupe. (Besides being known as Sara Segal and Sofia Goldstein, she became best known as Sofia Karp, after a second marriage to actor Max Karp).
After the successful run in Galaţi came a less successful attempt in Brăila
Braila
Brăila is a city in Muntenia, eastern Romania, a port on the Danube and the capital of Brăila County, in the close vicinity of Galaţi.According to the 2002 Romanian census there were 216,292 people living within the city of Brăila, making it the 10th most populous city in Romania.-History:A...
, but by now the company
Company
A company is a form of business organization. It is an association or collection of individual real persons and/or other companies, who each provide some form of capital. This group has a common purpose or focus and an aim of gaining profits. This collection, group or association of persons can be...
had honed its act and it was time to go to the capital, Bucharest
Bucharest
Bucharest is the capital municipality, cultural, industrial, and financial centre of Romania. It is the largest city in Romania, located in the southeast of the country, at , and lies on the banks of the Dâmbovița River....
.
Bucharest
As in Iaşi, Goldfaden arrived in Bucharest with his reputation already established. He and his players performed first in the early spring at the salon Lazăr Cafegiu on Calea Văcăreşti (VăcăreştiVacaresti
Văcăreşti may refer to several entities in Romania:*the Văcărescu family of boyars*the Bucharest neighbourhood of Văcăreşti*the Văcăreşti Monastery and the Văcăreşti prison*Văcăreşti, a commune in Dâmboviţa County...
Avenue, in the heart of the ghetto
Ghetto
A ghetto is a section of a city predominantly occupied by a group who live there, especially because of social, economic, or legal issues.The term was originally used in Venice to describe the area where Jews were compelled to live. The term now refers to an overcrowded urban area often associated...
), then, once the weather turned warm, at the Jigniţa garden, a pleasant tree-shaded beer garden
Beer garden
Beer garden is an open-air area where beer, other drinks and local food are served. The concept originates from and is most common in Southern Germany...
on Str. Negru Vodă that up until then had drawn only a neighborhood crowd. He filled out his cast from the great pool of Jewish vocal talent: synagogue cantors
Hazzan
A hazzan or chazzan is a Jewish cantor, a musician trained in the vocal arts who helps lead the congregation in songful prayer.There are many rules relating to how a cantor should lead services, but the idea of a cantor as a paid professional does not exist in classical rabbinic sources...
. He also recruited two eminently respectable classically trained prima donna
Prima donna
Originally used in opera or Commedia dell'arte companies, "prima donna" is Italian for "first lady." The term was used to designate the leading female singer in the opera company, the person to whom the prime roles would be given. The prima donna was normally, but not necessarily, a soprano...
s, sisters Margaretta
Margaretta Schwartz
Margeretta Schwartz was one of the first distinguished female performers in Yiddish theater. She and her sister Annetta shared prima donna duties in Abraham Goldfaden's troupe in Romania beginning in 1877. Jacob Adler described the sisters as "absolutely respectable" women with classical training...
and Annetta Schwartz
Annetta Schwartz
Annetta Schwartz was one of the first distinguished female performers in Yiddish theater. She and her sister Margaretta shared prima donna duties in Abraham Goldfaden's troupe in Romania beginning in 1877. Jacob Adler described the sisters as "absolutely respectable" women with classical training...
.
Among the cantors in his casts that year were Lazăr Zuckermann (also known as Laiser Zuckerman; as a song-and-dance man, he would eventually follow Goldfaden to New York and a long stage career, Moishe Zilberman (also known as Silberman), and Simhe Dinman, but the find, soon to become a stage star, was the 18-year-old Zigmund Mogulescu (Sigmund Mogulesko), an orphan who had already made his way in the world as a singer not only as a soloist in the Great Synagogue of Bucharest, but in cafes, at parties, with a visiting French operetta
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
company, and even in a church choir. Before his voice changed, he had sung with Zuckerman, Dinman, and Moses Wald in the "Israelite Chorus", performing at important ceremonies in the Jewish community. Mogulescu's audition for Goldfaden was a scene from Vlăduţu Mamei (Mama's Boy), which formed the basis later that year for Goldfaden's light comedy Shmendrik, oder Die Komishe Chaseneh (Shmendrik or The Comical Wedding starring Mogulescu as the almost painfully clueless and hapless young man (later, famously played in New York and elsewhere by actress Molly Picon
Molly Picon
Molly Picon was an American actress of stage, screen and television, as well as a lyricist and dramatic storyteller....
