25  fine books for you to choose from!
 

First edition. The catalogue serves as an introduction to the Joseph Buloff Yiddish Theatre Archive donated to the Harvard College Library in 1986. Compiled by Luba Kadison Buloff, the last surviving member of the legendary Vilna Troupe, and includes stories of its tours in Europe, Buenos Aires, and the United States, before many of its actors died in the Holocaust. Joseph Buloff's memoirs of his childhood and civil war in Vilna are reprinted from an earlier work. This is a richly detailed account that mirrors the history of the Yiddish theatre in the twentieth century. Illustrated with over 100 photographs and facsimiles of posters, programs, and documents. viii , 161+ 1 pages. stiff paper wrappers.

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Pesach'ke Burstein, an old trouper from the Yiddish theater, recalls dramas both onstage and off in this memoir, which he dictated to his wife, Lillian Lux Burstein. The Story of Burstein's successful stage career is played out against the background of political turmoil in Europe, vignettes of life in small towns and big cities, friendships and rivalries among theater folk, family life, emigration to the United States, and tours through Europe, South America, Israel, and South Africa. Every personal anecdote tells the larger history: theater history and also the history of the Yiddish communities who were his audiences. While Burstein is a legend in Yiddish cheater, he was little known outside that world until he was celebrated in Arnon Goldfinger's acclaimed documentary Der Komediant. This memoir provides the first window for English readers into the other side of Yiddish culture—the Yiddish burlesque, the traveling Yiddish theater, and the music hall. It will not only delight readers but also reveal a social and cultural history never before described in such detail. Burstein's life is the story of popular Yiddish theater in the first half of the century.

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A lavishly illustrated world history of the Yiddish theater covering five continents and more than 300 years.

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Alyssa Quint focuses on the early years of the modern Yiddish theater, from roughly 1876 to 1883, through the works of one of its best-known and most colorful figures, Avrom Goldfaden. Goldfaden (né Goldenfaden, 1840-1908) was one of the first playwrights to stage a commercially viable Yiddish-language theater, first in Romania and then in Russia. Goldfaden's work was rapidly disseminated in print and his plays were performed frequently for Jewish audiences. Sholem Aleichem considered him as a forger of a new language that "breathed the European spirit into our old jargon." Quint uses Goldfaden's theatrical works as a way to understand the social life of Jewish theater in Imperial Russia. Through a study of his libretti, she looks at the experiences of Russian Jewish actors, male and female, to explore connections between culture as artistic production and culture in the sense of broader social structures. Quint explores how Jewish actors who played Goldfaden's work on stage absorbed the theater into their everyday lives. Goldfaden's theater gives a rich view into the conduct, ideology, religion, and politics of Jews during an important moment in the history of late Imperial Russia.

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"Jeffrey Veidlinger relates a fascinating and little-known piece of history. . . . [He] distills a remarkable amount of research into a pithy, well-turned account that will interest readers of cultural and political history." ―Publishers Weekly

Drawing from newly available archives, Jeffrey Veidlinger uses the dramatic story of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, the premiere secular Jewish cultural institution of the Soviet era, to demonstrate how Jewish writers and artists were able to promote Jewish national culture within the confines of Soviet nationality policies.

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Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy, and Mishugas of the Yiddish Theater in America
by Stefan Kanfer

From the author of the best-selling and critically acclaimed biographies Groucho and Ball of Fire comes a definitive look back at the Yiddish Theater. In this soulful and entertaining elegy Stefan Kanfer traces its meteoric rise, its precipitous fall, and its lasting mark on American theater, film, and culture in general.

