>> Sharon Horowitz: Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Sharon Horowitz, I'm a reference librarian in the Hebraic section. Thank you all so much for coming today. The Hebraic section marks its beginning in 1912, with the receipt of 10,000 Hebrew books and pamphlets, whose purchase was made possible by a gift from New York philanthropist, Jacob Schiff. From those humble beginnings, our collections have grown to about 250,000 items of research value in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Persian, and other Hebraic script languages. The Hebraic section also includes an important collection of books in Ge?ez, Amharic, and Tigrinya, languages of Ethiopia, past and present. Our sections holdings are particularly strong in the subject areas of Bible, rabbinics, liturgy, Hebrew, language and literature, and Jewish history. Our collections also include a broad selection of periodicals, both current and historical. Two of our missions in this division are to publicize our collections and to bring people into the library. One way we accomplish this second goal is by holding lectures and having programs such as the one we are hosting here today. The modern Yiddish theatre emerged in 1876, when the poet and song writer, Avrom Goldfaden, produced his first musical in a Iasi, Romania tavern. Just 6 years letter, at the dawn of mass immigration to the U.S. in 1882, a Yiddish theatrical troupe arrived in New York. By the 1890's the American Yiddish Theatre had become a popular entertainment medium. The American journalist, Hutchins Hopgood, noted in 1902, when box office prices for performances of Yiddish theatrical productions ranged from 25 cents to $1, that many immigrants who earned only $10 per week, were willing to spend up to half of their weekly income on theatre admissions. Today's speaker will share her research about the history and development of this thriving theatrical institution. Alyssa Quint has a PhD from Harvard in Yiddish literature. She is currently a senior scholar at the YIVO Institute in New York. She was previously affiliated with a number of universities including; Columbia, Princeton, and University of Pennsylvania. In Digital Yiddish Theatre Project. This initiative uses digital technology to study and preserve the rich legacy of Yiddish stage. Two items of business before we begin; Dr. Quint's book, The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theatre, will be available for sale after the program and she will be happy to sign books for those interested. Also, this event is being videotaped for subsequent broadcasting. There will be a formal question and answer period after the lecture, at which the audience is encouraging to ask questions and offer comments. Please be advised that your voice and image may be recorded and later broadcast as part of this event. By participating in the question and answer period, you are consenting to the library's possible reproduction and transmission of your remarks. And now, please join me in welcoming Dr. Alyssa Quint to the podium. [ Applause ] >> Alyssa Quint: Thanks, Sharon. Sharon and I were in touch for a couple of years and this has finally happened, so thank you for being persistent and thanks for having me. It's a true honor and thrill to be here. I asked for someone to take a picture of me here. I never do that when I speak, but I'm just so excited to be at the Library of Congress. So thank you, my personal photographer. But you should close my phone because my kids tend to call me at all hours, so just, we don't want to hear from them. So, I'm just going to plunge in. Just go to my first slide here, yeah. >> [inaudible] >> Alyssa Quint: Let's see. Here we go, done. In his memoirs, Jacob Adler describes his days as a young adult in Odessa before his discovery of modern Yiddish theatre. Adler would eventually become one of the most legendary actors of the Yiddish stage, first in the Russian Empire, then in London and then finally here in New York City. I shouldn't say here, but in New York City, here in the U.S. He married three times, each time to a Yiddish actress and with them, spawned around ten Yiddish actors, including and most famously, his granddaughter, his granddaughter, Stella Adler, who later in her career, founded one of the most important actors studios in the United States. Jacob Adler was born to an established and bourgeois Jewish family in Odessa. A multi ethnic port city in the pale of settlement, perched strategically on the Black Sea with a large Jewish population of modern sensibility. We know a lot about Odessa from Steve Zipperstein's work on it. Of the approximately 150,000 residents in 1880, Jews comprised almost 6% of the population, numbering less than the city's Russian population, but more than its Ukrainians, Poles, and other immigrants or foreigners. The Jews enjoyed a sense of belonging in Odessa and were permitted to participate in municipal affairs. And a relatively large number of them enjoyed wealth from vigorous business activity, especially with the port. Odessa was fast becoming an important crucible of modern Jewish culture during this period. So Adler attended a Russian high school and his prints expected him to become a medical doctor. But Adler knew at a young age, that he was not meant for a life of serious study. As he recounts, "I was a dandy, with my cape, my top hat, my gloves, attractive neckties and patent shoes. Even my walking stick that I bandied about when I walked down the street, sung in my hands." With the help of his family friend, Avrom Brodsky, of the famous Brodsky sugar empire, Adler secured a cushy government job as an agent of the weights and measures department. In this position, he tells us, I was able to live the good life. And with his ample free time, he would go with his friends to the theatre. And together they would decide on which performances they loved and which performances they would boo and that was really the focus of his life. For his visits to the theatre before his participation in the Yiddish theatre, Adler is not unique, actors memoirs document the regular attendance of Russia's mainstream theatre by many of the Yiddish theatres first participants, including Avrom Goldfaden. Quite legitimately, Goldfaden earned the most credit for creating the institution of the Yiddish theatre. And he is the main character of our story today. About his exposure