); the title is a pun on the Chemical Wedding).
This recruiting of cantors was not without controversy: Cantor Cuper (also known as Kupfer), the head cantor of the Great Synagogue, considered it "impious" that cantors should perform in a secular setting, to crowds where both sexes mingled freely, keeping people up late so that they might not be on time for morning prayers.
While one may argue over which performance "started" Yiddish theater, by the end of that summer in Bucharest Yiddish theater was an established fact. The influx of Jewish merchants and middlemen to at the start of the Russo-Turkish War had greatly expanded the audience; among these new arrivals were Israel Rosenberg
Israel Rosenberg
Israel Rosenberg founded the first Yiddish theater troupe in Imperial Russia....
and Jacob Spivakovsky, the highly cultured scion of a wealthy Russian Jewish family, both of whom actually joined Goldfaden's troupe, but soon left to found the first Yiddish theater troupe in Imperial Russia.
Goldfaden was churning out a repertoire – new songs, new plays, translations of plays from Romanian, French, and other languages; in the first two years, he wrote 22 plays, and would eventually write about 40 – and while Goldfaden was not always able to retain the players in his company once they became stars in their own right, he continued for many years to recruit first-rate talent, and his company became a de facto training ground for Yiddish theater. By the end of the year, others were writing Yiddish plays as well, such as Moses Horowitz
Moses Horowitz
Moses Ha-Levi Horowitz , also known as Moishe Hurvitz, Moishe Isaac Halevy-Hurvitz, etc., was a playwright and actor in the early years of Yiddish theater...
with Der tiranisher bankir, (The Tyrannical Banker) or Grodner with Curve un ganev, (Prostitute and Thief), and Yiddish theater had become big theater, with elaborate sets, duelling choruses, and extras to fill out crowd scenes.
Goldfaden was helped by Ion Ghica
Ion Ghica
Ion Ghica was a Romanian revolutionary, mathematician, diplomat and twice Prime Minister of Romania . He was a full member of the Romanian Academy and its president for four times...
, then head of the Romanian National Theater to legally establish a "dramatic society" to handle administrative matters. From those papers, we know that the troupe at the Jigniţa included Moris Teich, Michel Liechman (Glückman), Lazăr Zuckermann, Margareta Schwartz, Sofia Palandi, Aba Goldstein, and Clara Goldstein. We also know from similar papers that when Grodner and Mogulescu walked out on Goldfaden to start their own company, it included (besides themselves) I. Rosenberg, Y. Spivakovsky, P. Şapira, M. Banderevsky, Anetta Grodner, and Rosa Friedman.
Ion Ghica was a valuable ally for Yiddish theater in Bucharest. On several occasions he expressed his favorable view of the quality of acting, and even more of the technical aspects of the Yiddish theater. In 1881, he obtained for the National Theater the costumes that had been used for a Yiddish pageant on the coronation of King Solomon, which had been timed in tribute to the actual coronation of Carol I of Romania
Carol I of Romania
Carol I , born Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was reigning prince and then King of Romania from 1866 to 1914. He was elected prince of Romania on 20 April 1866 following the overthrow of Alexandru Ioan Cuza by a palace coup...
.
A turn to the serious
While light comedy and satire might have established Yiddish theater as a commercially successful medium, it would never have established Goldfaden as "the Yiddish Shakespeare" (which the New York Times called him at his death in 1908). As a man broadly read in several languages, he was acutely aware that there was no Eastern European Jewish tradition of dramatic literature, his audience was used to seeking just "a good glass of Odobeşti and a song". Years later, he would paraphrase the typical Yiddish theatergoer of the time as saying to him, "We don't go to the theater to make our head swim with sad things. We have enough troubles at home... We go to the theater to cheer ourselves up. We pay up a coin and hope to be distracted, we want to laugh from the heart."Goldfaden wrote that this attitude put him "pure and simply at war with the public". His stage was not to be merely "...a masquerade. No, brothers. If I have arrived at having a stage, I want it to be a school for you. In youth you didn't have time to learn and cultivate yourself... Laugh heartily if I amuse you with my jokes, while I, watching you, feel my heart crying. Then, brothers, I'll give you a drama, a tragedy drawn from life, and you, too, shall cry – while my heart shall be glad." Nonetheless, his "war with the public" was based on understanding that public. He would also write, "I wrote Di kishefmakhern (The Witch
The Witch of Botosani
The Witch of Botoşani or simply The Witch or The Sorceress was an 1878, or possibly 1877, play by Abraham Goldfaden...
