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A History of The Folksbiene
Mother's Sabbath Days
by Chaim Grade
1960-1961 Season
Folksbiene Playhouse
175 East Broadway
New York, NY
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A review from the New
York Times, November 21, 1960.
Theatre:
Post-War Jews
'Mother Sabbath Days' Given at Folksbiene
by Richard F. Shepard
A group of beautiful portraits of East
European Jewry are set against the stark background of shattered
post-war Vilna in "Mother's Sabbath Days," which started weekend
performances at the Folksbiene Playhouse on Friday.
The drama was adapted from a novel by
Chaim Grade and directed by David Licht as the first work of the
forty-sixth season of the Yiddish Folksbiene group. The troupe
clings with great fidelity to classical Yiddish, undiluted by
English intrusions. It is a treat to hear, but for those who learned
the language in America, it may lose something in the original.
The play is about a young man who
returns to the Lithuanian city in which his mother and bride
perished at the hands of the Nazis. He meets a few of the dazed,
stunned survivors who struggle to learn some meaning from the
catastrophe. But, for the most part, it consists of onstage
flashbacks of the characters who populated what is now a literal
ghost town.
It is in the pre-war reminiscences
that the play shines. There is the saintly mother, beloved by all,
beautifully enacted by Mina Kern; the acid-tongued town gossip,
flaying one and all impartially, unerringly interpreted by Ziporah
Spaisman; the hunchbacked, tragi-comic tailor, played by Joshua
Zeldis, who sadly reports that people should wish him "mazel tov" --
his daughter has been arrested by the Russians as a spy. And there
is the poet, in the person of Michael Neiditch, who chants a
touching poem to a prayer shawl.
Others in the expertly managed cast
include Norman Kruger, as the man who came back; Morris Adler, as
the shoemaker who sits in perpetual mourning, and Rita Reich as the
bride. Sam Leve's set is designed as a simple yet impressive
background that mirrors forcefully he happy times and the horrible
aftermath.
Despite these virtues, the play as a
whole does not have the continuous dramatic force that one might
expect. The discussions among the survivors should be the binding
material; one looks for a moral. For some, life goes on; for some,
life has stopped in thoughts of death. Some have hope, some have
hate. The talk weakens, rather than strengthens, the work. This may
be an accurate, realistic summary, but as drama it does not provide
the necessary unity of either hope or despair.
However, it is good to see a survival
of serious original Yiddish theatre that merits more than a
condescending appraisal. This is a play that stands on its own feet
and need no apologists. |
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Mina Kern and Harry Frey
Courtesy of YIVO
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From right: Morris Adler, Harry Freifeld,
Rivka Adler and Zypora Spaisman
Both photos courtesy of YIVO
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The Cast of Characters: |
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The Son
Balberishkin
The Mother
Mariashe
Velvel
Reb Mayer
Mania
Liza
Frumeh Libtshe
Chatzkel
Shayf
Reb Natan Noteh
Zalman Press
The Bride's Father
Dr. Anna Itkin
Moishele
Lonek |
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Norman Kruger
Morris Adler
Mina Kern
Ziporah Spaisman
Joshua Zeldis
Harry Frey
Ada Singer
Sara Stabin
Rita Reich
Ben Feivelowitz
Jacob Belagorsky
Morris August
Michael Neiditch
Max Strahl
Eva Adler
Albert Jacobs
Harry Freifeld |
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Sung by: Masha Benia
Time: Before and after
World War II
Place: Vilno, Poland
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The Synopsis:
My child, I'll continue to cry in my grave,
My
form, it will never find rest anymore;
If
you should ever forget my testament,
Or, if I ever become estranged in your heart.
Let valor radiate, if lose you must,
Like after darkness, arises the dawn,
Bent to the clue of your own heart's blood,
If
I ever become a stranger in your heart.
CHAIM GRADE
Upon the ruins of the Vilno ghetto, we see
wandering the lone figure of the Man who came
back.
When the Nazis took Vilno in the year 1941, He
left for Russia, leaving behind him, his mother
with his young wife. Now that he returned and is
finding himself wandering on the ruins of his
beloved Vilno, he is stifled by the immensity of
the destruction on all sides.The death-laden
dust of the mountainous piles of debris fill his
embittered soul and tie his broken body with
links of granite. They cut deep grooves in his
body; they lacerate his flesh, but he will not
free himself of his shackles.
In his mind's eye arise scenes from his own past
life, bringing with the the forms and shapes of
neighbors, the lovely figure of his bride; that
of her father's and brother's and the face of
his martyred mother. Her week-days of stark
poverty, despite hard labor, and her glorious
Days of Sabbath.
In a small cellar filled with black destruction,
he who returned finds a cobbler, whose son he
has met in his wanderings in the foreign lands.
He finds that the cobbler, too, is invisibly
attached to his ruins. His wife and their small
daughter were abducted by the Nazis and brought
to Maidanek to be rubbed out. So, the little
cobbler is observing the seven days mourning
period, that in truth never ends.
The friend of the man who came back, a
woman-doctor, and her son, urge him to leave Vilno. It is their contention that there will
not be a vestige of Jewish life there
anymore. The scales on which the podiatrist used
to weigh Jewish infants, she can use no
more. Only dirt is left to be put on the scales
for weighing, but not newly-borns. How then is
it to be expected here, that Jewish life will
rise again.
Above the door of the humble smithy, that his
mother once called home, hangs precariously a
thick piece of gray spider web, which does not
allow the man who came back to penetrate into
the interior, as the cherubs with their swords
of fire did not permit Adam and Eve to re-enter
the garden of Eden. Out of the pitch-black
darkness within comes the wailing of a cat. The
Returnee is thus reminded how on Yom Kippur,
just before the afternoon prayers, she would
interrupt her supplications to go feed the cat,
that lived with us. Now he justifies his mother
before the lonely cat. He whimpers, "mother
cannot come back. She will never come back."
He leaves Vilno. He takes formal departure from
the ruins. Wherever he would set foot, these
shapes and forms of the martyrs will forever be
with him. He would once more return to normal
life and will never cease to demand an
accounting of the assassins who destroyed a
Jewish world, cut down Jewish mothers and
forever snuffed out the blessing-candles of
"Mother's Sabbath Days." |
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