to the theatre he writes in his memoirs, "I had plenty of opportunity to see the best dramas and operas of the time. In Polish, Russian, German, and all the smaller operettas from the most famous of Verdi, and Meyerbeer, and Halevy, and all of Wagner's work." Other Odessa residents and future Yiddish theatre pioneers, and there's so many of them who came from this kind of middle class background and I kind of list a lot of these names that would be familiar to many of my colleagues. All of them were avid consumers of theatre. Their theatre habits make sense, they certainly could not have attended Yiddish theatre as Yiddish theatre didn't yet exist. And yet, and this is in the 1870's or 1860's-1870's, and yet, if they were enthusiastic consumers of theatre in other languages, why would they go out of their way to create a new form of culture distinct for a number of characteristics, but mostly for its Yiddish language, a language of a marginalized people and a language of the most parochial aspects of their lives? Here they're trying to be worldly, why, why create Yiddish theatre? Didn't Yiddish culture really flourish for the sake of shtetl bound Jews who could not consume culture in any other languages? What would otherwise be the point? Keep your eye on Adler, as an urban, middle class Russian theatre goer cum Yiddish actor, as he reveals far more about the origins of the modern Yiddish theatre than any of the theatres previous historians care to admit. But first, what does theatre going look like in late imperial Odessa? In many ways, this provincial city's theatre was continuous with those of the twin capitals of Moscow and Saint Petersburg. First, its offerings were multi lingual, shows put on by operetta companies in French and Italian, for their culture primacy, and German for the empire's large ethnic German population, and of course, in Russian. The takeaway here is that theatre goers were used to consuming foreign language opera and operetta. Imperial productions were plentiful and available to the country's growing middle class. Finally, most of the empire's theatrical offerings were sponsored by the Tsarist government, which meant that the venues were maintained by the state and most active, home grown and foreign troops enjoyed imperial subsidies and were protected from local and imperial sensors. Independent or entrepreneurial theatre in any language, was in its infancy, even in Russian, and often discouraged or suppressed. It just made the Tsar nervous and when thank you make the Tsar nervous, he just kind of pushes you away. They were still able to enjoy a little bit of cabaret in Odessa, in like little taverns, but Yiddish was never able to claim big public theatre spaces. That was prohibited. So, just a word about what I'm going to try to argue, so what I'm trying, what I'm setting up is the fact that the Yiddish theatre comes from people like Goldfaden, Adler, with this more bourgeois sensibility, and the reason why I'm doing that is because the argument has been, so far, really crafted by historians of the interwar period who were all either left of center or very left of center, or extremely left of center, riding under the communist regime. Basically said they wanted to make an argument to really include Yiddish culture in the soviet framework and they argued that it was a real folk driven culture. And so it was folk and shtetl nourished and driven, and this was purely a folk form. And it just doesn't really add up for me. And so I'm going to kind of push that paradigm a little bit more into kind of an urban setting and a middle class setting. That's my agenda. So, what they did with, Goldfaden is interesting, because Goldfaden's particularly resistant to this format. He grew up in a modest home, to a clock maker and he was born in 1840, in Starokostiantyniv, the eldest child of a modest and pious clockmaker named Haim Lipa, and almost by chance, he was sent to a Russian-Jewish school because his prints wanted him to avoid conscription to the army and this is how the government pressured Jews to send them to modernized schools, they said well, if you go, if you send your children to these schools, we will exempt them from army service. And he turned out to be a very gifted student and then he went on to a Russian-Jewish seminary, a very exclusive one, where he learned a lot of Russian and French and German, but also Jewish subjects and this school attracted a lot of bourgeois young people from cities, he was a stipendiary student, he was there on scholarship. And he was actually expected to teach after he graduated which he kind of didn't do, but, because that was kind of beneath him. Because he had really, he went there and he saw all these very worldly modern Jews and he was like, I just, that's who I want to be like, that's exactly what I want for myself. So after graduating, he settled himself in Odessa and he boarded with his uncle who allowed him to stay for a little bit and then tried to kick him out and said like, go get a job. And he and a colleague of his, Yoeli Netsky [phonetic], decided to edit a newspaper, to found a newspaper in Yiddish which was also, Yiddish [inaudible] were also prohibited by the government, so their plan was to situate themselves or plant themselves in Lemberg, just outside the border, create the newspaper there, and smuggle it in and distribute it in the Russian empire. It didn't work. It was too, it was not a great business plan. But they did get out a few issues for over about a year, and when it was, when it kind of failed on those last days, Goldfaden received a letter from one of the subscribers, named Isaac [foreign name] who was a resident of Iasi, Romania, also very close to the border, the Russian empire's border. So and he says, come down to Iasi and talk, I have this little club, the Lebanon Club, also modernized Romanian Jews, also bourgeois aspiring modern reformers, and he said come down and speak to our club and I'll put you up, and he did. He came down to Iasi, and then they said well, you're such a great speaker and singer, why don't you sing in this tavern, this local tavern, where there's sometimes entertainment? So as he describes in his memoirs, Goldfaden dressed, I think I have a slide for this actually, let's see. >> [inaudible] >> Alyssa Quint: This one, now, this is so this is one of the very earliest Yiddish actors, and then hmm-- I seem to