Abraham Goldfaden

Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden
Born	Avrum Goldnfoden (1840-07-24)24 July 1840 Starokostiantyniv, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine)
Died	9 January 1908(1908-01-09) (aged 67) New York City, United States
Genre	Yiddish theatre operetta
Years active	1876–1908

Abraham Goldfaden (

In 1876 he founded in the

Odessa. He lived initially in his uncle's house, where a cousin who was a good pianist helped him set some of his poems to music. In Odessa, Goldfaden renewed his acquaintance with fellow Yiddish-language writer Yitzkhok Yoel Linetzky, whom he knew from Zhytomyr^[3] and met Hebrew-language poet Eliahu Mordechai Werbel (whose daughter Paulina would become Goldfaden's wife) and published poems in the newspaper Kol-Mevaser. He also wrote his first two plays, Die Tzwei Sheines (The Two Neighbours) and Die Murneh Sosfeh (Aunt Susie), included with some verses in a modestly successful 1869 book Die Yidene (The Jewish Woman), which went through three editions in three years. At this time, he and Paulina were living mainly on his meagre teacher's salary of 18 rubles

a year, supplemented by his giving private lessons and taking a job as a cashier in a hat shop.

In 1875, Goldfaden headed for

Iaşi in Moldavia

on the invitation of Isaac Librescu (1850–1930), a young wealthy community activist interested in theatre.

Iaşi

Arriving in

Iaşi (Jassy)

in 1876, Goldfaden was fortunate to be better known as a good poet — many of whose poems had been set to music and had become popular songs — than as a less-than-successful businessman. Nevertheless, when he sought funds from Isaac Librescu for another newspaper, Librescu was uninterested in that proposition. Librescu's wife remarked that Yiddish-language journalism was just a way to starve and suggested that there would be a lot more of a market for Yiddish-language theatre. Librescu offered Goldfaden 100 francs for a public recital of his songs in the garden of Shimen Mark, Grădina Pomul Verde ("the Green Fruit-Tree Garden").

Instead of a simple recital, Goldfaden expanded the program into something of a

Odessa

(songs by Goldfaden, among others) that apparently included significant improvised material between songs, although no actual script.

Although Goldfaden, by his own account, was familiar at this time with "practically all of Russian literature", and also had plenty of exposure to Polish theatre, and had even seen an

African American tragedian, Ira Aldridge, performing Shakespeare,^[3] the performance at Grădina Pomul Verde was only a bit more of a play than Grodner had participated in three years earlier. The songs were strung together with a bit of character and plot and a good bit of improvisation. The performance by Goldfaden, Grodner, Sokher Goldstein

, and possibly as many as three other men went over well. The first performance was either Di bobe mitn einikl (Grandmother and Granddaughter) or Dos bintl holts (The Bundle of sticks); sources disagree. (Some reports suggest that Goldfaden himself was a poor singer, or even a non-singer and poor actor; according to Bercovici, these reports stem from Goldfaden's own self-disparaging remarks or from his countenance as an old man in New York, but contemporary reports show him to have been a decent, though not earth-shattering, actor and singer.)

After that time, Goldfaden continued miscellaneous newspaper work, but the stage became his main focus.

Later that summer, the famous Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, then a journalist, saw one of the Pomul Verde performances. He recorded in his review that the company had six players. (A 1905 typographical error would turn this into a much-cited sixteen, suggesting a grander beginning for Yiddish theatre.) He was impressed by the quality of the singing and acting, but found the pieces "without much dramatic interest.^[7] His generally positive comments would seem to deserve to be taken seriously: Eminescu was known generally as "virulently antisemitic."^[8] Eminescu appears to have seen four of Goldfaden's early plays: a satiric musical revue Di velt a gan-edn (The World and Paradise), Der farlibter maskil un der oyfgeklerter hosid (a dialogue between "an infatuated philosopher" and "an enlightened Hasid"), another musical revue Der shver mitn eidem (Father-in-law and Son-in-Law), and a comedy, Fishl der balegole un zayn knecht Sider (Fishel the Carter and His Servant Sider).^[7]

Searching for a theatre

As the season for outdoor performances was coming to a close, Goldfaden tried and failed to rent an appropriate theatre in Iaşi. A theatre owner named Reicher, presumably Jewish himself, told him that "a troupe of Jewish singers" would be "too dirty." Goldfaden, Grodner, and Goldstein headed first to

Galaţi

, which was to prove a bit more auspicious, with a successful three-week run.

