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Abraham Goldfaden

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Writers and critics

                    Abraham Goldfaden
   Image:Abraham Goldfaden.jpg
   Abraham Goldfaden
      Origin    Starokonstantinov, Russia
     Country    Imperial Russia, Romania, United States
   Years active 1876–1908
      Genres    Yiddish theatre, operetta

   Abraham Goldfaden ( July 24, 1840 – January 9, 1908), ( Yiddish: אברהם
   גולדפדן) born Abraham Goldenfoden (first name alternately Avram, Avron,
   Avrohom, Avrom, or Avrum, last name alternately Goldfadn; the Romanian
   spelling Avram Goldfaden is common) was a Russian-born Jewish poet and
   playwright, author of some 40 plays. In 1876 he founded in Romania what
   is generally credited as the world's first professional
   Yiddish-language theatre troupe. He was also responsible for the first
   Hebrew-language play performed in the United States.

   Jacob Sternberg called him "the Prince Charming who woke up the
   lethargic Romanian Jewish culture". Israil Bercovici wrote that in his
   works "...we find points in common with what we now call 'total
   theatre'. In many of his plays he alternates prose and verse, pantomime
   and dance, moments of acrobatics and some of jonglerie, and even of
   spiritualism..."

Youth and early manhood

   Goldfaden was born in Starokonstantinov. His birthdate is sometimes
   given as July 12, following the "Old Style" calendar in use at that
   time in Russia. He attended a Jewish religious school (a cheder), but
   his middle class family was strongly associated with the Haskalah, the
   Jewish Enlightenment, and his father, a watchmaker, arranged that he
   receive private lessons in German and Russian. As a child, he is said
   to have appreciated and imitated the performances of wedding jesters
   and Brody singers to the degree that he acquired the nickname Avromele
   Badkhen, "Abie the Jester". In 1857 he began studies at the
   government-run rabbinical school at Zhytomyr, from which he emerged in
   1866 as a teacher and a poet (with some experience in amateur theatre),
   but he never led a congregation.

   Goldfaden's first published poem was called "Progress"; his New York
   Times obituary described it as "a plea for Zionism years before that
   movement developed". In 1865 he published his first book of poetry,
   Zizim u-Ferahim (in Hebrew); The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1906) says
   that "Goldfaden's Hebrew poetry... possesses considerable merit, but it
   has been eclipsed by his Yiddish poetry, which, for strength of
   expression and for depth of true Jewish feeling, remains unrivaled."
   The first book of verse in Yiddish was published in 1866, and in 1867
   he took a job teaching in Simferopol. A year later, he moved on to
   Odessa (in Ukraine), where 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 Yitzhak Yoel Linetsky, whom he knew from
   Zhytomyr 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 Neighbors) 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 giving private lessons and
   taking a job as a cashier in a hat shop.

   In 1875, Golfaden headed for Munich, intending to study medicine. This
   did not work out, and he headed for Lvov/Lemberg in Galicia, where he
   again met up with Linetsky, now editor of a weekly paper, Isrulik or
   Der Alter Yisrulik (which was well reputed, but was soon shut by the
   government). A year later, he moved on to Chernivtsi in Bukovina, where
   he edited the Yiddish-language daily Dos Bukoviner Israelitishe
   Folksblatt. The limits of the economic sense of this enterprise can be
   gauged from his inability to pay a registration fee of 3000 ducats. He
   tried unsuccessfully to operate the paper under a different name, but
   soon moved on to Iaşi.

Iaşi

   Arriving in Iaşi 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. When he
   sought funds from Yitzhak Librescu for another newspaper, Librescu was
   uninterested in that proposition. Librescu's wife remarked that
   Yiddish-language journalism was just a way to starve; she 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, Gradina Pomul Verde ("the Green
   Fruit-Tree Garden").

   Instead of a simple recital, Goldfaden expanded this into something of
   a vaudeville; either this or their first indoor performance later that
   year in Botoşani is generally counted as the first professional Yiddish
   theatre performance. However, the nature of his cast indicates exactly
   how nominal it is to choose one performance as "the first": Goldfaden's
   first actor, Israel Grodner, was already singing Goldfaden's songs (and
   others) in the salons of Iaşi.

   In fact, another candidate for consideration as the first professional
   Yiddish theatre performance also included Grodner. He sang in a concert
   in Odessa in 1873, which also included some of the Goldfaden's songs,
   although Goldfaden was not personally involved. It appears to have had
   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", had plenty of exposure to
   Russian and Polish theatre, and had even seen African American
   tragedian Ira Aldrich perform Shakespeare, the performance at Gradina
   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 holţ (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.