The Yiddish Theater’s star seems to have burned out. The venues in New York City have all gone. So have the performers and their immigrant audiences. But in Stardust Lost they live again as Kanfer brings the colorful stage roaring back to life. Meticulously unraveling the history of Jewish theater, he begins with the drama of the Old Testament and moves through time and space to the cultural explosions of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the oppressions of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and the pogroms of early twentieth-century czarist Russia. Fleeing anti-Semitic edicts, the Jews of Eastern Europe push westward, migrating first to England and then to America. With them come the extravagant personages who bring drama—in every sense of the word—to Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Stardust Lost invokes the energy, belief, and pure chutzpah it took to establish and run the thriving, influential theaters. En route, Kanfer reveals the nightly drama and comedy that played out behind the scenes as well as onstage, and introduces all the players—actors, divas, playwrights, directors, designers, and producers—who made it possible. Along with the beating pulse of the Yiddish tradition come the larger-than-life stars: Boris Thomashefsky, Jacob P. Adler, Molly Picon, Paul Muni, Bertha Kalisch, David Kessler, Maurice Schwartz, and many others, most with libidos to match their oversized egos. The book grants us views of genuine artistic achievement along with tales of cutthroat competition, adulterous liaisons, and hilarious wrangles. As we see in detail, assimilation, world events, and great shifts in American entertainment—the very entertainment that the Yiddish Theater encouraged by providing talent to uptown stages and film studios—lead to a poignant finale.

From the daring Yiddish interpretation of The Merchant of Venice to Stella Adler’s influence on young actors to John Garfield’s and Marlon Brando’s impact on the screen, Kanfer traverses lower Manhattan, Broadway, and Hollywood to give us the tumultuous birth, flourishing, and decline of a great art form. It is a richly evocative chronicle that resurrects the forgotten landmarks and the vital personalities of the Yiddish Theater, whose work has gone but whose achievements can never be lost.

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The Yiddish Stage As a Temporary Home: Dzigan and Shumacher's Satirical Theater (1927-1980)
By Diego Rotman

The Yiddish Theater Stage as a Temporary Home takes us through the fascinating life and career of the most important comic duo in Yiddish Theater, Shimen Dzigan and Isroel Shumacher. Spanning over the course of half a century, from the beginning of their work at the Ararat avant-garde Yiddish theater in Lodz, Poland to their Warsaw theatre. They produced bold, groundbreaking political satire. The book further discusses their wanderings through the Soviet Union during the Second World War and their attempt to revive Jewish culture in Poland after the Holocaust. It finally describes their time in Israel, first as guest performers and later as permanent residents. Despite the restrictions on Yiddish actors in Israel, the duo insisted on performing in their language and succeeded in translating the new Israeli reality into unique and timely satire. In the 1950s, they voiced a unique among the Hebrew stages, political and cultural critique. Dzigan continued to perform on his own and with other Israeli artists until his death in 1980.

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The Moscow Yiddish Theater
by Benjamin Harsav

A vivid portrait of the Moscow Yiddish Theater and its innovations and contributions to the art of the theater in the modern age

The Moscow Yiddish Theater (later called GOSET) was born in 1919 and almost immediately became one of the most remarkable avant-garde theaters in Europe. It flourished in the 1920s but under Bolshevik pressure soon lost much of the originality that had distinguished it. In 1948 Stalin’s henchmen slaughtered GOSET’s legendary actor and director Solomon Mikhoels, and the theater was liquidated. This book focuses not on how the theater was persecuted but on its ambitious beginnings as a revolutionary organization of passionate artistic exploration. The book brings to English readers for the first time selected writings that reflect the aesthetics and politics of the Yiddish revolutionary theater. The book also incorporates miraculously salvaged images of Marc Chagall’s famous theater murals, as well as paintings of costumes and stage sets created by the best artists of the day. These illustrations, discovered only after the fall of the Soviet Union, have never been published before. With emphasis on the theater’s early achievements and its centrality in Moscow’s burgeoning theater world, the book makes a major contribution to the understanding of modern Jewish culture and the art of theater.

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The Detroit Yiddish Theater: 1920 to 1937
by James Albert Miller

A historical overview of the Yiddish Theater in Detroit, which had an Vibrant Yiddish community which rivaled New York and Chicago.