In Galaţi they acquired their first serious set designer, a

Sara Segal, their first actress. She was not yet out of her teens. After seeing her perform in their Galaţi premiere, her mother objected to her unmarried daughter cavorting on a stage. Goldstein – who, unlike Goldfaden and Grodner, was single – promptly married her and she remained with the troupe. (Besides being known as Sara Segal and Sofia Goldstein, she became best known as Sofia Karp, after a second marriage to actor Max Karp

.)

After the successful run in Galaţi came a less successful attempt in Brăila, but by now the company had honed its act and it was time to go to the capital, Bucharest.

Bucharest

As in Iași, Goldfaden arrived in Bucharest with his reputation already established. He and his players performed first in the early spring at the salon Lazăr Cafegiu on Calea Văcărești (Văcărești Avenue, in the heart of the Jewish quarter), then, once the weather turned warm, at the Jignița garden, a pleasant tree-shaded beer garden on Str. Negru Vodă that up until then had drawn only a neighbourhood crowd. He filled out his cast from the great pool of Jewish vocal talent: synagogue cantors. He also recruited two eminently respectable classically trained prima donnas, the sisters Margaretta and Annetta Schwartz.

Among the cantors in his casts that year were

Goldfaden was churning out a repertoire – new songs, new plays and translations of plays from Romanian, French, and other languages (in the first two years, he wrote 22 plays, and would eventually write about 40) – and while he was not always able to retain the players in his company once they became stars in their own right, he continued for many years to recruit first-rate talent, and his company became a de facto training ground for Yiddish theatre. By the end of the year, others were writing Yiddish plays as well, such as Moses Horowitz with Der tiranisher bankir (The Tyrannical Banker), or Grodner with Curve un ganev (Prostitute and Thief), and Yiddish theatre had become big theatre, with elaborate sets, duelling choruses, and extras to fill out crowd scenes.

Goldfaden was helped by

Ion Ghica was a valuable ally for Yiddish theatre in Bucharest. On several occasions he expressed his favourable view of the quality of the acting, and even more of the technical aspects of the Yiddish theatre. In 1881, he obtained for the National Theatre the costumes that had been used for a Yiddish pageant on the coronation of King Solomon, which had been timed in tribute to the actual coronation of Carol I of Romania.

Turning serious

While light comedy and satire might have established

Wake up my people

From your sleep, wake up

And believe no more in foolishness.^[citation needed]

A call like this might be a bit ambiguous, but it was unsettling to those who were on the side of the status quo. Yiddish theatre was banned in Russia starting September 14, 1883, as part of the anti-Jewish reaction following the assassination of Czar Alexander II. Goldfaden and his troupe were left adrift in Saint Petersburg. They headed various directions, some to England, some to New York City, some to Poland, some to Romania.

The prophet adrift

While Yiddish theatre continued successfully in various places, Goldfaden was not on the best terms at this time with Mogulescu. They had quarrelled (and settled) several times over rights to plays, and Mogulescu and his partner Moishe "Maurice" Finkel now dominated Yiddish theatre in Romania, with about ten lesser companies competing as well. Mogulescu was a towering figure in Bucharest theatre at this point, lauded on a level comparable to the actors of the National theatre, performing at times in Romanian as well as Yiddish, drawing an audience that went well beyond the Jewish community.