not press the right thing. [ Ambient Noise ] What about that. Excellent, okay. I'll just let you take that in for a second. And now catch up with myself. Okay, so as he describes in his memoirs, Goldfaden dressed impeccably that night when he went to perform, in a tuxedo, a bow tie, white gloves, he also rattles off all of his clothing, and he declaimed a poem according to the style of formal Russian declamatory practice. And the crowd promptly booed. They're like insulated and incensed by what he considered a boorish audience, Goldfaden left. But in his place, an entertainer of Yiddish skits and songs, named Israel Grodner, danced onto the stage, he had dressed himself up in Hasidic garb, and he sang a song that actually Goldfaden composed and the crowd just ate it up. And Goldfaden noticed. So, that evening, Goldfaden and Grodner discussed collaborating and over the ensuing weeks, Goldfaden composed one act and two act works that would allow him to transition his actors to works of growing sophistication. They successfully recruited Sahar Goldstein [phonetic], a saddle maker with a very beautiful voice, and kind of almost feminine characteristics so he could pass for a lady on the stage. Very often they were cross dressing until, at some point, they finally got women on the stage and in fact the first one they did was a woman named Sophie Carp and she was so nervous about being on the stage that Goldfaden created a role called the Mute Bride so she would acclimate to the stage before having to say anything, say any lines. So there is an uneasy alliance between Goldfaden's version of events and the narrative of the historians. For instance, Goldfaden complains rather shamelessly about the low level of education of his first actors and the crudeness and culture illiteracy of his first audiences. And this, the historians love, because they're like well look what he was doing. He was trying to serve the untutored masses, you know, they would always kind of shift it around. But they could not sugar coat the following; after doing this for about a year, Goldfaden realizes that he can't grow his productions. There's a little bit of money in it, he can make, he could get to the next day, he could pay the bills, but it was not enough for him to really grow his company and to grow the scale of his shows. And so, he was like, you know, this is not that interesting to me and I'm going to try to think of something else to do. But then history interrupted. For the Yiddish theatre, this was kind of a happy accident. Revolution brewing in principalities of the Ottoman Empire, including Romania, convinced Russia that the time was ripe to curtail the Turks menacing European reach. So this is the beginning of the Russo-Turkish war and its, you know, we have Goldfaden, his dilemma, but then politics intervenes and what happened was the Russians were gathering their armies to fight the Ottomans, and even in Romania, this is when, this is, Romania is on the brink of gaining its national independence and what they needed to do was create an army for themselves and so they went just to, just grabbed every man on the street that they could to create this army. And so, men like Goldfaden, who did not want to be in this army, basically went into hiding and could not show their faces for a couple of months and that's exactly what he did with his actors and finally, when he came out of Iasi, he saw that there were people from Odessa in Iasi, Romania. A small city in Romania and he was perplexed. When Russia declared war on the Ottomans in April 1877, Romania, sandwiched between these two empires, gave permission to the Russian troops to pass through its territory to attack the Turks. Here we go. I don't know how well you can see it, hundreds of thousands of Russian troops entered Romania by crossing the Prut River and where is that river situated? Not far from the town of Iasi. With the troops, came Russian contractors to service the needs of the army. A disproportionate number of these contractors were Jewish merchants. So basically, what happens is, Goldfaden has what I call, a mountain and Mohammed problem. So the mountain really is in Odessa, all the people that he would really love to put theatre on for, are the audiences taking in theatre in Odessa. He was one of those members of the audience, Adler, and many others like him, including non-Jews. He wanted to put that kind of theatre on but in Yiddish. The year, but he wasn't allowed. Mohammed, Goldfaden, was in Iasi, and all of a sudden what happens with the war is, lifts up probably hundreds and, or thousands really, of potential audience members. Picks them up and brings them to Iasi, Romania. And that's really the accident of the Yiddish theatre because before that point, he was not able to gather that momentum for the Yiddish theatre. He wasn't able to scale up because he really needed better financing and he couldn't get it in this small town, Iasi theatre goers or tavern audience. And that's kind of the accident of my title. So what happens? With the troops came Russian contractors to service the needs of the army, and a disproportionate number of these were Jewish, and many of them from Odessa. And in these contractors lay the mountain that came to Mohammed. It was as if Goldfaden's ideal audience, Jewish, sophisticated, theatre going, and poised to make a good deal of disposable income from the war, was plucked up and placed in Iasi, beyond Russia's control, and beyond its band on the Yiddish theatre. Well, the Russo-Turkish War was no accident, the way it intersected with the embryonic institution of modern Yiddish theatre, was accidental. By 1877, Yiddish theatre, not just a group of actors, not just a collection of Yiddish dramatic works, not just a visionary impresario, and not just an engaged audience, but all of these things, in the same place at the same time, with the appropriate freedoms, had the seeds of veritable institutional [inaudible] that the theatre really needed. At first, these perfect circumstances were not obvious to Goldfaden, as Goldfaden describes, he snapped into action and tried himself to get a contract with the army, with the Russian army, because he saw all of his peers having these very lucrative contracts, but he was too late. But what he did was, he circulated the idea of what he was doing in Iasi, and his friends said oh, we would go to that, you know, keep