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The New York Times Great Songs of the Yiddish Theatre Arranged for Voice, Piano and Guitar
by Norman H. Warembud; Foreword by Mollie Picon

Hardcover book with dustjacket very good pre-owned condition, some light age/shelf wear to cover interior

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Der Payatz: Around the World With Yiddish Theater
by Herman Yablokoff

Herman Yablokoff was a master of his craft. He was an actor, singer, songwriter, playwright, director, and producer in a world that has virtually disappeared. In his autobiography, Yablokoff the showman stages a vivid recreation of his times. The result is breathtaking and captivating as Yablokoff, with genuine theatrical style, offers the story of his life. Originally published in Yiddish, Der Payatz was translated by Bella Mysell, Yablokoff’s wife and herself a star of the Yiddish stage. They were a popular team for many years. By the time Herman Yablokoff died the Yiddish culture in which he thrived had already largely vanished. But he leaves an enduring look at that culture. The master showman captures all the drama and excitement of the world in which he lived, giving us a riveting picture of a time that no longer exists.

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Ten Yiddish Plays in Translation
by Ellen Perecman

This volume includes works by six Yiddish playwrights: Sholem Aleichem, Sholem Asch, I.D. Berkowitz, Peretz Hirshbein, H. Leivick and David Pinski. These plays were published in the first half of the 20th century, the majority between 1904 and 1923. Preliminary drafts of six of the plays were published by iUniverse in 2007 in a volume entitled Selected Yiddish Plays: Vol.1. This updated volume includes final drafts and/or full text of plays in the 2007 publication, as well as four additional plays. With the exception of Hirshbein?s ?A Dream about Time? , all plays in this volume were produced in New York City between 2005 and 2015 by New Worlds Theatre Project (Producing Artistic Director, Ellen Perecman). The volume represents an effort to foster an appreciation for the literary legacy of Yiddish culture and the extent to which Yiddish literature, and Yiddish plays in particular, have enriched the international cultural and literary landscape.

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Six Plays of the Yiddish Theater (1916)
by David Pinski, Sholom Ash et al

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

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Yiddish Theatre: New Approaches
by Joel Berkowitz

This volume of essays is the first collection of scholarly studies on the Yiddish theatre to appear in English. Drawing on a variety of academic disciplines, it considers the dramatic and musical repertoire of Yiddish theatre and their historical development, popular and critical reception of
productions, and the practice and consequences of state censorship. The time-span covered is broad-from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century-as is the geographical range: Cracow, London, Moscow, New York, St Petersburg, Vienna, and Warsaw. Yiddish Theatre not only presents a comprehensive study
of the field but also helps illustrate the significance of the Yiddish theatre as a vital form of expression in the Jewish world. Yiddish drama and theatre has had an enormous capacity to entertain audiences on six continents, while at the same time highlighting social, political, religious, and
economic concerns of vital interest to the Jewish people.

Yiddish Theatre is a valuable resource for scholars, university students, and general readers interested both in Yiddish theatre specifically and related fields such as Jewish literature and culture, east European history and culture, and European and American theatre. The book contains the most
comprehensive bibliography to date of sources relating to the Yiddish theatre.

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Mirele Efros, also known as "The Yiddish Queen Lear", is a sophisticated version of Ukrainian-born Jacob Gordin's work about honesty, decency and devotion towards family and community. Mirele, a wealthy and pious widow, whose devotion to her children even goes as far as hand-picking her eldest son's wife, makes a tragic mistake in evaluating her future daughter-in-law as giving and pious. Conflict ensnares the two in short order and a lesson about the value of piety is conveyed in the cautionary tale.

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Yiddish Songs of the Gaslight Era: A Sampling of Sheet Music for Broadsides Sold by Peddlers on the Lower East Side (Yiddish Edition)
Prepared by Jane Peppler

Thirty-nine Yiddish songs with the beautiful period sheet music cover art, with melodies and chords for piano, guitar, etc. and with transliterations and translations. These songs were popular among the Jews of Manhattan's Lower East Side around the turn of the 20th century and were found in box of song sheets (sold by street peddlers) at Hebrew Union College.