Goldfaden seems, in Bercovici's words, to have lost "his theatrical elan" in this period. He briefly put together a theatre company in 1886 in Warsaw, with no notable success. In 1887 he went to New York (as did Mogulescu, independently). After extensive negotiations and great anticipation in the Yiddish-language press in New York ("Goldfaden in America," read the headline in the 11 January 1888 edition of the New Yorker Yiddishe Ilustrirte Zaitung), he briefly took on the job of director of Mogulescu's new "Rumanian Opera House"; they parted ways again after the failure of their first play, whose production values were apparently not up to New York standards. Goldfaden attempted (unsuccessfully) to found a theatre school, then headed in 1889 for Paris, rather low on funds. There he wrote some poetry, worked on a play that he didn't finish at that time, and put together a theatre company that never got to the point of putting on a play (because the cashier made off with all of their funds).^[12] In October 1889 he scraped together the money to get to Lvov, where his reputation as a poet again came to his rescue.

Lviv

Lviv was not exactly a dramatist's dream. Leon Dreykurs described audiences bringing meals into the theatre, rustling paper, treating the theatre like a beer garden. He also quotes Jacob Schatzky: "All in all, the Galician milieu was not favourable to Yiddish theatre. The intellectuals were assimilated, but the masses were fanatically religious and they viewed Jewish 'comedians' with disdain."^[13]

Nonetheless, Iacob Ber Ghimpel, who owned a Yiddish theatre there, was glad to have a figure of Goldfaden's stature. Goldfaden completed the play he'd started in Paris, Rabi Yoselman, oder Die Gzerot fun Alsas ("Rabbi Yoselman, or The Alsatian Decree"), in five acts and 23 scenes, based on the life of Josel of Rosheim. At this time he also wrote an operetta Rothschild and a semi-autobiographical play called Mashiach Tzeiten (Messiah Times) that gave a less-than-optimistic view of America.

Kalman Juvelier, an actor in Ber Ghimpel's company, credited Goldfaden with greatly strengthening the calibre of performance in Lviv during his brief time there, reporting that Goldfaden worked with every actor on understanding his or her character, so as to ensure that the play was more than just a series of songs and effects, and was respected by all.^[13]

Bucharest

Buoyed by his success in Lvov, he returned to Bucharest in 1892, as director of the Jigniţa theatre. His new company again included Lazăr Zuckermann; other players were Marcu (Mordechai) Segalescu, and later Iacob Kalich, Carol Schramek, Malvina Treitler-Löbel and her father H. Goldenbers. Among his notable plays from this period were Dos zenteh Gebot, oder Lo tachmod (The Tenth Commandment, or Thou Shalt Not Covet), Judas Maccabaeus, and Judith and Holofernes and a translation of Johann Strauss's Gypsy Baron.^[14]

However, it was not a propitious time to return to Romania. Yiddish theatre had become a business there, with slickly written advertisements, coordinated performances in multiple cities using the same publicity materials, and cut-throat competition: on one occasion in 1895, a young man named Bernfeld attended multiple performances of Goldfaden's Story of Isaac, memorised it all (including the songs), and took the whole package to Kalman Juvilier, who put on an unauthorised production in Iaşi. Such outright theft was possible because once Ion Ghica headed off on a diplomatic career, the National theatre, which was supposed to adjudicate issues like unauthorised performances of plays, was no longer paying much attention to Yiddish theatre. (Juvilier and Goldfaden finally reached an out-of-court settlement.)^[15]

Cutthroat competition was nothing to what was to follow. The 1890s were a tough time for the Romanian economy, and a rising tide of anti-Semitism made it an even tougher time for the Jews. One quarter of the Jewish population emigrated, with intellectuals particularly likely to leave, and those intellectuals who remained were more interested in politics than in theatre: this was a period of social ferment, with Jewish socialists in Iaşi starting Der Veker (The Awakener).

Goldfaden left Romania in 1896; soon Juvilier's was the only active Yiddish theatre troupe in the country, and foreign troupes had almost entirely ceased coming to the country. Although Lateiner, Horowitz, and Shumer kept writing, and occasionally managed to put on a play, it was not a good time for Yiddish theatre – or any theatre – in Romania, and would only become worse as the economy continued to decline.

Goldfaden wandered Europe as a poet and journalist. His plays continued to be performed in Europe and America, but rarely, if ever, did anyone send him royalties. His health deteriorated – a 1903 letter refers to asthma and spitting up blood – and he was running out of money. In 1903, he wrote Jacob Dinesohn from Paris, authorising him to sell his remaining possessions in Romania, clothes and all. This gave him the money to head once more to New York in 1904.