) in Romania, where the populace – Jews as much as Romanians – believe strongly in witches." Local superstitions and concerns always made good subject matter, and, as Bercovici remarks, however strong his inspirational and didactic intent, his historical pieces were always connected to contemporary concerns.
Even in the first couple of years of his company, Goldfaden did not shy away from serious themes: his rained-out vaudeville in Botoşani had been Di Rekruten (The Recruits), playing with the theme of the press gang
Impressment
Impressment, colloquially, "the Press", was the act of taking men into a navy by force and without notice. It was used by the Royal Navy, beginning in 1664 and during the 18th and early 19th centuries, in wartime, as a means of crewing warships, although legal sanction for the practice goes back to...
s working the streets of that town to conscript
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
young men into the army. Before the end of 1876, Goldfaden had already translated Desolate Island by August von Kotzebue
August von Kotzebue
August Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue was a German dramatist.One of Kotzebue's books was burned during the Wartburg festival in 1817. He was murdered in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a militant member of the Burschenschaften...
; thus, a play by a German aristocrat and Russian spy became the first non-comic play performed professionally in Yiddish. After his initial burst of mostly vaudevilles and light comedies (although Shmendrik and The Two Kuni-Lemls were reasonably sophisticated plays), Goldfaden would go on to write many serious Yiddish-language plays on Jewish themes, perhaps the most famous being Shulamith
Shulamith
Shulamith may refer to:*Shulamith School for Girls*Shulamith, a play by Abraham Goldfaden*Shulamith , the cat that founded the American Curl breed-Also:...
, also from 1880. Goldfaden himself suggested that this increasingly serious turn became possible because he had educated his audience. Nahma Sandrow suggests that it may have had equally much to do with the arrival in Romania of Russian Jews at the time of the Russo-Turkish War, who had been exposed to more sophisticated Russian language
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
theater. Goldfaden's strong turn toward almost uniformly serious subject matter roughly coincided with bringing his troupe to Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
.
Goldfaden was both a theoretician and a practitioner of theater. That he was in no small measure a theoretician – for example, he was interested almost from the start in having set design seriously support the themes of his plays – relates to a key property of Yiddish theater at the time of its birth: in general, writes Bercovici, theory ran ahead of practice. Much of the Jewish community, Goldfaden included, were already familiar with contemporary theater in other languages. The initial itinerary of Goldfaden's company – Iaşi, Botoşani, Galaţi, Brăila, Bucharest – could as easily have been the itinerary of a Romanian-language troupe. Yiddish theater may have been seen from the outset as an expression of a Jewish national character, but the theatrical values of Goldfaden's company were in many ways those of a good Romanian theater of the time. Also, Yiddish was a German dialect which became a well-known language even among non-Jews in Moldavia
Moldavia
Moldavia is a geographic and historical region and former principality in Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester river...
(and Transylvania
Transylvania
Transylvania is a historical region in the central part of Romania. Bounded on the east and south by the Carpathian mountain range, historical Transylvania extended in the west to the Apuseni Mountains; however, the term sometimes encompasses not only Transylvania proper, but also the historical...
), an important language of commerce; the fact that one of the first to write about Yiddish theater was Romania's national poet, Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu
Mihai Eminescu was a Romantic poet, novelist and journalist, often regarded as the most famous and influential Romanian poet. Eminescu was an active member of the Junimea literary society and he worked as an editor for the newspaper Timpul , the official newspaper of the Conservative Party...
, is testimony that interest in Yiddish theater went beyond the Jewish community.
Almost from the first, Yiddish theater drew a level of theater criticism comparable to any other European theater of its time. Bercovici cites a "brochure" by one G. Abramski, published in 1877. Abramski described and gave critiques of all of Goldfaden's plays of that year, discussed what a Yiddish theater ought to be, speculated that this might be a moment comparable to the Elizabethan era
Elizabethan era
The Elizabethan era was the epoch in English history of Queen Elizabeth I's reign . Historians often depict it as the golden age in English history...
for English theater, noted the many sources of this emerging form (ranging from Purim plays to circus
Circus
A circus is commonly a travelling company of performers that may include clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, unicyclists and other stunt-oriented artists...
pantomime
Pantomime
Pantomime — not to be confused with a mime artist, a theatrical performer of mime—is a musical-comedy theatrical production traditionally found in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, India, Ireland, Gibraltar and Malta, and is mostly performed during the...
