Boris Thomashefsky
Encyclopedia
Boris Thomashefsky was a Ukrainian
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...

-born (later American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

) Jewish singer and actor who became one of the biggest stars in 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...

; born in Tarashcha (Yiddish:Tarasche), a shtetl
Shtetl
A shtetl was typically a small town with a large Jewish population in Central and Eastern Europe until The Holocaust. Shtetls were mainly found in the areas which constituted the 19th century Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, the Congress Kingdom of Poland, Galicia and Romania...

 near Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....

, Ukraine, he emigrated to the U.S. at the age of 12 in 1881. A year later, barely a teenager, he was largely responsible for the first performance of 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...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 and has been credited as the pioneer of Borscht Belt
Borscht Belt
Borscht Belt, or Jewish Alps, is a colloquial term for the mostly defunct summer resorts of the Catskill Mountains in parts of Sullivan, Orange and Ulster counties in upstate New York that were a popular vacation spot for New York City Jews from the 1920s through the 1960s.-Name:The name comes from...

 entertainment.

Although Thomashefsky left Imperial Russia at a time when Yiddish theater was still thriving there (it was banned shortly after, in September 1883), he had never actually seen it performed prior to the 1882 performance he brought together in New York. Thomashefsky, who was earning some money by singing on Saturdays at the Henry Street Synagogue on the Lower East Side
Lower East Side, Manhattan
The Lower East Side, LES, is a neighborhood in the southeastern part of the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is roughly bounded by Allen Street, East Houston Street, Essex Street, Canal Street, Eldridge Street, East Broadway, and Grand Street....

, was also working as a cigarette maker in a sweatshop
Sweatshop
Sweatshop is a negatively connoted term for any working environment considered to be unacceptably difficult or dangerous. Sweatshop workers often work long hours for very low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage. Child labour laws may be violated. Sweatshops may have...

, where he first heard songs from the Yiddish theater, sung by some of his fellow workers. [JVL]

He managed to convince a local tavern owner to invest in bringing over some performers. The first performance was Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden ; was an Russian-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...

's Yiddish 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:...

 די מכשפה (The Witch). The performance was a bit of a disaster: pious and prosperous "uptown" German Jews opposed to Yiddish theater did a great deal to sabotage it. Thomashefsky's performing career was launched partly because part of the sabotage consisted of bribing the soubrette
Soubrette
A soubrette is a female stock character in opera and theatre. The term arrived in English from Provençal via French, and means "conceited" or "coy".-Theater:...

to fake a sore throat: Thomashefsky went on in her place. [JVL]

Shortly after, the teenaged Thomashefsky was the pioneer of taking Yiddish theater "on the road" in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, performing Goldfaden's plays in cities such as Philadelphia, Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

, Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...

, Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh is the second-largest city in the US Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Allegheny County. Regionally, it anchors the largest urban area of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley, and nationally, it is the 22nd-largest urban area in the United States...

, Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

 and Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, all in the 1880s; for much of the 1880s, Chicago was his base. After Yiddish theater was banned in Russia, his tours came to include such prominent actors as Siegmund Mogulesko, David Kessler
David Kessler (actor)
David Kessler was a prominent actor in the first great era of Yiddish theater. As a star Yiddish dramatic performer in New York City, he was the first leading man in Yiddish theater to dispense with incidental music....

, and 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....

, with new plays by playwrights such as Moses Ha-Levi 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...

. [Adler, 1999, 312-314]

In 1887, playing in Baltimore, he met 14-year-old Bessie Baumfeld-Kaufman
Bessie Thomashefsky
Bessie Thomashefsky was a Jewish American singer and actress, a star in Yiddish theater beginning in the 1890s. She was the wife and stage partner of Boris Thomashefsky, the most popular Yiddish leading man of his era...

, who went backstage to meet the beautiful young "actress" she had seen on stage, only to discover that "she" was a boy. Bessie soon ran away from home to join the company, and eventually took over the ingenue roles, as Boris moved on to romantic male leads; they were married in 1891. [JVL]

In 1891, with Mogulesko, Kessler, and Adler all engaged in starting the Union Theater, Moishe Finkel
Moishe 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...

 brought the still relatively unknown Thomashefsky back to New York to star at his National Theater, where Thomashefsky became such an enormous popular success in Moses Halevy Horowitz's
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...

 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:...

 David ben Jesse as to force the Union Theater temporarily to abandon its highbrow programming and compete head on. [Adler, 1999, 318 (commentary)]

After Adler recruited Jacob Gordin as a playwright and found a way to draw the masses to serious theater with Gordin's The Yiddish King Lear
The Yiddish King Lear
The Yiddish King Lear was an 1892 play by Jacob Gordin, and is generally seen as ushering in the first great era of Yiddish Theater, in which serious drama gained prominence over operetta.Gordin, a respected intellectual and...

, and then turned to Shakespeare's Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...

, Thomashefsky decided to show that he could compete on that ground as well, and responded with the first Yiddish-language production of Shakespeare's Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...

