This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. The world-famous Yiddish theater that eventually became known as the Vilna Troupe had its beginnings under remarkable and completely unexpected circumstances. Before World War I, Vilna had a high-quality Russian theater that attracted a mostly Jewish audience, in part due to the Polish intellectuals’s boycott of Russian…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. In today’s trip to the past, we examine an invitation to a party – a Jewish Holiday Party. I found this fascinating poster in the YIVO digital collection of POSTERS FROM DISPLACED PERSONS CAMPS, which are on display at the website of the American Center of Jewish…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Thirty-five years ago, Zalmen Mlotek and Moishe Rosenfeld co-wrote the script for a musical called “The Golden Land” in honor of the 85th anniversary of the Forverts, the world’s oldest Yiddish newspaper. The goal then was to depict, through Yiddish song, the first decades of Eastern European Jewish immigration…
Appropriately located at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park within view of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF) is attempting to redefine its mission and aesthetic while celebrating the Yiddish language, with few if any English words thrown in for good measure. Its renewed commitment to…
At the entrance to “New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway,” an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, there’s a wall-sized reproduction of a 1905 photo showing the 1700-seat Grand Theatre, the first venue built expressly for Yiddish productions. A well-dressed crowd in starched collars and derby hats mills…
A version of this post appeared in Yiddish here. A large crowd filled the main auditorium at the Center for Jewish History in Manhattan on January 11 to see a memorial program in honor of the life and work of the Yiddish actress Mina Bern. During the concert a dozen singers, actors and musicians performed…
Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly photo feature in which we sift 116 years of Forward history to find snapshots of women’s lives. The image of Yiddish theatre diva Sonia Nadolsky depicts a stiff, haughty looking woman who could easily play everyone’s favorite serpent-tongued bubbie —the Dowager Countess of Grantham on television’s Downton Abbey. According…
Photo: Simon Annand/JW3 The second act of David Schneider’s new play, “Making Stalin Laugh,” opens in 1935, the year the Moscow State Yiddish Theater decided to mount a production of “King Lear” with its legendary director Solomon Mikhoels as the lead. Lear, Mikhoels tells the cast as the party apparatchiki watch over his rehearsal, is…
במשך פֿון זיבן יאָר האָט דזשעף לויִס אַוועקגעגעבן צען טויזנט שפּײַזקאַרטלעך.
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