Jacob Sternberg
Encyclopedia
Yankev Shternberg (1890, Lipcani
, Bessarabia
- 1973, Moscow
, USSR) 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 Lipkany (Yiddish: Lipkon, now Lipcani
in Moldova
), which was famously termed "Bessarabian Olympus" by Hebrew and Yiddish poet Chaim Nachman Bialik and which in the second half of the 19th century produced several major figures of the modern Yiddish and Hebrew belle-lettres, among them Yehuda Shteinberg and Eliezer Shteinbarg. As a child, Shternberg went to school in Kamenets-Podolsky with and closely befriended another important future Yiddish writer Moyshe Altman
(although they have parted ways years later)
Shternberg debuted in 1908 with a fairy tale in the newspaper Unzer Lebn (Odessa
); published poetry in Reizen's collections "Fraye Erd" (1910) and "Dos Naye Land" (1911), and in "Gut Morgn" (Odessa
). Moved to Czernowitz, then to Romania
in 1914 and became associated with a short-lived Yiddish-language magazine Likht ("Light"), four issues of which were published in Iaşi
between December 1914 and September 1915. Likht called for a "renaissance of the Jewish stages in Romania" and condemned the "poor foundation" of Yiddish theater as a commercial institution: "The Yiddish stage ought to be a place of education, of drawing Jews closer together through the Yiddish word… we will fight against this [commercial] state of things."
Israil Bercovici
counts the "literary-musical" gatherings sponsored by that magazine as "the beginning of modern Yiddish theater in Romania", and sees Shternberg as preparing the way for the Vilna Troupe
, the Yiddish theater troupe that brought the ideas of Konstantin Stanislavski
to Romania. Nonetheless, Shternberg adopted as a slogan "Back to Goldfaden
". Calling Abraham Goldfaden "the Prince Charming
who woke up the lethargic Romanian Jewish Culture" when he founded professional Yiddish theater in 1876 (Iaşi
), Shternberg wrote, "The only milieu that attracts the great Jewish masses is a traditional-cultural
theater. Not even a literary theater… From that I created a social-political theater, a theater… [of current events]… which I think was, then, the first of its kind in Yiddish".
In the 1910s, Shternberg published poetry in literary magazines Hamer (Brăila
), Frayhayt, Arbeter Tsaytung, Dos Naye Lebm (all in Czernowitz), as well as in Literarishe Bleter (Warsaw) and Tsayt (New York). In 1917, in response to antisemitic violence at that time in Romania and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, he staged passages from Bialik. In 1920, he became the editor of "Der Veker", official organ of the Jewish section of the Romanian Socialist Party. In the early 1920s, after spending a year in Berlin
, he started his own troupe in Bucharest
(theater-review), for which he wrote nine plays (so-called "revistes") including Tsimes (named after a traditional pureed vegetable dish), Bukaresht-Yerusholaim ("Bucharest-Jerusalem"), Mitskedrinem ("All of a sudden"), Grine bleter ("Green leaves"), Kukuriku, Sholem-Aleykhem ("Hello"), Hershele Ostropoler ("Hershele of Ostropol"). In 1924-26, he was the director for the "Vilner trupe"
. The Romania
n daily newspaper Adevărul
wrote on August 23, 1924, shortly after the troupe's arrival in Bucharest, that "Such a demonstration of artistry, even on a small stage such as Jigniţa and even in a language like Yiddish ought to be seen by all who are interested in superior realization of drama."
In 1930 he created a hugely successful studio theater BITS
("Bukareshter Yidishe Teater-Studiye"), housed in Bucharest
's Jewish quarter Văcăreşti
, that played a prominent role in the development of modern trends in European theater. BITS staged works of O. Dymov (Yashke-muzikant - "Yashka The Musician"), Jacob Gordin, I.L. Peretz
(Banakht afn altn mark - "A night at the old market"), Sholem Aleichem (Oytser - "Treasure", and most famously Der farkishefter shnayder - "The enchanted tailor"), Leyb Malekh (Der Geler Shotn, 1935), Nikolai Gogol
(Zhenit'ba
- "The Marriage"), - mostly musical comedies with elements of grotesque, but also I.Y. Singer's
Yoshe Kalb and his own play Teater in Flamen ("Theater in Flames") on the theme of the then-ongoing Spanish Civil War
. Sidi Tal
starred in many of these productions. The performances were popular with the Bucharest intelligentsia and Peretz's "Banakht Afn Altn Mark", for one, was played more than 150 times. During this time, Shternberg published his first collection of poetry, in Bucharest (1938). As antisemitic, pro-fascist tendencies gained power in Bucharest, the theater left for a prolonged tour of major European cities and eventually Shternberg moved to Czernowitz, where he continued his theatrical activities.