New York City

In America, he again tried his hand at journalism, but a brief stint as editor of the New Yorker Yiddishe Ilustrirte Zaitung resulted only in getting the paper suspended and landing himself a rather large fine. On March 31, 1905, he recited poetry at a benefit performance at Cooper Union to raise a pension for Yiddish poet Eliakum Zunser, even worse off than himself because he had found himself unable to write since coming to America in 1889. Shortly afterwards, he met a group of young people who had a Hebrew language association at the Dr. Herzl Zion Club, and wrote a Hebrew-language play David ba-Milchama (David in the War), which they performed in March 1906, the first Hebrew-language play to be performed in America. Repeat performances in March 1907 and April 1908 drew successively larger crowds.

He also wrote the spoken portions of Ben Ami, loosely based on George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. After Goldfaden's former bit player Jacob Adler—by now the owner of a prominent New York Yiddish theatre—optioned and ignored it, even accusing Goldfaden of being "senile", it premiered successfully at rival Boris Thomashefsky's People's theatre December 25, 1907, with music by H. Friedzel and lyrics by Mogulescu, who was by this time an international star.^[16]

Goldfaden died in New York City in 1908. A contemporary account in The New York Times estimated that 75,000 people turned out for his funeral, joining the procession from the People's theatre on Bowery to Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn;^[17] in recent scholarship the number of mourners has been given as 30,000.^[18] In a follow-up article The New York Times called him "both a poet and a prophet", and noted that "there was more evidence of genuine sympathy with and admiration for the man and his work than is likely to be manifested at the funeral of any poet now writing in the English language in this country."^[19]

In November 2009, Goldfaden was the subject of postage stamps issued jointly by Israel and Romania.

Zionism

Goldfaden had an on-again off-again relationship with Zionism. Some of his earliest poetry was Zionist avant la lettre and one of his last plays was written in Hebrew; several of his plays were implicitly or explicitly Zionist (Shulamith set in Jerusalem, Mashiach Tzeiten?! ending with its protagonists abandoning New York for Palestine); he served as a delegate from Paris to the World Zionist Congress in 1900.^[20] Still, he spent most of his life (and set slightly more than half of his plays) in the Pale of Settlement and in the adjoining Jewish areas in Romania, and when he left it was never to go to Palestine, but to cities such as New York, London or Paris. This might be understandable when the number of his potential Jewish spectators in Palestine in his time was very small.

Works

Plays

Sources disagree about the dates (and even the names) of some of Goldfaden's plays. The titles here represent YIVO Yiddish>English transliteration, though other variants exist.