), praised the strong female roles, but criticized where he saw weaknesses: a male actor unconvincingly playing the mother in Shmendrik, or the entire play Di shtume kale (The Mute Bride) — a play apparently written to accommodate a pretty, young actress who was too nervous to deliver her lines — saying of it that the only evidence of Goldfaden's authorship was his name.
Russia
Goldfaden's father wrote him to solicit the troupe to come to OdessaOdessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
in Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
, which was then part of Imperial Russia. The timing was opportune: the end of the war meant that much of his best audience were now in Odessa rather than Bucharest; Rosenberg had already quit Goldfaden's troupe and was performing the Goldfadenian repertoire in Odessa.
With a loan from Librescu, Goldfaden headed east with a group of 42 people, including performers, musicians, and their families. After the end of the Russo-Turkish War he and his troupe travelled extensively through Imperial Russia, notably to Kharkov (also in Ukraine), Moscow, and Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
. Jacob Adler
Jacob Pavlovich Adler
Jacob Pavlovich Adler , born Yankev P. Adler, was a Jewish actor and star of Yiddish theater, first in Odessa, and later in London and New York City....
later described him at this time as "a bon vivant", "a cavalier", "as difficult to approach as an emperor". He continued to turn out plays at a prolific pace, now mostly serious pieces such as Doctor Almasada, oder Die Yiden in Palermo (Doctor Almasada, or The Jews of Palermo), Shulamith
Shulamith
Shulamith may refer to:*Shulamith School for Girls*Shulamith, a play by Abraham Goldfaden*Shulamith , the cat that founded the American Curl breed-Also:...
, and Bar Kokhba, the last being a rather dark operetta about Bar Kokhba's revolt
Bar Kokhba's revolt
The Bar Kokhba revolt 132–136 CE; or mered bar kokhba) against the Roman Empire, was the third major rebellion by the Jews of Judaea Province being the last of the Jewish-Roman Wars. Simon bar Kokhba, the commander of the revolt, was acclaimed as a Messiah, a heroic figure who could restore Israel...
, written after the pogrom
Pogrom
A pogrom is a form of violent riot, a mob attack directed against a minority group, and characterized by killings and destruction of their homes and properties, businesses, and religious centres...
s following the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
, as the tide turned against Jewish emancipation.
As it happens, a Frenchman
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
named Victor Tissot happened to be in Berdichev when Goldfaden's company was there. He saw two plays – Di Rekruten, first premiered in Botoşani, and the later Di Shvebleh (Matches), a play of intrigue. Tissot's account of what he saw gives an interesting picture of the theaters and audiences Goldfaden's troupe encountered outside of the big cities. "Berdichev," he begins, "has not one cafe, not one restaurant. Berdichev, which is a boring and sad city, nonetheless has a theatrical hall, a big building made of rough boards, where theater troupes passing through now and then put on a play." Although there was a proper stage with a curtain, the cheap seats were bare benches, the more expensive ones were benches covered in red percale. Although there were many full beards, "there were no long caftans, no skullcaps." Some of the audience were quite poor, but these were assimilated Jews, basically secular. The audience also included Russian officers with their wives or girlfriends.
In Russia, Goldfaden and his troupe drew large audiences and were generally popular with progressive Jewish intellectuals, but slowly ran afoul of both the Czarist government and conservative elements in the Jewish community. Goldfaden was calling for change in the Jewish world:
- Wake up my people
- From your sleep, wake up
- And believe no more in foolishness.
A call like this might be a bit ambiguous, but it was unsettling to those who were on the side of the status quo. Yiddish theater was banned in Russia starting September 14, 1883 as part of the anti-Jewish reaction following the assassination of Czar Alexander II
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
. Goldfaden and his troupe were left adrift in Saint Petersburg. They headed various directions, some to England, some to New York City, some to Poland, some to Romania.