   As it happens, Mihai Eminescu saw one of their Pomul Verde performances
   later that summer. He records that the company had six players. (A 1905
   typographical error would turn this to 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." [Bercovici, 1998, 58] His generally positive
   comments would seem to deserve to be taken seriously: Eminescu was
   "virulently antisemitic". Eminescu appears to have seen four of
   Goldfaden's early plays: a satiric musical revue De velt a gan-edn (The
   World and Paradise), Der Farlibter Maskil un der Oifgheklerter Hosid'
   (a dialogue between "an infatuated philosopher" and "an enlightened
   Hasid"), another musical revue Der sver mitn eidem (Father-in-law and
   Son-in-Law), and a comedy Fishl der balegole un zain knecht Sider
   (Fishel the Junkman and His Servant Sider).

The search for a theatre

   As the season for outdoor performances was coming to a close, Goldfaden
   tried and failed to rent an appropriate theater 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 Botoşani, where they lived in a garret and
   Goldfaden continued to churn out songs and plays. An initial successful
   performance of Di Rekruten (The Recruits) in an indoor theater ("with
   loges!" as Goldfaden wrote) was followed by days of rain so torrential
   that no one would come out to the theatre; they pawned some possessions
   and left for 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
   housepainter known as Reb Moishe Bas. He had no formal artistic
   training, but he proved to be good at the job, and joined the troupe,
   as did 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 like that;
   Goldstein (unlike Goldfaden and Grodner) was single; he 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 Iaşi, 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 Văcăreşti ( Văcăreşti Avenue, in the
   heart of the ghetto), then, once the weather turned warm, at the
   Jigniţa 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, sisters Margaretta and Annetta Schwartz.

   Among the cantors in his casts that year were Lazăr Zuckermann (also
   known as Laiser Zuckerman; as a song-and-dance man, he would eventually
   follow Goldfaden to New York and a long stage career, Moishe Zilberman
   (also known as Silberman), and Simhe Dinman, but the find, soon to
   become a stage star, was the 18-year-old Zigmund Mogulescu (Sigmund
   Mogulesko), an orphan who had already made his way in the world as a
   singer not only as a soloist in the Great Synagogue of Bucharest, but
   in cafes, at parties, with a visiting French operetta company, and even
   in a church choir. Before his voice changed, he had sung with
   Zuckerman, Dinman, and Moses Wald in the "Israelite Chorus", performing
   at important ceremonies in the Jewish community. Mogulescu's audition
   for Goldfaden was a scene from Vlăduţu Mamei (Mama's Boy), which formed
   the basis later that year for Goldfaden's light comedy Shmendrik, oder
   Die Komishe Chaseneh (Shmendrik or The Comical Wedding starring
   Mogulescu as the almost painfully clueless and hapless young man
   (later, famously played in New York and elsewhere by actress Molly
   Picon); the title is a pun on the Chemical Wedding).

   This recruiting of cantors was not without controversy: Cantor Cuper
   (also known as Kupfer), the head cantor of the Great Synagogue,
   considered it "impious" that cantors should perform in a secular
   setting, to crowds where both sexes mingled freely, keeping people up
   late so that they might not be on time for morning prayers.

   While one may argue over which performance "started" Yiddish theater,
   by the end of that summer in Bucharest Yiddish theatre was an
   established fact. The influx of Jewish merchants and middlemen to at
   the start of the Russo-Turkish War had greatly expanded the audience;
   among these new arrivals were Israel Rosenberg and Jacob Spivakovsky,
   the highly cultured scion of a wealthy Russian Jewish family, both of
   whom actually joined Goldfaden's troupe, but soon left to found the
   first Yiddish theatre troupe in Imperial Russia.

   Goldfaden was churning out a repertoire – new songs, new plays,
   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 Goldfaden 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, (Prostitutes and Thieves), and Yiddish theater had
   become big theatre, with elaborate sets, duelling choruses, and extras
   to fill out crowd scenes.

   Goldfaden was helped by Ion Ghica, then head of the Romanian National
   Theatre to legally establish a "dramatic society" to handle
   administrative matters. From those papers, we know that the troupe at
   the Jigniţa included Moris Teich, Michel Liechman (Glückman), Lazăr
   Zuckermann, Margareta Schwartz, Sofia Palandi, Aba Goldstein, and Clara
   Goldstein. We also know from similar papers that when Grodner and
   Mogulescu walked out on Goldfaden to start their own company, it
   included (besides themselves) I. Rosenberg, E. Epivakowsky, P. Şapira,
   M. Banderevsky, Anetta Grodner, and Rosa Friedman.

   Ion Ghica was a valuable ally for Yiddish theater in Bucharest. On
   several occasions he expressed his favorable view of the quality of
   acting, and even more of the technical aspects of the Yiddish theater.
   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.