putting your shows on, and he did. And then Goldfaden describes in his memoirs how he tried to convince his friends to write for theatre and promised them good money, but none of them were interested. This is Goldfaden being, bless you, this is Goldfaden being rather disingenuous because, yes he was kind of alone for that first moment, but then so many people like Adler and all of his peers, come and join and write for the theatre and start acting on the stage, very, very quickly. But Goldfaden really gives very little credit to his frienemies. I love that word, frienemies, it's very apt here. So, and this is how he crafts his story of his own life as the father of the Yiddish theatre. He really gives no credence to any of his friends, it's really only the more, the less educated of the participants that he's more willing to grant some recognition to. By the time the war ended a year later, in 1878, Goldfaden's troop had played various cities in Romania and had achieved critical momentum in size, repertoire, and experience, and knowing how much Mohammed needs his mountain, Goldfaden thought anew about the further potential of theatre and understood that he needed to follow his audience back to Russia with them and so that's what he did. He brings them to Odessa and he says, let's see what happens. And at first they are not shut down and then they are, and he takes a train to Saint Petersburg to the sensors office and negotiates the freedom of the Yiddish theatre. This is in 1878 and he, this freedom exists not just in the pale of settlement but throughout the empire until 883, when the government shuts it down. So that there's this 4 years that really has have little recognition in the history books because very few people right about it, including Goldfaden for all kinds of reasons that I can't get into here. But this is really a crucial time when the Yiddish theatre really gathers its strength and its momentum and eventually, as Sharon says, it's able to transport itself because these actors leave in 1883 to London and then to New York. But without these few years, it could not have happened. Just see what I have, what I'm forgetting to show you. [ Ambient Noise ] Okay, so we don't know about these years from Goldfaden but we do know about them from sources besides Goldfaden, like memoirs by joiners to the theatre like Adler, and we know these years look different than the portrait of shtetl driven folk theatre that the historians advance. So adamant was Goldfaden in taking credit for being the father of the Yiddish theatre, he could not bring himself to refer to anyone other than uneducated folk singers. This is convenient for interwar historians who sought to emphasize the same aspect of the theatre, albeit for political reasons. But Goldfaden is not the only voice of this period that survives; [foreign name], a playwright and producer of Yiddish theatre, bears witness to the theatre, that was urban and middle class during this period. He writes, for instance, that the enthusiasm Odessa Jews already felt for the theatre was magnified and channeled toward the Yiddish theatre. He writes, "one who's never seen the passion in play, has no conception about what visiting the theatre meant. All the seats were sold out 3 nights before every show, and even though the shows were populated by dilettantes and other actors who had no experience on the stage, the applause and bravos were defining." Betty Vinovitz [phonetic], the daughter of Goldfaden's orchestra conductor, also recalls the popularity of the shows. People who would rise a night to secure a ticket. Tickets would sometimes transfer three or four hands. The best business was made by the agents. None of the Russian language theatres with the best actors, did such business. Perhaps the best evidence of the Yiddish theatre's bourgeois profile is from the Russian press of the time that reflects the Yiddish theatre's acculturated participants and its merchant backers and city bound audiences. And this is an audience that was Jewish and non-Jewish. A recent survey of surviving Russian newspapers from this period by a scholar, [foreign name], illuminates over 1000 references to Yiddish theatre in the Russian, and Russian-Jewish press from this 4 year period. And it suggests that Goldfaden's theatre claimed stages that were almost entirely in big cities, in prominent venues of operetta, and his works, and the works themselves were evocative of middle brow operetta. In particular, Odessa embraced theatre and embraced Yiddish theatre. Even without imperial subsidies and with no protection from the caprices of local government and government sensors. Goldfaden, and soon, competing Yiddish theatre impresarios found great success. So, much of these 4 years, I record and I document in my book, but it was really a phenomenal chapter and perhaps the height of it was when Goldfaden negotiated a contract with, is this the theatre actually? I can't say for sure, but the largest theatre venue in Odessa, called the Mariinsky Theatre, it, there was one more that was even bigger but it was, it had burned down before Goldfaden arrived in 1878 and it, so this one was the largest and the Yiddish theatre played there 2or 3 times a week. And claimed an audience there. What are we, how are we doing with timing? Yeah? How many more minutes you think? [ Inaudible ] So, I just wanted to give you a sense of one of his plays and then I'll conclude after that. But I think you could take it. Yeah? Okay-- [ Ambient Noise ] Okay. >> [inaudible] >> Alyssa Quint: Do you, does this, this familiar to you? So, the idea that Goldfaden's theatre was of the masses and for the masses, also turned on what historians called Goldfaden's anti-Hasidic, or anti-Hasidic, operettas. These operetta's were proof, they argued, that Goldfaden sought to educate his benighted brethren. Why else would a good quarter of Goldfaden's [inaudible] resemble anti-Hasidic propaganda. Some of his most popular operettas certainly traded in negative stereotypes of [inaudible] and the most popular of them, entitled The Two Kuni-Lemls, begins in the well-appointed home of an Odessa merchant named Pinkhes, and I'm going to give you the plot of the operetta. So Pinkhes is described as a refined Jew, dressed in [inaudible] garb. In the operetta's first scene, he presides over Saturday night celebratory meal with his guests, all Hasidic. His