New York's Yiddish Theater

Take my wife...please! Nahshon (Theater/Jewish Theological Seminary) charts a transformative artistic lineage from the shtetl to Broadway, the Borscht Belt, and beyond.This companion volume to a new exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York introduces figures who deserve a broader place in American cultural history but who in many cases are all but unknown: Jacob Adler, for one, who commanded the Jewish theatrical stage from its years on the Bowery to the Jazz Age and who, had things turned out differently, might have introduced Tevye to the Broadway crowd a couple of generations before Theodore Bikel did. Sholem Aleichem didn't have the hit he hoped for because, the author suggests, Jewish audiences in early-20th-century New York wanted something else: they were in a new world, after all, and "had left behind the world Sholem Aleichem stood for." By such means does art evolve. Nahshon traces the origins of a specifically Jewish theater not to biblical antiquity, though Purim does figure in the story, but instead to a Romanian wine garden where, in 1876, a writer named Abraham Goldfaden joined forces with two folk singers for whom he "provided a skimpy storyline that offered narrative continuity to their musical numbers." Both song and story grew more sophisticated, arriving in New York as a theater of nostalgia and sentimentality that branched in several directions, including vaudeville, from which stand-up comedy in turn evolved. Familiar names turn up, among them the likes of Rodney Dangerfield and Sophie Tucker, but mostly the text, wonderfully well-illustrated with handbills, portraits, advertisements, and the like, yields a constant discovery of new show people, such as matinee idol Boris Thomashefsky, whose name was famous not just in theatrical circles, but "was evoked just as frequently for being at the center of juicy scandals." A witty and absorbing demonstration of the interplay of minority and mainstream--with the minority culture here being of outsize influence over the larger culture of Broadway, Hollywood, and America. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from March 15, 2016

Nahshon (theater & drama, Jewish Theological Seminary; Jews and Theater in an Intercultural Context) has edited a comprehensive, albeit highly readable and lavishly illustrated history of the Yiddish Theater which, from the late 19th century through the early decades of the 20th century, thrived initially on the Lower East Side in New York and gradually, after World War I, moved uptown. In addition to Shakespearean productions in Yiddish and shows of original classics, the Yiddish Theater was a source of both serious and comic entertainment. The tension between high art and more broadly appealing theater is a theme that runs throughout this handsomely produced volume. The backstory of the Yiddish theater in New York reflects the history and preoccupations of Jewish American immigrant life and thus themes of assimilation, nationalism, and religious observance are dominant. The importance of Yiddish Broadway to American culture is not to be underestimated as its impact on Hollywood, Broadway, and popular society demonstrates today. VERDICT This essential book is an important addition to library collections focusing on theater, pop culture, and Jewish studies.--Herbert E. Shapiro, Lifelong Learning Soc., Florida Atlantic Univ., Boca Raton

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