Yiddish Theater
by Anna Khomina, Research and Special Projects Intern, Center for Jewish History
The tradition of Yiddish theater in America began in the 1880s and flourished into the 1920s, as Jewish immigrants streaming in from Eastern Europe yearned for a taste of the old country as well as a mode of entertainment and a gathering space that distracted them from the bustle and drudgery of New York City tenement life. Plays and musicals varied from melodramas and comedies, and often dealt with themes familiar to its audience, including the clash between Jewish culture and American secular life. Yiddish translations of popular contemporary and classic plays by Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Shakespeare, and others were also popular. Vaudeville elements, such as stunts, jokes, and couplets, could also be interjected into the program, making for an entertaining and boisterous performance.
Harold Clurman, a noted midcentury theater director, noted in 1968 that “even more than the synagogue or the lodge, [the theater] became the meeting place and the forum of the Jewish community in America between 1888 and the early 1920s.“ Jews of varied social classes and countries of origin found themselves sitting next to one another in an atmosphere that highly resembled a busy "outdoor marketplace” – “peddlers promoted their wares, and spectators chewed apples, shelled peanuts, and popped bottles of soda both during and after the intermission.” This environment, coupled with the melodramatic and “lowbrow” vaudevillian comedy of many performances, led upper-class intellectuals to turn up their noses at Yiddish theater, referring to it as shund (trash). Despite this view, Yiddish theater remained immensely popular in cities. By 1927, New York had eleven theaters, some of which were elegant and held over a thousand seats, a far cry from the ramshackle and humble theaters of the early 20th century. Lead actors became akin to “royalty” on the Lower East Side, and everyone in the audience had a favorite.
By the 1930s, as Jewish immigration from Europe decreased to a trickle, movies took off as a cheap alternative to theater, and knowledge of Yiddish began to falter among the younger generations, ticket sales fell and many theaters were abandoned. The era of Yiddish theater had come to a close, but not before leaving behind a mass of posters, photographs, manuscripts and documents that continue to attest to this cultural landmark. Source.
The Center for Jewish History houses a large collection of these documents – a set of Yiddish theater posters can be viewed at the Center’s flickr page, the CJH catalog and, of course, around the Center itself. In addition to this, the American Jewish Historical Society Archives holds a collection of over forty plays in Yiddish, including several translated plays by such writers as Dostoevsky and Gorky.
Search the collections at search.cjh.org.