wife, Rivke, is dismissive of his newfound passion for Hasidism, while Pinkhes believes that his wife's modern ways have ruined their only daughter, Carolina. Rivke allowed Carolina to study literature with a tutor, a university student named Max. But Pinkhes has recently put an end to their lessons. He rightly suspects that they are falling in love. Before Carolina is lost to worldly ways, Pinkhes reports to his wife, in Act 1, that he has begun negotiating with Kalman, a traditional Jewish matchmaker, who has proposed a match with a groom with the preposterous name of Kuni-Leml, two words that have little record, or no record as a Jewish name and little meaning, except that for Leml means lamb. Kuni-Leml sounds as silly in Yiddish as it does in English. Kuni-Leml is the stepson of Shloyme, the respected Galician sexton and alderman and as such would bestow on Pinkhes, the value of Hasidic lineage and social currency in the community. Kalman arranges for Kuni-Leml, who lives in Krakow, to present himself to Pinkhes in his home in Odessa and to finalize the match and pick up his dowry. So after hearing about her arranged match, she over hears this discussion, Carolina goes to the park and complains to Max, her boyfriend, about her betrothal. As luck has it, Max knows Kuni-Leml and explains to Carolina that not only is her future bridegroom's name silly, but he also limps, has a stutter, and lacks intelligence. Max then devises a plan to dress up as Kuni-Leml in order to replace him. So he dresses up as Kuni-Leml to replace him in Pinkhes's home, and win over Pinkhes. Once he has Pinkhes's allegiance as Kuni-Leml, according to this plan, he will reveal himself and claim his bride. And then hijinks ensue and Kuni-Leml, at Kuni-Leml's expense but also at Max's expense. So the soviet historians dug up contemporary newspaper reviews to demonstrate that the two Kuni-Leml's was Goldfaden's way of reaching a mass audience and as a result became the victim of bourgeois contempt. While bourgeois contempt is indeed in evidence, consciously or unconsciously, these historians draw the wrong conclusions from what they've read in the press. They point, for instance, to a critic named B. Brand, who wrote a series of very critical reviews of Goldfaden in a periodical, a modern periodical, called the Russian Jew [inaudible], by a critic who wrote under the byline, Brand. Besides his uncharitable analysis of the play, Brand scornfully wondered why the Yiddish impresario preferred to play Odessa instead of say, Berdichev, a city with a dense Jewish population, vulnerable to Hasidism and a place where the composer's anti-Hasidic message would have positive propaganda value. Brand accuses Goldfaden of wanting to make money with his theatre. However scandalous this might have struck Brand, indeed Goldfaden never considered not making money with his theatre. But what is more, not withstanding Brand's contempt and haughtiness, the frequency with which it played, suggests that the Two Kuni-Lemls was one of the five most popular operettas of this area, most popular Yiddish operettas of this era. Another review, this one in the Odessa Herald, so not a Jewish newspaper, also takes issue with the operetta. Here with the, it's ideological ambiguity, the Two Kumi-Lemls, so it writes, "Goldfaden's best plays, the Sorcerous and the Fanatic, or the Two Kuni-Lemls, whose subjects are drawn from the lives of the most conservative traditional Jews, were presented on the stage at the Mariinsky Theatre. Apparently Mr. Goldfaden wrote these plays with some particular goal. These plays however would produce a different impression and influence and have a different conclusion if Goldfaden introduced serious heroes into his plays, and not the motley assortment of personalities that appear on the stage to amaze the audience." So in other words, the ideological orientation of these plays was not clear to the critic. He says that it didn't even really come across as anti-Hasidic, which really disappoints him. So, the better question is, how could we reconcile an operetta like the Two Kuni-Lemls, with the Odessa crowd, including a good number of non-Jews that I believe attended it? Well, what was not to like. Goldfaden's city audiences found Hasidic operettas entertaining and exotic. It had something in common with other depictions of Jews that they had encountered in Russian opera houses. And there were operettas with Jewish characters in them before the advent of Yiddish language theatre. Non-Jews who were not used to going to the theatre in the company of Jews or didn't, maybe didn't realize that they were going to the theatre in the company of Jews, found the visible presence of Jews in the audience to be intriguing. One non Jewish reviewer in Moscow, for instance, Moscow is a restricted city at this time, restricted to Jewish residents, wrote the following about the operetta; "You are probably thinking that this is an operetta of Jewish life but nothing more. It's [foreign phrase], a Jewish work. They use a lot of French. It is [foreign phrase] Jewish work, written in the language that sounds louder than others in places like [foreign cities] and played by pure blooded Jewish royalty," whatever that means. "The play begin with a fiery table song that wasn't at all bad, and might even be original. And after this we suddenly found ourselves navigating a variety of oy veys and gevalts, that we heard but could not understand for our lives. We turned to our neighbors and from every direction, one interrupting the other, they made everything clear to us." So here this non Jewish audience member was a little confused about what he saw on stage, but sure enough there were Yiddish speakers in the audience who were able to explain everything to him. And I think he enjoyed it. A little condescending, but he celebrates the ethnic otherness of the Yiddish operetta. How do we make sense of the contempt of the Jewish intelligentsia reserved for Goldfaden? It's attendance of these shows, alongside non Jewish audience, seeing Jews through their gentile gaze I think really made Jews uncomfortable, at least certain category of Jews. And they felt that they were really the victim of the satire, so in other words, even though it was really meant to satirize Hasids, if anybody, modern Jews who looked nothing like Hasidic Jews, felt that it was, it kind of changed the dynamics and the signifying