In 1939, Shternberg along with Moyshe Altman sneaked across the Dniester
and became a Soviet citizen. A year later, when his native Bessarabia
was annexed by the Soviet Union
, he and most of his former troupe settled in Kishinev, where Shternberg became artistic director of the Yiddish-language Moldova
n State Jewish Theater and staged, among other works, M. Daniel's Zyamke Kopatsh and Sholom-Aleichem's Motl Peysi Dem Khazns ("Motl Peysi, the cantor's son") with Sidi Tal in the boys' roles. During the war, he and his theatre evacuated to Uzbekistan
, where he worked for the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
and was mobilized into a paramilitary construction unit. After the war, he returned to Kishinev and resumed his work at the Moldovan State Jewish Theater, where he staged his play Di Balade fun der Esesovke Brunhilde un ir hunt ("The ballad of the SS soldier Brunhilde and her dog") and published poetry in the almanac Heymland (1948). He was arrested at the height of the Stalin's campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans
" (Jews) in the spring of 1949 and was sent to labour camps for 7 years. On his early return and rehabilitation 5 years later, Shternberg settled in Moscow
and worked as a translator of Romanian literary works into Russian. He began to publish literary essays and poetry in the newly founded Sovetish Heymland in 1961 and briefly became a member of its editorial board.http://judaica.kiev.ua/Conference/Conf30.htm Collections of his poetry were published in Bucharest and Paris, and in Hebrew translation by Shlionsky and Penn in Israel
on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Shternberg died of a heart attack in 1973 on the very day he received a permission to leave for Israel. His wife, the composer Otiliya Likhtenshteyn, who set his poems and those of other Soviet Yiddish poets (first of all Leib Kvitko
) to music, died the same year. A collection of Shternberg's literary essays on theatrical topics was published posthumously in Israel.
A committed socialist
, Shternberg wrote that, in the wake of the October Revolution
, "we satirized bourgeois assimilation, struggled with the [Jewish] clergy, fought for progressive Jewish culture, for the emancipation of the Jews, for the rights of citizenship… for progressive Jewish literature."
Lipcani
Lipcani is a town in Briceni District, Moldova. It is also a border crossing between Moldova and Romania.- Overview :Lipcani is located on the banks of the Prut river, which forms the border with Romania. The border with Ukraine is also only a few kilometers to the north. Lipcani is located in...
, Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
- 1973, Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
, USSR) was a Yiddish theater director, teacher of theater, playwright, avant-garde poet and short-story writer, best known for his theater work 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...
between the two world wars.
Shternberg grew up in the northern Bessarabian shtetl of Lipkany (Yiddish: Lipkon, now Lipcani
Lipcani
Lipcani is a town in Briceni District, Moldova. It is also a border crossing between Moldova and Romania.- Overview :Lipcani is located on the banks of the Prut river, which forms the border with Romania. The border with Ukraine is also only a few kilometers to the north. Lipcani is located in...
in Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
), which was famously termed "Bessarabian Olympus" by Hebrew and Yiddish poet Chaim Nachman Bialik and which in the second half of the 19th century produced several major figures of the modern Yiddish and Hebrew belle-lettres, among them Yehuda Shteinberg and Eliezer Shteinbarg. As a child, Shternberg went to school in Kamenets-Podolsky with and closely befriended another important future Yiddish writer Moyshe Altman
Moyshe Altman
Moyshe Altman was a Yiddish writer.-Works:* בלענדעניש , Култур: Черновцы, 1926....
(although they have parted ways years later)
Shternberg debuted in 1908 with a fairy tale in the newspaper Unzer Lebn (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,...
); published poetry in Reizen's collections "Fraye Erd" (1910) and "Dos Naye Land" (1911), and in "Gut Morgn" (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,...
). Moved to Czernowitz, then to 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...
in 1914 and became associated with a short-lived Yiddish-language magazine Likht ("Light"), four issues of which were published in 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...
between December 1914 and September 1915. Likht called for a "renaissance of the Jewish stages in Romania" and condemned the "poor foundation" of Yiddish theater as a commercial institution: "The Yiddish stage ought to be a place of education, of drawing Jews closer together through the Yiddish word… we will fight against this [commercial] state of things."