The prophet adrift
While Yiddish theater continued successfully in various places, Goldfaden was not on the best terms at this time with Mogulescu. They had quarrelled (and settled) several times over rights to plays, and Mogulescu and his partner Moishe "Maurice" FinkelMoishe Finkel
Moishe Finkel was a prominent figure in the early years of Yiddish theater. He was business partner first of Abraham Goldfaden and later of Sigmund Mogulesko and, for a time, was married to prima donna Annetta Schwartz...
now dominated Yiddish theater in Romania, with about ten lesser companies competing as well. Mogulescu was a towering figure in Bucharest theater at this point, lauded on a level comparable to the actors of the National Theater, performing at times in Romanian as well as Yiddish, drawing an audience that went well beyond the Jewish community.
Goldfaden seems, in Bercovici's words, to have lost "his theatrical elan" in this period. He briefly put together a theater company in 1886 in Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
, with no notable success. In 1887 he went to New York (as did Mogulescu, independently). After extensive negotiations and great anticipation in the Yiddish-language press in New York ("Goldfaden in America", read the headline in the January 11, 1888 edition of the New Yorker Yiddishe Ilustrirte Zaitung), he briefly took on the job of director of Mogulescu's new "Rumanian Opera House"; they parted ways again after the failure of their first play, whose production values were apparently not up to New York standards. Goldfaden attempted (unsuccessfully) to found a theater school, then headed in 1889 for Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, rather low on funds. There he wrote some poetry, worked on a play that he didn't finish at that time, and put together a theater company that never got to the point of putting on a play (because the cashier made off with all of their funds [Adler, 1999, 262 commentary]). In October 1889 he scraped together the money to get to Lvov
Lviv
Lviv is a city in western Ukraine. The city is regarded as one of the main cultural centres of today's Ukraine and historically has also been a major Polish and Jewish cultural center, as Poles and Jews were the two main ethnicities of the city until the outbreak of World War II and the following...
, where his reputation as a poet again came to his rescue.
Lvov
Lvov was not exactly a dramatist's dream. Leon Dreykurs described audiences bringing meals into the theater, rustling paper, treating the theater like a beer garden. He also quotes Jacob Schatzky: "All in all, the Galician milieu was not favorable to Yiddish theater. The intellectuals were assimilated, but the masses were fanatically religious and they viewed Jewish 'comedians' with disdain."Nonetheless, Iacob Ber Ghimpel, who owned a Yiddish theater there, was glad to have a figure of Goldfaden's stature. Goldfaden completed the play he'd started in Paris, Rabi Yoselman, oder Die Gzerot fun Alsas ("Rabbi Yoselman, or The Alsatian Decree"), in five acts and 23 scenes, based on the life of Josel of Rosheim
Josel of Rosheim
Josel of Rosheim Josel of Rosheim Josel of Rosheim (alternatively: Joselin, Joselmann, Yoselmann, , Joseph ben Gershon mi-Rosheim, or Joseph ben Gershon Loanz; c...
. At this time he also wrote an operetta Rothschild and a semi-autobiographical play called Mashiach Tzeiten (Messiah Times) that gave a less-than-optimistic view of America.
Kalman Juvelier, an actor in Ber Ghimpel's company, credited Goldfaden's brief time in Lvov as greatly strengthening the caliber of performance there, working with every actor on understanding his or her character, making sure that the play was more than just a series of songs and effects, respected by all.
Back to Bucharest
Johann Strauss II
Johann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...
's Gypsy Baron.
However, it was not a propitious time to return to Romania. Yiddish theater had become a business there, with slickly written advertisements, coordinated performances in multiple cities using the same publicity materials, and cutthroat competition: on one occasion in 1895, a young man named Bernfeld attended multiple performances of Goldfaden's Story of Isaac, memorized it all (including the songs), and took the whole package to Kalman Juvilier, who put on an unauthorized production in Iaşi. Such outright theft was possible because once Ion Ghica headed off on a diplomatic career, the National Theater, which was supposed to adjudicate issues like unauthorized performances of plays, was no longer paying much attention to Yiddish theater. (Juvilier and Goldfaden finally reached an out-of-court settlement.)
Cutthroat competition was nothing to what was to follow. The 1890s were a tough time for the Romanian economy, and a rising tide of anti-Semitism made it an even tougher time for the Jews. One quarter of the Jewish population emigrated, with intellectuals particularly likely to leave, and those intellectuals who remained were more interested in politics than in theater: this was a period of social ferment, with Jewish socialists
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
in Iaşi starting Der Veker (The Awakener).