quality of the play. So that it almost turned on them and they felt themselves that they were the butt of the joke. Even though they were, of course, modern and not Hasidic. And I think that's what's happening and I think that's even thematized in the work itself when Max, you know, Max wants to become Kuni-Leml, he wants to look like Kuni-Leml for a reason, but then he also has a straight hostility towards Kuni-Leml that's kind of built into the plot of the play. So it's about Kuni-Leml being kind of silly, and maybe a kind of degrading picture of Hasidism, yes on the one hand. But on the other hand, Max is strident, very angry throughout the play, and uncomfortable, and also looks exactly like Kuni-Leml. And all of the hijinks almost show how interchangeable they are. Carolina tries to kiss Max as Kuni-Leml, but it actually is Kuni-Leml. And then she tries to avoid Max, it's actually Kuni-Leml. So this interchangeability really makes sense of that other critic who talked about the ambiguity of the play, the ideological ambiguity of the play, and I think it's a reflection both on what it says about Hasidism and about, and what it says about modern Jews. And I think Max, that figure of Max who's both modern but has this very complicated relationship to traditional Jews and Judaism, is really the audience of the Yiddish theatre. Oh, let me see what's happening. Reminding me that I should use this more. Okay, well I'm concluding anyway so, see what else. So, this is a censured manuscript of Goldfaden's, the Two Kuni-Lemls, everything had to be censured. And I'm just going to say a few concluding remarks. Okay-- [ Ambient Noise ] So the accidental of this article's title is meant to suggest, had history not cooperated, there might not have been such a thing as the modern Yiddish theatre. Especially not the coherent institution we have come to know, where the historians saw inevitable and organic cultural expression, I see accident. Where they frame the theatre as a stream of uninterrupted vigorous full culture, I highlight a culture, a cultural break during which bourgeois urban Jews immersed in European theatrical genres before, come and return with them to Yiddish. Where historians have enshrined Romania as the Yiddish theatre's birthplace, I favor Odessa, the incubator of these intermingled cultural forms. Observers of the Yiddish theatre might point to its phenomenal run in New York City and argue that had the Yiddish theatre not begun in Russia, it would have risen in the atmosphere of freedom and entrepreneurialism afforded by America. But there is no evidence that this is the case. In fact, we know that a young Boris Tomashevsky, before himself becoming a matinee idol, I know one of his images is on the table, he tried to put on Yiddish theatre. He had heard about it, about what was going on in Russia and he said, let's do that here. But Tomashevsky gave up after a few productions, a failure that reflects more on the complexity of the institution of theatre than on the Yiddish theatre in particular. Yiddish theatre in America only gathers momentum after the wave of practiced Yiddish actors arrived on American shores. Who, after tasting the life in Yiddish theatre, could not tolerate Russia's oppressive ban of 1883. So they leave, they come to New York and then the Yiddish theatre gets started. As I outlined in my book, other elements of this cultural phenomenon were just as crucial and they were not accident. Ambivalent Max embracing of Jewishness but also aspects of the, sorry, so both embracing of Jewishness, but also embracing of these worldly forms of the operetta, he became a crucial part of this. And this is Adler and Goldfaden, and so many like them, who are fluent in Russian and fluent in other language, and immersed in Western European culture. Of course, they were crucial to the development of Yiddish theatre. As both independent and created by Jews, the Yiddish theatre supplied him with the only opportunity to become an actor. And this is now Adler I'm talking about. The Russian Conservatory was closed to outsiders and while we know some Jewish vocal artists like Sigmund Mogolesko, whose image was shown earlier, he was able to participate in a small, traveling, French operetta group before joining the theatre. You could not really join a Russian dramatic conservatory as a Jew. I just don't see any record of it. So Adler, his only choice was really, or his only possibility, opportunity of becoming an actor was the Yiddish theatre. And so, that's really the non, what I would call the non-accident part, these people trying to shore up Yiddish culture wherever they can and abidingly even under very difficult and oppressive circumstances. And there was one in particular that I'm going to end with, it's a memoir by a Yiddish actor named Isaac Lowe, who had befriended Franz Kafka in Prague. He talks about growing up in Poland, and this is what he writes; he wrote that as a young boy, he would sneak to the theatre to see gentile, non-Jewish theatre, and that his family called it treyf, not kosher, for gentiles and sinners. And he explained he was so drawn to theatre that he would regularly attend Warsaw's Grand Theatre. But then he discovers the Yiddish theatre and this is what he writes; "this completely transformed me, even before the play began, I felt quite different from the way I felt among them, the gentiles. Above all, there were no gentlemen in evening dress, no ladies in low-cut gowns, no Polish, no Russian, only Jews of every kind, in caftans, in suits, women and girls dressed in the western way, and everyone talked loudly and carelessly in our mother tongue. Nobody particularly noticed me in my long caftan and I did not need to be ashamed at all." in describing his personal experience in attending the theatre, Lowe touches on the least accident part of the rise of the modern Yiddish theatre. There is a through line in 19th century Jewish cultural history, of a desire on the part of various cultural producers throughout Eastern Europe, to put on a Yiddish version of the productions they observed in the theatres. Legal impediments or other restrictive environmental conditions denied most of them this opportunity. Driven by the same desire, this time closer to the end of the century, and most importantly, following the achievements of men like Goldfaden and Adler, Lowe went from attending the theatre to