• Di Mumeh Soseh (Aunt Susie) wr. 1869^[21][22]
• Di Tzvey Sheynes (The Two Neighbours) wr. 1869^[21] (possibly the same as Di Sheynes 1877^[23]
• Polyeh Shikor (Polyeh, the Drunkard) 1871^[21]
• Anonimeh Komedyeh (Anonymous Comedy) 1876^[21]
• Di Rekruten (The Recruits) 1876,^[23] 1877^[21]
• Dos Bintl Holtz (The Bundle of Sticks) 1876^[23]
• Fishl der balegole un zayn knecht Sider (Fishel the Carter and His Servant Sider) 1876^[23]
• Di Velt a Gan-Edn (The World and Paradise) 1876^[23]
• Der Farlibter Maskil un der Oifgeklerter Hosid (The Infatuated Philosopher and the Enlightened Hasid) 1876^[23]
• Der Shver mitn eydem (Father-in-Law and Son-in-Law) 1876^[23]
• Di Bobeh mit dem Eynikel (The Grandmother and the Granddaughter) 1876,^[23] 1879^[21]
• The Desolate Isle, Yiddish translation of a play by August von Kotzebue, 1876^[23]
• Di Intrigeh oder Dvosye di pliotkemahern (The Intrigue or Dvoisie Intrigued) 1876,^[21] 1877^[23]
• A Gloz Vaser (A Glass of Water) 1877^[23]
• Hotye-mir un Zaytye-mir (Leftovers) 1877^[23]
• Shmendrik, oder Di komishe Chaseneh (Schmendrik or The Comical Wedding) 1877,^[23] 1879^[21]
• Shuster un Shnayder (Shoemaker and Tailor) 1877[23]
• Di Kaprizneh Kaleh, oder Kaptsnzon un Hungerman (The Capricious Bride or Pauper-son and Hunger-man) 1877^[23][24] presumably the same play as Di kaprizneh Kaleh-Moyd (The Capricious Bridemaid) 1887^[21]
• Yontl Shnayder (Yontl the Tailor) 1877^[23]
• Vos tut men? (What Did He Do?) 1877^[23]
• Di Shtumeh Kaleh (The Mute Bride) 1877,^[23] 1887^[21]
• Di Tsvey Toybe (The Two Deaf Men) 1877^[23]
• Der Gekoyfter Shlof (The Purchased Sleep) 1877^[23]
• Di Sheynes (The Neighbors) 1877^[23]
• Yukel un Yekel (Yukel and Yekel) 1877^[23]
• Der Katar (Catarrh) 1877^[23]
• Iks-Miks-Driks, 1877^[23]
• Di Mumeh Sose (Aunty Susie) 1877^[23]
• Brayndele Kozak (Breindele Cossack), 1877^[21][23]
• Der Podriatshik (The Purveyor), 1877^[23]
• Di Alte Moyd (The Old Maid) 1877^[23]
• Di Tsvey fardulte (The Two Scatter-Brains) 1877^[23]
• Di Shvebeleh (Matches) 1877^[23]
• Fir Portselayene Teler (Four Porcelain Plates) 1877^[23]
• Der Shpigl (The Mirror) 1877^[23]
• Toib, Shtum un Blind (Deaf, Dumb and Blind) 1878^[23]
• Der Ligner, oder Todres Bloz (The Liar, or, Todres, Blow) (or Todres the Trombonist) 1878^[23]
• Ni-be-ni-me-ni-cucurigu (Not Me, Not You, Not Cock-a-Doodle-Doo or Neither This, Nor That, nor Kukerikoo; Lulla Rosenfeld also gives the alternate title The Struggle of Culture with Fanaticism) 1878^[23]
• Der Heker un der Bleher-yung (The Butcher and the Tinker) 1878^[23]
• The Witch of Botoşani) 1878,^[23] 1887^[21]
• Soufflé, 1878[23]
• Doy Intriganten (Two Intriguers) 1878^[23]
• Di tsvey Kuni-lemels (The Fanatic, or
  The Two Kuni-Lemls) 1880^[21][24]
• Tchiyat Hametim (The Winter of Death) 1881[23]
• Shulamith (Shulamith or The Daughter of Jerusalem) wr. 1880,^[21] 1881^[24]
• Dos Zenteh Gebot, oder Lo Tachmod (The Tenth Commandment, or Thou Shalt Not Covet) 1882,^[24] 1887^[21]
• Der Sambatyen (Sambation) 1882^[24]
• Doktor Almasada, oder Di Yiden in Palermo (Doctor Almasada, or The Jews of Palermo also known as Doctor Almasado, Doctor Almaraso, Doctor Almasaro) 1880,^[21] 1883^[24]
• Bar Kokhba, 1883,^[21] 1885^[24]
• Akeydos Yitschok (The Sacrifice of Isaac), 1891^[23]
• Dos Finfteh Gebot, oder Kibed Ov (The Fifth Commandment, or Honor Thy Father), 1892^[23]
• Rabi Yoselman, oder Di Gzerot fun Alsas (Rabbi Yoselman, or The Alsatian Decree) 1877,^[21] 1892^[23]
• Judas Maccabeus, 1892^[23]
• Judith and Holofernes, 1892^[23]
• Mashiach Tzeiten?! (The Messianic Era?!) 1891^[21][22] 1893^[23]
• Yiddish translation of Johann Strauss's Gypsy Baron 1894^[23]
• Sdom Veamora (Sodom and Gomorrah) 1895^[23]
• Di Katastrofe fun Brayla (The Catastrophe in Brăila) 1895^[23]
• Meylits Yoysher (The Messenger of Justice) 1897^[23]
• David ba-Milchama (David in the War) 1906,^[21] in Hebrew
• Ben Ami (Son of My People) 1907,^[23] 1908^[21]

