Guest Post by Margaret Compton Brown Media Archives, University of Georgia Libraries I’d never heard of him before, but I’ve found out a few things about Mark Schweid since February. In 1929, Schweid was 38 years old, he had emigrated to the U.S. from Poland in 1911, had written many Yiddish plays and poems, was […]
By David Mazower Think of the pulsating energy of Motown’s dawn in Detroit. Or the soaring sounds of early jazz in New Orleans. And now imagine if all that remained of those transformative moments in American music history were a few faded black and white photographs and some scratchy 78 discs. That’s the reality Yiddish […]
One of the hardest problems in theatre studies is understanding audiences response. Nobody goes around collecting the opinions of everyday theatre-goers to preserve for posterity. Theatrical memoirs can give us some hints of audience reactions, for example by noting fan groups or long runs of certain shows, but the notorious ego intrusions in actor-authored books […]
By Amanda Seigel, Dorot Jewish Division, New York Public Library Nahum Stutchkoff (1893-1965) was a beloved Yiddish radio personality, playwright, lyricist and linguist who created dramas and commercials for WEVD radio and compiled a Yiddish rhyming dictionary and thesaurus. Once a household name among New York Yiddish speakers, he even appeared in ads for Beech-Nut […]
By David Mazower Some photographs just make you smile, and this is one of them. When I first saw it I thought it was a group of adults dressed up for the Jewish festival of Purim. That would explain the Cossack-style costumes and the (real or fake?) comedy store moustaches. In fact, although it’s not […]
By Zachary M. Baker For readers of this blog, Purim reminds us that modern Yiddish theater traces its lineage from the traditional folk drama genre known as the Purim-shpil. According to the literary historian Jean Baumgarten, the “Purim-shpil primarily drew on themes from traditional Jewish texts” – and not just the dramatic episodes recounted in […]
By Joel Berkowitz In 1888, the first school for Yiddish actors was supposed to open in New York. It never did, but the surviving document* that articulates its rationale and rules helps shed light on the state of Yiddish theatre in America at that moment. The school’s would-be founder, Avrom Goldfaden, was not just any […]
Guest Post by Jane Peppler I first discovered Ola Lilith while researching for my band Mappamundi’s Cabaret Warsaw CD. You can find Lilith on Youtube, with her husband Władysław Godik, singing An eytsele. Ola Lilith was born Lolya Tsederboym in Warsaw in 1906, to a middle-class assimilated, Polish-speaking family. She acted in school and at the age […]
By David Mazower This is the story behind an exquisite portrait of a Yiddish dramatist. It’s also a story of three strong personalities: a struggling immigrant widow, the playwright Jacob Gordin, and a gifted but forgotten artist/photographer; respectively, the portrait’s owner, subject, and creator. The immigrant widow was Rickel Sazer Hackman. She was born in […]
![Shloyme ha-meylekh [Shelomoh ha-melekh], September 17, 1898](http://web.archive.org./web/20150901210910im_/http://www.yiddishstage.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/pngbase64e2beae3804fd248b-522x410.png)
Amanda Seigel, Dorot Jewish Division New York Public Library The New York Public Library’s Digital Collection includes Yiddish theater posters dating back more than a hundred years. These ephemeral pieces, with their bold titles, portraits of actors, and exuberant descriptions of plays, illustrate the dynamic Yiddish theater tradition in two major centers: New York and […]
dear Amanda, this is a real bingo!!! thank you very, VERY (...)
NYPL has an edition of "Dos tsente begot" and it is also (...)
(as sweet as it possible :) ) dear Amanda, maybe you (...)