becoming a Yiddish actor. Thank you very much for listening. [ applause ] Yes? Please, if you have comments and questions. >> Repeat the questions. >> Alyssa Quint: And I'll repeat, and I'm going to repeat your question-- >> [multiple speakers - inaudible] >> Alyssa Quint: Oh, sure. Even better. [ Ambient Noise ] >> Will you please expound upon the reason, it's not on, oh good. Could you please expound upon the reason for the termination of Yiddish theatre in Odessa, in Russia? >> Alyssa Quint: Why, meaning? >> Why did it end so abruptly? >> Alyssa Quint: Why was it shut down so abruptly? >> Yeah. >> Alyssa Quint: So there were theories about this, theories about you know, maybe anti-Semitic motivations or maybe enemies of Goldfaden, that kind of conspiracy floated. What I think happened, is that there was such enthusiasm for Yiddish theatre that it inspired many people to write Yiddish plays. And when you wrote a Yiddish play and hoped to stage the play, you needed first to send it to the sensor bureau. And so people were sending, throngs of people, were sending things to the sensor in Odessa and also in Saint Petersburg, you needed a local sensor and also a Saint Petersburg sensor. And these sensors did not know what hit them. And they're like, this is really crazy, we can't deal with this with all of this pressure on our office, and I think that was part of it. That was, it was, you know, that's what happens in an authoritarian country, you know, if it's easier to shut down the theatre, no one's really thinking of the cultural cost or the cost of, you know, to the freedom of, you know, those types of variables aren't really considered necessarily. And it was something as petty as that. It was not anti-Semitic, it was certainly because on a bureaucratic level, it was just not going smoothly enough. Yeah. Yes? Oh, do we need the? >> I can talk loud. When you were in Bucharest-- >> Alyssa Quint: Yes. >> -- they say that is the birth of Yiddish theatre. >> Alyssa Quint: Yes. >> Yeah, and also, is there anything left in Odessa, of the Yiddish, say any buildings? I'll be in Odessa this summer. >> Alyssa Quint: Oh, is that right? What can you see in Odessa, there are some Jewish, you know, landmarks that you can see in Odessa. Something specific to the Yiddish theatre, I don't know. I think the Mariinsky Theatre is still standing, but whether or not they give any homage to Yiddish is, I don't think they do. But you should go see it. In terms of Bucharest, Bucharest was an interesting case because it did adopt under, you know, its communist regime did support a functioning Yiddish theatre, I think it's still functioning in some form. >> It is [inaudible] >> Alyssa Quint: Yes. >> -- been inside it. >> Alyssa Quint: Yes, I don't know how much Yiddish language stuff they put on per se-- >> Jewish and then there's just regular people that perform in Yiddish. >> Alyssa Quint: Okay, so there is some Yiddish language. So, yes, they still sponsor Yiddish theatre of some form there. It's one of the last ones. Merriam? >> [inaudible] first of all, congratulations, what a fascinating lecture and I have ten questions but I'll just have maybe two. One, is I know that in the earlier days before and around the time of Goldfaden, you had these salons, I can't imagine anything more bourgeois than a literary salon. >> Alyssa Quint: That's right. >> Did those continue and were those in Odessa? And my second question, which is unrelated, is how come in these restricted cities, there was enough of an audience, in Moscow and Petersburg? >> Alyssa Quint: Right. >> Two questions. >> Alyssa Quint: Okay, so the last question first, the last question really interested me. And it interested even contemporary journalists, how many Jews are in the audience? How many non-Jews are in the audience? Especially the Jewish journalists, but also the non-Jewish journalists and critics would ask that same question. Who is watching these shows? So we don't know numbers exactly, but they, but like I said, the way theatre and performance was consumed in the Russian Empire during this period, it was just pretty ordinary to take in shows of different languages and Yiddish was very dramatic sounding language and it really, certainly did not deter people from going, more than a bad review might. And even those probably didn't deter a lot. Yeah, so in Moscow, probably you know, maybe 50% the way I imagine it. But we, again, we don't know numbers. I think there were a lot of non-Jews attending these shows and in the non-Jewish press, you see that coverage. And then the first question was about the salons. Yes, there were salons. And that's where Goldfaden you know, that prepares him and that's where he gets his, you know, cultural education, his bourgeois cultural education. He himself performs in salons with his peers and we know that he attended a salon during his seminary days and also in Odessa. And these of course were private, but they had, they were very elaborate affairs. Yeah, and they were, you're right, that was a crucial piece of the puzzle, part of what nourished the theatre. It encouraged a lot of these writers to write plays, even though there was no public theatre. Yeah, thanks. Yes? >> [inaudible] >> Alyssa Quint: I'm just repeating. >> Are you fluent in Yiddish then? >> Alyssa Quint: Yes, I read all those memoirs in Yiddish, most of the scholarship on Yiddish theatre is in Yiddish. Not just, not just the primary sources, but also the secondary sources, because the historians that wrote about it during the interwar period, who were so productive and so intelligent, notwithstanding some of their political leanings. They all were big believers in writing Yiddish language scholarship and that's here in the United States and Poland and the Soviet Union, those are the three centers of Yiddish scholarship during this interwar period. So that's what I immersed myself in. Yeah, next time I'll, sorry I didn't repeat the question. >> I was very, very interested in your, in the book and then all this presentation and I'm sorry I was late. I come from Bucharest, you know. >> Alyssa Quint: Oh, yes. >> I have just seen a fresh premiere of a play called Yiddish. >> Alyssa Quint: The play itself is called Yiddish? >> Yes. >> Alyssa Quint: Interesting. >> Yes, the Jewish theatre, that in fact was founded by Goldfaden. So, I have many questions of course, we are extremely proud to