Goldfaden left Romania in 1896; soon Juvilier's was the only active Yiddish theater troupe in the country, and foreign troupes had almost entirely ceased coming to the country. Although Lateiner, Horowitz, and Shumer kept writing, and occasionally managed to put on a play, it was not a good time for Yiddish theater – or any theater – in Romania, and would only become worse as the economy continued to decline.
Goldfaden wandered Europe as a poet and journalist. His plays continued to be performed in Europe and America, but rarely, if ever, did anyone send him royalties. His health deteriorated – a 1903 letter refers to asthma
Asthma
Asthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
and spitting up blood – and he was running out of money. In 1903, he wrote Jacob Dinesohn from Paris, authorizing him to sell his remaining possessions in Romania, clothes and all. This gave him the money to head once more to New York in 1904.
New York
In America, he again tried his hand at journalism, but a brief stint as editor of the New Yorker Yiddishe Ilustrirte Zaitung resulted only in getting the paper suspended and landing himself a rather large fine. On March 31, 1905, he recited poetry at a benefit performance at Cooper UnionCooper Union
The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, commonly referred to simply as Cooper Union, is a privately funded college in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, United States, located at Cooper Square and Astor Place...
to raise a pension for Yiddish poet Eliakum Zunser
Eliakum Zunser
Eliakum Zunser , was a Lithuanian Jewish Yiddish-language poet, songwriter, and badchen who lived out the last part of his life in U.S.. A 1905 article in the New York Times lauded him as "the father of Yiddish poetry". About a quarter of his roughly 600 songs survive...
, even worse off than himself because he had found himself unable to write since coming to America in 1889. Shortly afterwards, he met a group of young people who had a Hebrew language association at the Dr. Herzl
Theodor Herzl
Theodor Herzl , born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl was an Ashkenazi Jew Austro-Hungarian journalist and the father of modern political Zionism and in effect the State of Israel.-Early life:...
Zion Club, and wrote a Hebrew-language play David ba-Milchama (David in the War), which they performed in March 1906, the first Hebrew-language play to be performed in America. Repeat performances in March 1907 and April 1908 drew successively larger crowds.
He also wrote the spoken portions of Ben Ami, loosely based on George Eliot
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
's Daniel Deronda
Daniel Deronda
Daniel Deronda is a novel by George Eliot, first published in 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the contemporary Victorian society of her day...
. After Goldfaden's former bit player Jacob Adler
Jacob Pavlovich Adler
Jacob Pavlovich Adler , born Yankev P. Adler, was a Jewish actor and star of Yiddish theater, first in Odessa, and later in London and New York City....
— by now the owner of a prominent New York Yiddish theater — optioned and ignored it, even accusing Goldfaden of being "senile", it premiered successfully at rival Boris Thomashefsky
Boris Thomashefsky
Boris Thomashefsky was a Ukrainian-born Jewish singer and actor who became one of the biggest stars in Yiddish theatre; born in Tarashcha , a shtetl near Kiev, Ukraine, he emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 12 in 1881...
's People's Theater December 25, 1907, with music by H. Friedzel and lyrics by Mogulescu, who was by this time an international star.
He died in New York City in 1908. At the time of his death, the New York Times called him not only "the Yiddish Shakespeare", but "both a poet and a prophet", and added that "...there is more evidence of genuine sympathy with and admiration for the man and his work than is likely to be manifested at the funeral of any poet now writing in the English language in this country." An estimated 75,000 attended his funeral procession from the People's Theater in the Bowery
Bowery, Manhattan
Bowery , commonly called "the Bowery," is a street and a small neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan...
to Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
.
In November 2009 Goldfaden was the subject of postage stamps issued jointly by Israel and Romania.
Goldfaden and Zionism
Goldfaden had an on-again off-again relationship with ZionismZionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
. Some of his earliest poetry was Zionist avant la lettre and one of his last plays was written in Hebrew; several of his plays were implicitly or explicitly Zionist (Shulamith set in Jerusalem, Mashiach Tzeiten?! ending with its protagonists abandoning New York for Palestine
Palestine
Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....
); he served as a delegate from Paris to the World Zionist Congress in 1900. Still, he spent most of his life (and set slightly more than half of his plays) in the Pale of Settlement
Pale of Settlement
The Pale of Settlement was the term given to a region of Imperial Russia, in which permanent residency by Jews was allowed, and beyond which Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited...
and in the adjoining Jewish areas in Romania, and when he left it was never to go to Palestine, but to cities such as New York, London or Paris. This might be understandable when the number of his potential Jewish spectators in Palestine in his time was very small.