Songs and poetry

Goldfaden wrote hundreds of songs and poems. Among his most famous are:

• "Der Malekh" ("The Angel")
• "Royzhinkes mit mandlen" (Raisins and Almonds)
• "Shabes, Yontev, un Rosh Khoydesh" ("Sabbath, Festival, and New Moon")
• "Tsu Dayn Geburtstag!" ("To Your Birthday!")

See also

• Yiddish theatre
• List of Jewish Romanians

Notes and references

Notes

References

References

• — "East Side Honors Poet of its Masses; Cooper Union Throng Cheers Eliakum Zunser," The New York Times, March 31, 1905, p. 7.
• —, "Noted Jewish Bard Dead," The New York Times, January 10, 1908, p. 7.
• —, "75,000 at Poet's Funeral," The New York Times, January 11, 1908, p. 1.
• —, "Burial of a Yiddish Poet," The New York Times, January 12, 1908, p. 8.
• —, Partial list of plays by Goldfaden; the names are useful, but some of the dates are certainly incorrect. Retrieved January 11, 2005.
• ISBN 0-679-41351-0
  .
• ISBN 973-98272-2-5. See the article on the author
  for further publication information. This is the primary source for the article. Bercovici cites many sources. In particular, the account of the 1873 concert in Odessa is attributed to Archiv far der geşihte dun idişn teater un drame, Vilna-New York, 1930, vol. I, pag. 225.
• Berkowitz, Joel, Avrom Goldfaden and the Modern Yiddish theatre: The Bard of Old Constantine, archived 18 Feb 2006 from the original (PDF), Pakn Treger, no. 44, Winter 2004, 10–19.
• Jacobs, Joseph and Wiernik, Peter, Goldfaden, Abraham B. Hayyim Lippe in the
  Jewish Encyclopedia
  (1901–1906). The article is not terribly well researched, but is useful for the names of books, etc.
• Benjamin Nathans, Gabriella Safran (ed),Culture Front - Representing Jews in Eastern Europe, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
• Michael Riff, The Face of Survival: Jewish Life in Eastern Europe Past and Present. Vallentine Mitchell, London, 1992,
  ISBN 0-85303-220-3
  .
• Sandrow, Nahma, "The Father of Yiddish theatre," Zamir, Autumn 2003 (PDF), 9-15. There is much interesting material here, but Sandrow does retail a story about Goldfaden being a poor stage performer, which Bercovici debunks.
• Wolitz, Seth L. (August 9, 2010). "Goldfadn, Avrom." YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Abraham Goldfaden.

• Works by or about Abraham Goldfaden at Internet Archive
• Literature by and about Abraham Goldfaden in University Library JCS Frankfurt am Main: Digital Collections Judaica
• Anca Mocanu, Avram Goldfaden şi teatrul ca identitate, Editura Fundaţia Culturală „Camil Petrescu” - revista „Teatrul Azi”, 2012 Avram Goldfaden and theatre as Identity, The Camil Petrescu Cultural Foundation - „Teatrul Azi” magazine Publishing, Romanian theatre Gallery series http://www.fnt.ro/2012/en/Program/Avram-Goldfaden-and-theatre-as-Identity/ Archived 2015-12-24 at the Wayback Machine
• McBee, Richard "Akeydes Yitskhok - Goldfaden's Masterpiece Revived". Archived from the original on 2005-12-19.. The Jewish Press (New York) January 7, 2004: review of a 2003 performance of Goldfaden's operetta Akeydes Yitskhok ("The Sacrifice of Isaac").
• Avraham Levinson - article in Hebrew about Goldfaden on line
• Abraham Goldfaden Collection at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, NY
• Free song lyrics in Yiddish and sheet music by Abraham Goldfaden http://ulrich-greve.eu/free/goldfaden.html