A History of The Folksbiene
 

It's Hard to Be a Jew
by Sholem Aleichem

1983-1984 Season

Central Synagogue Auditorium
123 East 55th Street
New York, NY

Zypora Spaisman in "It's Hard to Be a Jew" Courtesy of YIVO.

Cast of Characters:
		A review for this play appeared in the New York Times, November 9, 1983: Stage: 'Hard to Be a Jew' by Richard F. Shepard "It's Hard to Be a Jew" is not, as readers of English might presume, a theme for which Philip Roth holds the franchise. It is an ancient Yiddish saying and, as such, was taken for the title of a play, a wry comedy by Sholem Aleichem. It was first produced in 1920 on Second Avenue, in Yiddish, by the Yiddish Art Theatre and starred Maurice Schwartz, and a young Yiddish actor who later worked in the movies under the name of Paul Muni. It has been a hardy play, even if it is not a great one, and it is having yet another revival in its mother tongue by the Folksbiene Playhouse, the New York Yiddish performing company that is now sixty-nine years old. "It's Hard to Be a Jew" is still full of life and humor, a play with overtones of something old (czarist anti-Semitism), something new (Soviet anti-Semitism), something borrowed (a plot of mixed identities), and something blue (Jewish tsores in general). It is a story of two young friends in Czarist Russia, recent graduates from a high school who are about to enter university. the Jewish boy anticipates troubles.

His comrade, the patrician son of a Russian general, says that it is nonsense and he proposes that the two exchange identities for a year. The Russian boy goes to a university town, rooms with a Jewish family, which is baffled by his ignorance of Yiddish, and falls in love with the daughter, as does his friend. Somehow all this works out in a wry Sholem Aleichem context.

Israel Beker has directed this good cast in a way that breathes life and strikes sparks into a script that one might call old-fashioned if one did not ruminate that Shakespeare also wrote old-fashioned scripts that have held up rather well. The humor is mixed with the oppressiveness of the actual situation in a way that keeps an audience smiling and chuckling , and every once in a while erupting into a full belly laugh.

I.W. Firestone and Alexander Sirotin, as the two students, make a perfect "odd couple." Leon Liebgold plays the father of the house, prouder of his lineage than the general's son is of his own, and the unquenchable Zypora Spaisman is quintessentially comic as the practical balabusta, or lady of the house. Ibi Kaufman is an attractive heroine, while Paula Teitelbaum glows as the impish youngest member of the family. Jack Rechtzeit adds to the humor as a friend of the family, an ink-maker whose dirty hands serve as his papers giving him the right to live, as a Jew, in the town.

"It's Hard to Be a Jew" make no concessions to the non-Yiddishist beyond outlining the plot in the program. But you may have gone to the opera not knowing any more than that. Once you are keyed in, or have brought your interpreter with you (you can ask the people who are laughing what was said), you should enjoy it, too.