Plays
Sources disagree about the dates (and even the names) of some of Goldfaden's plays. As usual in transcribing Yiddish, spellings vary wildly.- Die Mumeh Soseh (Aunt Susie) wr. 1869
- Die Tzwei Sheines (The Two Neighbours) wr. 1869 (possibly the same as Die Sheines 1877
- Polyeh Shikor (Polyeh, the Drunkard) 1871
- Anonimeh Komedyeh (Anonymous Comedy) 1876
- Die Rekruten (The Recruits) 1876, 1877
- Dos Bintl Holtz (The Bundle of Sticks) 1876
- Fishl der balegole un zain knecht Sider (Fishel the Junkman and His Servant Sider) 1876
- Die Velt a Gan-Edn (The World and Paradise) 1876
- Der Farlibter Maskil un der Oifgheklerter Hosid (The Infatuated Philosopher and the Enlightened Hasid) 1876
- Der Shver mitn eidem (Father-in-Law and Son-in-Law) 1876
- Die Bobeh mit dem Einikel (The Grandmother and the Granddaughter) 1876, 1879
- The Desolate Isle, Yiddish translation of a play by August von KotzebueAugust von KotzebueAugust Friedrich Ferdinand von Kotzebue was a German dramatist.One of Kotzebue's books was burned during the Wartburg festival in 1817. He was murdered in 1819 by Karl Ludwig Sand, a militant member of the Burschenschaften...
, 1876 - Die Intrigeh oder Dvosie di pliotkemahern (The Intrigue or Dvoisie Intrigued) 1876, 1877
- A Gloz Vaser (A Glass of Water) 1877
- Hotje-mir un Zaitje-mir (Leftovers) 1877
- Shmendrik, oder Die komishe Chaseneh (Schmendrik or The Comical Wedding) 1877, 1879
- Shuster un Shnaider (Shoemaker and Tailor) 1877
- Die Kaprizneh Kaleh, oder Kaptsnzon un Hungerman (The Capricious Bride or Pauper-son and Hunger-man) 1877 presumably the same play as Die kaprizneh Kaleh-Moid (The Capricious Bridemaid) 1887
- Yontl Shnaider (Yontl the Tailor) 1877
- Vos tut men? (What Did He Do?) 1877
- Die Shtumeh Kaleh (The Dumb Bride) 1877, 1887
- Die Tzwei Toibe (The Two Deaf Men) 1877
- Der Ghekoifter Shlof (The Purchased Sleep) 1877
- Die Sheines (The Neighbors) 1877
- Yukel un Yekel (Yukel and Yekel) 1877
- Der Katar (Catarrh) 1877
- Ix-Mix-Drix, 1877
- Die Mumeh Sose (Mute Susie) 1877
- Braindele Kozak (Breindele CossackBreindele CossackBreindele Cossack is a darkly comic 1887 Yiddish-language play by Abraham Goldfaden, generally accounted one of the best of his early works. The title character is a woman who, at the start of the play, has already driven five husbands to suicide...
), 1877 - Der Podriatshik (The Purveyor), 1877
- Die Alte Moid (The Old Maid) 1877
- Die Tzvei fardulte (The Two Scatter-Brains) 1877
- Die Shvebeleh (Matches) 1877
- Fir Portselaiene Teler (Four Porcelain Plates) 1877
- Der Shpigl (The Mirror) 1877
- Toib, Shtum un Blind (Deaf, Dumb and Blind) 1878
- Der Ligner, oder Todres Bloz (The Liar, or, Todres, Blow) (or Todres the Trombonist) 1878
- Ni-be-ni-me-ni-cucuriguNi-be-ni-me-ni-cucuriguNi-be-ni-me-ni-cucurigu is an 1878 play by Abraham Goldfaden. The somewhat nonsensical Yiddish title is variously translated as Not Me, Not You, Not Cock-a-Doodle-Doo or Neither This, Nor That, nor Kukerikoo; Lulla Rosenfeld says it had an alternate title The Struggle of Culture with Fanaticism...
(Not Me, Not You, Not Cock-a-Doodle-Doo or Neither This, Nor That, nor Kukerikoo; Lulla Rosenfeld also gives the alternate title The Struggle of Culture with Fanaticism) 1878 - Der Heker un der Bleher-iung (The Butcher and the Tinker) 1878
- Die Kishufmacherin (The Sorceress, also known as The Witch of BotoşaniThe Witch of BotosaniThe Witch of Botoşani or simply The Witch or The Sorceress was an 1878, or possibly 1877, play by Abraham Goldfaden...