have this theatre because it is reported and there are histories written about it. >> Alyssa Quint: Yes. >> It's reported to have had an absolutely continuous existence to be active from 1876 until today. >> Alyssa Quint: Yes. >> In various forms. Goldfaden came from Russia and one question I had, okay, is there any of these, of these Yiddish theatres left active in those territories? Like in Odessa for instance. >> Alyssa Quint: Absolutely not. >> Not. Why did Goldfaden come to the smaller place that was the, maybe was it just very, very harsh censorship? >> Alyssa Quint: If you guys don't mind, I'm just going to start again. Yeah, that was really the focus of my talk and it was, no, not to worry, it was really what made me wonder because, because the Russian Empire had so many Jews and there was such a concentration of Jews in Odessa where Goldfaden lived before coming to Romania, it surprised me that no historian really took, you know, really took that apart, really unpacked that problem. Why come down to Romania where the Jews are less concentrated and they have far less money, to start the theatre. >> But you know, he was very successful at it. So he first started a theatre in the capital of Province of Moldova, which then after the second world war, part of it became the Republic of Moldova but he was active in the part that is still in Romania, so in [inaudible]. And very soon after the, before even 1880, he came to Bucharest and founded this very theatre, which is still there and open. >> Alyssa Quint: Yes. >> And I have my own experience, okay, I have a certain age, but during those communist times okay, it was there and subsidized, but you see, because the Jewish actors were themselves Jewish and could speak Yiddish, some of them were exceptional and they were active in the National Theatre and so only Romanian. >> Alyssa Quint: Yeah. >> So, they, in Romania, people tend to adore their actors, so they were going anyway to all these theatres, you know, including the Yiddish theatre. And there were subtitles-- >> Alyssa Quint: Right. >> -- titles. >> Alyssa Quint: Right, what I would say is that, what I would say is that I wouldn't, I shift, I kind of push back a little bit on the importance of Romania and talk about how Odessa is important but I would say that Romania was an important, you know, incubator of Yiddish theatre at certain moments before World War II and after World War II, there's a lot of really interesting, a lot of avant garde Yiddish theatre in Romania between the two world wars, and then after the war it sponsored so-- [ Inaudible ] Yes. Yes, thank you too, making that point, it's important. Two more questions. Yes, one right here. Just want to wait for the microphone. [ Ambient Noise ] >> Thank you. How much of the, how many of the plays have been translated into English and would be available from the library, let's say, or from Amazon, to read? >> Alyssa Quint: Yes. So the Two Kuni-Lemls that I just quoted from, was translated recently. And that would be available in an anthology called Landmark Yiddish Plays, so that's one. There's about 20 that he composed in all in Yiddish. In my book there's one the I translate and it's an appendix to the Sorcerous, which appears at the end of my book. That's two. And then there's one that I'm publishing with a friend and translator, Shulamis, which is his most important play, or operetta. And that's three, so that's three so far. See how much of an appetite I have for it. >> And if I can ask one more question. >> Alyssa Quint: Of course. >> What was the relationship between the production of plays and books that were produced in Yiddish? Was there any relationship? Did one spark the other or not? >> Alyssa Quint: Mm hmm, that's a good question. You know, I think that at least during the time that Goldfaden, I think that's a huge important question, but what I would say just to narrow it down is that during this very short period, first what I call this first chapter, Goldfaden was quite happy not to publish his work because he was always very paranoid about copycat productions and those did get staged often, by other competing troupes, especially because he was so off-putting himself, personality wise, you know, actors that he trained were very happy to leave him and say I'm going to do my own thing, and then put on the same operetta but in a different town. >> [inaudible] >> Alyssa Quint: Like Shakespeare. Goldfaden would really like that analogy. Yes, but then eventually he does get published. All of his, you know, authoritative plays, at least [inaudible] are published, the music is much dicier, we have some manuscripts that have come down to us but nothing was published in terms of the scores of the operettas. We're kind of piecing that together these days now. Yes, one more question. >> Have you also been doing research on the Yiddish theatre troupes in Eastern Europe, west of the Russian Empire? We're talking about Austria-Hungary, Bukovina, Galicia, and into Poland. I understand there were also Yiddish theatre troupes in that area. >> Alyssa Quint: Yes. >> Active, they maybe didn't have this 1883 turn of events that sent as many Jews to America, but-- >> Alyssa Quint: You're right, you're right, it gets forgotten, that area. Bertha Kalich gets her start in Gimple's Tavern, which was an important theatre and yes, there's you know, it's more amorphous and there, it's happening at different times and different places, and then by the time we get to-- >> And it continues to thrive in that part of Europe, even [inaudible] >> Alyssa Quint: Yes, it produced great stars, great celebrities, and it was very, it was important to kind of keeping the momentum alive until we get to this next important period, at least on the European continent, which is post World War I. Because then things, Poland is established as a country, and with it the, you know, minorities peace treaty is signs and so Yiddish theatre is allowed to thrive, finally, on Polish lands again in Poland. And so then you have this, another amazing chapter, probably the most stunningly prolific and creative period of the Yiddish theatre. But until that point, there's very interesting works going on in, during this period that you're talking about. And probably overlooked and understudied, and we should, we should look at that some more. >> [inaudible] >> Alyssa Quint: Thank you, thank you very much.