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God, Man, and Devil: Yiddish Plays in Transition
Translated and edited by Nahma Sandrow

God, Man, and Devil is an anthology of five Yiddish plays in translation, plus two additional independent scenes, all written by well-known playwrights in the first quarter of the twentieth century. The settings range widely—a luxurious parlor, a haunted graveyard, a farmyard, a sweatshop on strike, a subway, and the boardwalk of Atlantic City. The plays evoke tears and laughter through melodrama, expressionism, satire, fantasy, farce, suspense, and romance. But all consider the same question: what is life’s moral purpose? And all display the theatrical flair that made Yiddish audiences such passionate fans of their dramas and their stars. Translated and edited to make them more accessible for both reading and performance, the plays are accompanied by prefaces and notes to help students of theater and of Jewish culture by providing historical context, production histories, and elucidation of references.

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S. An-Sky: Four Plays (Bilingual Edition)
by S. An-sky (Author), Fernando Peñalosa (Translator)

While The Dybbuk is the best known and most beloved of An-sky's works, he wrote a number of other plays of interest and value in the early 20th Century that have been virtually forgotten. Four of them, Day and Night, Father and Son, In a Conspiratorial Apartment, and The Grandfather, were included in his Collected Works, and are presented here for the modern reader with Yiddish and English on facing pages. Only Father and Son has been translated into English before, and it was of a different version. These texts feature modern Yiddish spelling and very readable typography and format, as do the translations. Day and Night is a Hasidic tragedy, reminiscent of The Dybbuk in a number of ways, but more violent in its depiction of the struggle between good and evil. The play goes back and forth between reality and fantasy and the reader is not always sure of what is happening. But the action moves along very fast; it's a real page turner. The other three plays deal with the lives of revolutionaries in the tumultuous period preceding the 1905 Russian Revolution. They are not plays about demonstrations, marches, and strikes, but rather depicts how the revolutionaries' activities impact the lives of their families as they struggle against the intrusion of the Tsarist authorities. They are labeled "comedies" by the author, but in the dictionary meaning of light, often satirical pieces that may have a happy ending. They are not at all funny, although there are some humorous episodes. viii, 327 pp., introduction, notes.

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In the half-century since its premiere, Fiddler on the Roof has become a supremely potent cultural landmark, beloved by audiences the world over. Now, in a history as captivating as its subject, award-winning drama critic Alisa Solomon traces how and why the story of Tevye the milkman, the creation of the great Yiddish writer Sholem-Aleichem, was reborn as blockbuster entertainment and a cultural touchstone, not only for Jews and not only in America.

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Indecent
Paula Vogel

“Revelatory…As intimate and immediate as a whispered secret. Vogel’s play thrums with music, desire, and fear, and it’s shrewd about the ways in which America isn’t free, and about how art does and doesn’t transcend the perilous winds of history.” —New Yorker

“Superbly realized…Indecent, the powerful play by Paula Vogel, sheds an eye-opening light on a little-known time when theatrical history, Jewish culture, and the frank depiction of homosexuality intersected, with explosive results.” —New York Times

“Gorgeous. Illuminating and heartbreaking. Rich in sympathy and humor, Indecent has the scope of an epic but the intimacy of a chamber piece…It celebrates and illustrates the power of theater.” —Time Out New York

“A moving and fascinating play…A singular achievement… The historical perspective is vast and knowing…Has there ever been anything quite like Indecent, a play that touches—I mean deeply touches—so much rich emotion about history and the theater, anti-Semitism, homophobia, censorship, world wars, red-baiting, and oh, yes, joyful human passion?...An extraordinary play.” —Newsday

“Indecent is more than a play about forbidden love: It’s about theater as a life force.” —New York Post

When Sholem Asch wrote God of Vengeance in 1907, he didn’t imagine the height of controversy the play would eventually reach. Performing at first in Yiddish and German, the play’s subject matter wasn’t deemed contentious until it was produced in English, when the American audiences were scandalized by the onstage depiction of an amorous affair between two women. Paula Vogel’s newest work traces the trajectory of the show’s success through its tour in Europe to its abrupt and explosive demise on Broadway in 1923—including the arrest of the entire production’s cast and crew.