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:...
counts the "literary-musical" gatherings sponsored by that magazine as "the beginning of modern Yiddish theater in Romania", and sees Shternberg as preparing the way for the Vilna Troupe
Vilna Troupe
The Vilna Troupe , also known as Fareyn Fun Yiddishe Dramatishe Artistn and later Dramă şi Comedie was an international and mostly Yiddish-speaking theatrical company, one of the most famous in the history of Yiddish theater...
, the Yiddish theater troupe that brought the ideas of Konstantin Stanislavski
Konstantin Stanislavski
Constantin Sergeyevich Stanislavski , was a Russian actor and theatre director. Building on the directorially-unified aesthetic and ensemble playing of the Meiningen company and the naturalistic staging of Antoine and the independent theatre movement, Stanislavski organized his realistic...
to Romania. Nonetheless, Shternberg adopted as a slogan "Back to 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...
". Calling Abraham Goldfaden "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" when he founded professional Yiddish theater in 1876 (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...
), Shternberg wrote, "The only milieu that attracts the great Jewish masses is a traditional-cultural
Culture
Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...
theater. Not even a literary theater… From that I created a social-political theater, a theater… [of current events]… which I think was, then, the first of its kind in Yiddish".
In the 1910s, Shternberg published poetry in literary magazines Hamer (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...
), Frayhayt, Arbeter Tsaytung, Dos Naye Lebm (all in Czernowitz), as well as in Literarishe Bleter (Warsaw) and Tsayt (New York). In 1917, in response to antisemitic violence at that time in Romania and elsewhere in Eastern Europe, he staged passages from Bialik. In 1920, he became the editor of "Der Veker", official organ of the Jewish section of the Romanian Socialist Party. In the early 1920s, after spending a year in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, he started his own troupe in 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....
(theater-review), for which he wrote nine plays (so-called "revistes") including Tsimes (named after a traditional pureed vegetable dish), Bukaresht-Yerusholaim ("Bucharest-Jerusalem"), Mitskedrinem ("All of a sudden"), Grine bleter ("Green leaves"), Kukuriku, Sholem-Aleykhem ("Hello"), Hershele Ostropoler ("Hershele of Ostropol"). In 1924-26, he was the director for the "Vilner trupe"
Vilna Troupe
The Vilna Troupe , also known as Fareyn Fun Yiddishe Dramatishe Artistn and later Dramă şi Comedie was an international and mostly Yiddish-speaking theatrical company, one of the most famous in the history of Yiddish theater...
. The 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...
n daily newspaper Adevărul
Adevarul
Adevărul is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in 1871 and reestablished in 1888, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published during the Romanian Kingdom's existence, adopting an independent pro-democratic position, advocating land reform and universal suffrage...
wrote on August 23, 1924, shortly after the troupe's arrival in Bucharest, that "Such a demonstration of artistry, even on a small stage such as Jigniţa and even in a language like Yiddish ought to be seen by all who are interested in superior realization of drama."
In 1930 he created a hugely successful studio theater BITS
Bucharest Yiddish Studio Theater
The Bucharest Yiddish Studio Theater was a short-lived, highly experimental Yiddish theater founded in Bucharest, Romania in 1930, under the leadership of Jacob Sternberg....
("Bukareshter Yidishe Teater-Studiye"), housed in 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....
's Jewish quarter Văcăreşti
Vacaresti
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...
, that played a prominent role in the development of modern trends in European theater. BITS staged works of O. Dymov (Yashke-muzikant - "Yashka The Musician"), Jacob Gordin, I.L. Peretz
I.L. Peretz
Isaac Leib Peretz , also known as Yitskhok Leybush Peretz and Icchok Lejbusz Perec or Izaak Lejb Perec , best known as I.L. Peretz, was a Yiddish language author and playwright. Payson R. Stevens, Charles M...
(Banakht afn altn mark - "A night at the old market"), Sholem Aleichem (Oytser - "Treasure", and most famously Der farkishefter shnayder - "The enchanted tailor"), Leyb Malekh (Der Geler Shotn, 1935), Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
(Zhenit'ba
Zhenitba (play)
Marriage is a play by the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, which was first published in 1842.-Plot summary:In the opening scene, a civil servant named Ivan Kuzmich Podkolyosin sits alone in his room smoking a pipe and contemplating marriage. He has hired a matchmaker , as was the custom in Russia at...
- "The Marriage"), - mostly musical comedies with elements of grotesque, but also I.Y. Singer's
Israel Joshua Singer
Israel Joshua Singer was a Yiddish novelist. He was born Yisroel Yehoyshue Zinger, the son of Pinchas Mendl Zinger, a rabbi and author of rabbinic commentaries, and Basheva Zylberman...