) 1878, 1887 - Soufflé, 1878
- Doi Intriganten (Two Intriguers) 1878
- Die tzwei Kuni-lemels (The Fanatic, or The Two Kuni-Lemls) 1880
- Thiat Hametim (The Winter of Death) 1881
- Shulamith (ShulamithShulamithShulamith may refer to:*Shulamith School for Girls*Shulamith, a play by Abraham Goldfaden*Shulamith , the cat that founded the American Curl breed-Also:...
or The Daughter of Jerusalem) wr. 1880, 1881 - Dos Zenteh Gebot, oder Lo Tachmod (The Tenth Commandment, or Thou Shalt Not Covet) 1882, 1887
- Der Sambatien (SambationSambationAccording to rabbinic literature, the Sambation is the river beyond which the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel were exiled by the Assyrian king Shalmaneser V.-Location:...
) 1882 - Doctor Almasada, oder Die Yiden in Palermo (Doctor Almasada, or The Jews of Palermo also known as Doctor Almasado, Doctor Almaraso, Doctor AlmasaroDoctor AlmasaroDoctor Almasaro, or The Jews of Palermo is an historical, dramatic play in rhymed couplets by Abraham Goldfaden, written some time between 1880 and 1883...
) 1880, 1883 - Bar Kokhba, 1883, 1885
- Akejdos Jzchuk (The Sacrifice of Isaac), 1891
- Dos Finfteh Gebot, oder Kibed Ov (The Fifth Commandment, or Thou Shalt Not Kill), 1892
- Rabi Yoselman, oder Die Gzerot fun Alsas (Rabbi Yoselman, or The Alsatian Decree) 1877, 1892
- Judas Maccabeus, 1892
- Judith and Holofernes, 1892
- Mashiach Tzeiten?! (The Messianic Era?!) 1891 1893
- Yiddish translation of Johann StraussJohann Strauss IIJohann Strauss II , also known as Johann Baptist Strauss or Johann Strauss, Jr., the Younger, or the Son , was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrilles, and other types of dance music, as well as several operettas...
's Gypsy BaronThe Gypsy BaronThe Gypsy Baron is an operetta in three acts by Johann Strauss II which premiered at the Theater an der Wien on 24 October 1885. Its libretto was by the author Ignaz Schnitzer and in turn was based on Sáffi by Mór Jókai. During the composer's lifetime, the operetta enjoyed great success, second...
1894 - Sdom Veamora (Sodom and Gomorrah) 1895
- Die Catastrofe fun Braila (The Catastrophe in Brăila) 1895
- Meilits Ioisher (The Messenger of Justice) 1897
- David ba-Milchama (David in the War) 1906, in Hebrew
- Ben Ami (Son of My People) 1907, 1908
Songs and poetry
Goldfaden wrote hundreds of songs and poems. Among his most famous are:- "Der Malekh" ("The Angel")
- "Royzhinkes mit mandlen" (Raisins and AlmondsRaisins and Almonds"Raisins and Almonds" is a Jewish lullaby by Abraham Goldfaden, so well known that it has assumed the status of a folk song. It has been recorded as both a vocal and instrumental by many artists over the years, including Itzhak Perlman and Benita Valente. It is a common lullaby among European Jews...
) - "Shabes, Yontev, un Rosh Khoydesh" ("Sabbath, Festival, and New Moon")
- "Tsu Dayn Geburtstag!" ("To Your Birthday!")
External links
- McBee, Richard . The Jewish PressThe Jewish PressThe Jewish Press is an American weekly newspaper, geared toward the Modern Orthodox Jewish community. It describes itself as "America's Largest Independent Jewish Weekly." The newspaper has a politically conservative viewpoint and editorial policy....
(New York) January 7, 2004: review of a 2003 performance of Goldfaden's operettaOperettaOperetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
Akeydes Yitskhok ("The Sacrifice of IsaacIsaacIsaac as described in the Hebrew Bible, was the only son Abraham had with his wife Sarah, and was the father of Jacob and Esau. Isaac was one of the three patriarchs of the Israelites...
"). - avraham levinson - article in Hebrew about Goldfaden on line