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Of all the characters in modern Jewish fiction, the most beloved is Tevye, the compassionate, irrepressible, Bible-quoting dairyman from Anatevka, who has been immortalized in the writings of Sholem Aleichem and in acclaimed and award-winning theatrical and film adaptations.

And no Yiddish writer was more beloved than Tevye’s creator, Sholem Rabinovich (1859–1916), the “Jewish Mark Twain,” who wrote under the pen name of Sholem Aleichem. Beautifully translated by Hillel Halkin, here is Sholem Aleichem’s heartwarming and poignant account of Tevye and his daughters, together with the “Railroad Stories,” twenty-one tales that examine human nature and modernity as they are perceived by men and women riding the trains from shtetl to shtetl.

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In this surprising book, Jan Lisa Huttner turns the focus of Fiddler on the Roof fans away from Tevye and onto his daughters.

What is tradition? Who makes the matches? Should people who want to marry each other be allowed to make that choice? These questions are just as important now as they were fifty years ago —in 1964 — when Fiddler on the Roof made its original debut on the Broadway stage.

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New York's Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway
by Edna Nahshon

In the early decades of the twentieth century, a vibrant theatrical culture took shape on New York City's Lower East Side. Original dramas, comedies, musicals, and vaudeville, along with sophisticated productions of Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Chekhov, were innovatively staged for crowds that rivaled the audiences on Broadway. Though these productions were in Yiddish and catered to Eastern European, Jewish audiences (the largest immigrant group in the city at the time), their artistic innovations, energetic style, and engagement with politics and the world around them came to influence all facets of the American stage.

Vividly illustrated and with essays from leading historians and critics, this book recounts the heyday of "Yiddish Broadway" and its vital contribution to American Jewish life and crossover to the broader American culture. These performances grappled with Jewish nationalism, labor relations, women's rights, religious observance, acculturation, and assimilation. They reflected a range of genres, from tear-jerkers to experimental theater. The artists who came of age in this world include Stella Adler, Eddie Cantor, Jerry Lewis, Sophie Tucker, Mel Brooks, and Joan Rivers. The story of New York's Yiddish theater is a tale of creativity and legacy and of immigrants who, in the process of becoming Americans, had an enormous impact on the country's cultural and artistic development.

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Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy
by Debra Caplan

Yiddish Empire tells the story of how a group of itinerant Jewish performers became the interwar equivalent of a viral sensation, providing a missing chapter in the history of the modern stage. During World War I, a motley group of teenaged amateurs, impoverished war refugees, and out- of- work Russian actors banded together to revolutionize the Yiddish stage. Achieving a most unlikely success through their productions, the Vilna Troupe (1915– 36) would eventually go on to earn the attention of theatergoers around the world. Advancements in modern transportation allowed Yiddish theater artists to reach global audiences, traversing not only cities and districts but also countries and continents. The Vilna Troupe routinely performed in major venues that had never before allowed Jews, let alone Yiddish, upon their stages, and operated across a vast territory, a strategy that enabled them to attract unusually diverse audiences to the Yiddish stage and a precursor to the organizational structures and travel patterns that we see now in contemporary theater. Debra Caplan’s history of the Troupe is rigorously researched, employing primary and secondary sources in multiple languages, and is engagingly written.

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Messiahs of 1933: How American Yiddish Theatre Survived Adversity through Satire

From the author, Joel Schechter:

"The book opens with discussion of Nadir’s play, Messiah in America, and a speculative discussion of what might have happened if his play, as well as Yiddish language and culture were more widely known by Americans in the 1930s.  I suggest that Yiddish stage satire was not as far removed from mainstream American culture as it now appears to be; the language in which it was performed kept it separate from other political and popular theatre, but it made important contributions to American culture..."  more ›>

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