Yoshe Kalb and his own play Teater in Flamen ("Theater in Flames") on the theme of the then-ongoing Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. Sidi Tal
Sidi Tal
Sidi L'vovna Tal or Sidy Thal was a prominent, popular Jewish singer and actress in the Yiddish language, born in Czernowitz, Austria-Hungary...
starred in many of these productions. The performances were popular with the Bucharest intelligentsia and Peretz's "Banakht Afn Altn Mark", for one, was played more than 150 times. During this time, Shternberg published his first collection of poetry, in Bucharest (1938). As antisemitic, pro-fascist tendencies gained power in Bucharest, the theater left for a prolonged tour of major European cities and eventually Shternberg moved to Czernowitz, where he continued his theatrical activities.
In 1939, Shternberg along with Moyshe Altman sneaked across the Dniester
Dniester
The Dniester is a river in Eastern Europe. It runs through Ukraine and Moldova and separates most of Moldova's territory from the breakaway de facto state of Transnistria.-Names:...
and became a Soviet citizen. A year later, when his native Bessarabia
Bessarabia
Bessarabia is a historical term for the geographic region in Eastern Europe bounded by the Dniester River on the east and the Prut River on the west....
was annexed by the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, he and most of his former troupe settled in Kishinev, where Shternberg became artistic director of the Yiddish-language Moldova
Moldova
Moldova , officially the Republic of Moldova is a landlocked state in Eastern Europe, located between Romania to the West and Ukraine to the North, East and South. It declared itself an independent state with the same boundaries as the preceding Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991, as part...
n State Jewish Theater and staged, among other works, M. Daniel's Zyamke Kopatsh and Sholom-Aleichem's Motl Peysi Dem Khazns ("Motl Peysi, the cantor's son") with Sidi Tal in the boys' roles. During the war, he and his theatre evacuated to Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....
, where he worked for the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
The Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was formed on Joseph Stalin's order in Kuibyshev in April 1942 with the official support of the Soviet authorities...
and was mobilized into a paramilitary construction unit. After the war, he returned to Kishinev and resumed his work at the Moldovan State Jewish Theater, where he staged his play Di Balade fun der Esesovke Brunhilde un ir hunt ("The ballad of the SS soldier Brunhilde and her dog") and published poetry in the almanac Heymland (1948). He was arrested at the height of the Stalin's campaign against "rootless cosmopolitans
Rootless Cosmopolitans
-Track listing:# "I Should Care" – 1:17# "Shortly After Takeoff" – 4:14# "The Wind Cries Mary" – 5:01# "Friendly Ghosts" – 5:20...
" (Jews) in the spring of 1949 and was sent to labour camps for 7 years. On his early return and rehabilitation 5 years later, Shternberg settled in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
and worked as a translator of Romanian literary works into Russian. He began to publish literary essays and poetry in the newly founded Sovetish Heymland in 1961 and briefly became a member of its editorial board.http://judaica.kiev.ua/Conference/Conf30.htm Collections of his poetry were published in Bucharest and Paris, and in Hebrew translation by Shlionsky and Penn in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Shternberg died of a heart attack in 1973 on the very day he received a permission to leave for Israel. His wife, the composer Otiliya Likhtenshteyn, who set his poems and those of other Soviet Yiddish poets (first of all Leib Kvitko
Leib Kvitko
Leib Kvitko was a prominent Yiddish poet, an author of well-known children's poems and a member of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee . He was one of the editors of Eynikayt and of the Heymland, a literary magazine...
) to music, died the same year. A collection of Shternberg's literary essays on theatrical topics was published posthumously in Israel.
A committed socialist
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,...
, Shternberg wrote that, in the wake of the October Revolution
October Revolution
The October Revolution , also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution , Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a political revolution and a part of the Russian Revolution of 1917...
, "we satirized bourgeois assimilation, struggled with the [Jewish] clergy, fought for progressive Jewish culture, for the emancipation of the Jews, for the rights of citizenship… for progressive Jewish literature."
Books
- Shtot in profil. Lid un grotesk ("City in Profile. Poetry and Grotesque", Bucharest, 1935)
- Izbrannoe" ("Collected Poetry", in RussianRussian languageRussian 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...
, Moscow: Sovetskiy Pisatel', 1954) - Lid un balade af di karpatn ("Songs and Ballads of the Carpathians", Paris: Afsnay, 1968)
- In krayz fun yorn (geklibene lider) ("At the Crossing of Years" (collected poems)", Bucharest: Kriterion, 1970)
- Veygn literatur un teater ("On Literature and Theater" (critical essays), Tel Aviv, 1987)