, in which, by all reports, he acquitted himself excellently. [Adler, 1999, 329, 330] These productions ushered in what is generally seen as the first great age of Yiddish theater, centered in New York and lasting approximately until a new wave of Jewish immigration, in 1905—1908 once again resulted in a vogue for broad comedy, 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...

 and light operettas, which the Thomashefskys embraced wholeheartedly, especially in performing Leon Kobrin
Leon Kobrin
Leon Kobrin was a playwright in Yiddish theater, writer of short stories and novels, and a translator. As a playwright he is generally seen as a disciple of Jacob Gordin, but his mature work was more character-driven, more open and realistic in its presentation of human sexual desire, and less...

's plays about immigrant life. [Adler, 1999, passim, 359 (commentary)]

Other notable Thomashefsky productions included Yiddish versions of Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....

, Goethe's Faust and, unlikely as it may seem, Wagner's
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

 Parsifal
Parsifal
Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...

. According to the Jewish Virtual Library, in an adaptation of Hamlet called Der Yeshiva Bokher (The Yeshiva Student), "a wicked uncle smears [a] rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

nic candidate’s reputation by calling him a nihilist
Nihilist movement
The Nihilist movement was a Russian movement in the 1860s which rejected all authorities. It is derived from the Latin word "nihil", which means "nothing"...

 and the young man dies of a broken heart." [JVL] (They don't say whether this was the production that went head to head with the Adler/Kessler Othello.)

By 1910, Thomashefsky owned a 12-room home on Bedford Avenue 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...

, plus a bungalow by the sea, and 20 acres (81,000 m²) in Hunter, New York
Hunter, New York
Hunter, New York may refer to:* Hunter , New York* Hunter , New York...

 which included an open-air theater, Thomashefsky's Paradise Gardens. Each of his three sons had an Arabian horse
Arabian horse
The Arabian or Arab horse is a breed of horse that originated on the Arabian Peninsula. With a distinctive head shape and high tail carriage, the Arabian is one of the most easily recognizable horse breeds in the world. It is also one of the oldest breeds, with archaeological evidence of horses...

. [Adler, 1999, 359 (commentary)]

In 1935, late in his career, Thomashefsky was an actor/singer in Henry Lynn
Henry Lynn
Henry Lynn was a film director, screenwriter, and producer, who concentrated on Yiddish life and culture in the United States, early twentieth century, , the era of Yiddish film in America...

's Yiddish film, Bar Mitzvah, in which he played a melodramatic role with gusto and co-produced the film. He sang, Erlekh Zayn (Be Virtuous), a song from a 1924 Yiddish play, Bar Mitzvah.

With his wife, actress Bessie Thomashefsky
Bessie Thomashefsky
Bessie Thomashefsky was a Jewish American singer and actress, a star in Yiddish theater beginning in the 1890s. She was the wife and stage partner of Boris Thomashefsky, the most popular Yiddish leading man of his era...

, he had a son Ted, who changed his name to Ted Thomas and became a stage manager; one of Ted Thomas's sons is the noted conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...

 Michael Tilson Thomas
Michael Tilson Thomas
Michael Tilson Thomas is an American conductor, pianist and composer. He is currently music director of the San Francisco Symphony, and artistic director of the New World Symphony Orchestra.-Early years:...

.

Thomashefsky is buried with his wife in the Yiddish theater section of the Mount Hebron Cemetery
Mount Hebron Cemetery
Mount Hebron is a Jewish cemetery located in the Flushing neighborhood of New York City. It was founded in 1903 as the Jewish section of Cedar Grove Cemetery. It is noted for its Yiddish theater section....

.

In the third Marx Brothers movie, Monkey Business
Monkey Business (1931 film)
Monkey Business is a 1931 comedy film. It is the third of the Marx Brothers' released movies, and the first not to be an adaptation of one of their Broadway shows. The film stars the four brothers: Groucho Marx, Chico Marx, Harpo Marx, and Zeppo Marx, and screen comedienne Thelma Todd. It is...

, Groucho Marx (in defending his right to hide in a gangster's moll's closet) exclaims, "That's what they said to Thomas Edison, mighty inventor, Thomas Lindbergh, mighty flyer, and Thomashefsky, 'mighty like a rose'!" Tribute was also paid in Mel Brooks' 1968 film The Producers
The Producers (1968 film)
The Producers is a 1968 American satirical dark comedy cult classic film written and directed by Mel Brooks. The film is set in the late 1960s and it tells the story of a theatrical producer and an accountant who want to produce a sure-fire Broadway flop...

when Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel
Zero Mostel
Samuel Joel “Zero” Mostel was an American actor of stage and screen, best known for his portrayal of comic characters such as Tevye on stage in Fiddler on the Roof, Pseudolus on stage and on screen in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and Max Bialystock in the original film version...

) attributes his acumen as a Broadway producer to the tutelage of "the great Boris Thomashefsky"; the line is also present in the stage musical
The Producers (musical)
The Producers is a musical adapted by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan from Brooks' 1968 film of the same name, with lyrics written by Brooks and music composed by Brooks and arranged by Glen Kelly and Doug Besterman. As in the film, the story concerns two theatrical producers who scheme to get rich...

 and film musical
The Producers (2005 film)
# "Overture" - Orchestra# "Opening Night" - Opening Nighters# "We Can Do It" - Max and Leo# "I Wanna Be a Producer" - Leo, Accountants, Mr. Marks and Dancing Chorus Girls# "Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop" - Franz, Max, and Leo...

versions, in the song "The King of Broadway".
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