A turn to the serious

   While light comedy and satire might have established Yiddish theatre as
   a commercially successful medium, it would never have established
   Goldfaden as "the Yiddish Shakespeare" (which the New York Times called
   him at his death in 1908). As a man broadly read in several languages,
   he was acutely aware that there was no Eastern European Jewish
   tradition of dramatic literature, his audience was used to seeking just
   "a good glass of Odobeşti and a song". Years later, he would paraphrase
   the typical Yiddish theatergoer of the time as saying to him, "We don't
   go to the theater to make our head swim with sad things. We have enough
   troubles at home... We go to the theatre to cheer ourselves up. We pay
   up a coin and hope to be distracted, we want to laugh from the heart."

   Goldfaden wrote that this attitude put him "pure and simply at war with
   the public". His stage was not to be merely "...a masquerade. No,
   brothers. If I have arrived at having a stage, I want it to be a school
   for you. In youth you didn't have time to learn and cultivate
   yourself... Laugh heartily if I amuse you with my jokes, while I,
   watching you, feel my heart crying. Then, brothers, I'll give you a
   drama, a tragedy drawn from life, and you, too, shall cry – while my
   heart shall be glad." Nonetheless, his "war with the public" was based
   on understanding that public. He would also write, "I wrote Di
   kishofmeherin ( The Witch) in Romania, where the populace – Jews as
   much as Romanians – believe strongly in witches." Local superstitions
   and concerns always made good subject matter, and, as Bercovici
   remarks, however strong his inspirational and didactic intent, his
   historical pieces were always connected to contemporary concerns.

   Even in the first couple of years of his company, Goldfaden did not shy
   away from serious themes: his rained-out vaudeville in Botoşani had
   been Di Rekruten (The Recruits), playing with the theme of the press
   gangs working the streets of that town to conscript young men into the
   army. Before the end of 1876, Goldfaden had already translated Desolate
   Island by August von Kotzebue; thus, a play by a German aristocrat and
   Russian spy became the first non-comic play performed professionally in
   Yiddish. After his initial burst of mostly vaudevilles and light
   comedies (although Shmendrik and The Two Kuni-Lemls were reasonably
   sophisticated plays), Goldfaden would go on to write many serious
   Yiddish-language plays on Jewish themes, perhaps the most famous being
   Shulamith, also from 1880. Golfaden himself suggested that this
   increasingly serious turn became possible because he had educated his
   audience. Nahma Sandrow suggests that it may have had equally much to
   do with the arrival in Romania of Russian Jews at the time of the
   Russo-Turkish War, who had been exposed to more sophisticated Russian
   language theatre. Goldfaden's strong turn toward almost uniformly
   serious subject matter roughly coincided with bringing his troupe to
   Odessa.

   Goldfaden was both a theoretician and a practitioner of theater. That
   he was in no small measure a theoretician – for example, he was
   interested almost from the start in having set design seriously support
   the themes of his plays – relates to a key property of Yiddish theater
   at the time of its birth: in general, writes Bercovici, theory ran
   ahead of practice. Much of the Jewish community, Goldfaden included,
   were already familiar with contemporary theater in other languages. The
   initial itinerary of Goldfaden's company – Iaşi, Botoşani, Galaţi,
   Brăila, Bucharest – could as easily have been the itinerary of a
   Romanian-language troupe. Yiddish theater may have been seen from the
   outset as an expression of a Jewish national character, but the
   theatrical values of Goldfaden's company were in many ways those of a
   good Romanian theatre of the time. Also, Yiddish was a German dialect
   and a well-known language even among non-Jews in Moldavia (and
   Transylvania), an important language of commerce; the fact that one of
   the first to write about Yiddish theatre was Romania's national poet,
   Mihai Eminescu, is testimony that interest in Yiddish theatre went
   beyond the Jewish community.

   Almost from the first, Yiddish theater drew a level of theater
   criticism comparable to any other European theater of its time.
   Bercovici cites a "brochure" by one G. Abramski, published in 1877.
   Abramski described and gave critiques of all of Goldfaden's plays of
   that year, discussed what a Yiddish theatre ought to be, speculated
   that this might be a moment comparable to the Elizabethan era for
   English theatre, noted the many sources of this emerging form (ranging
   from Purim plays to circus pantomime), praised the strong female roles,
   but criticized where he saw weaknesses: a male actor unconvincingly
   playing the mother in Shmendrik, or the entire play Di shtume kale (The
   Mute Bride) — a play apparently written to accommodate a pretty, young
   actress who was too nervous to deliver her lines — saying of it that
   the only evidence of Goldfaden's authorship was his name.

Russia

   Goldfaden's father wrote him to solicit the troupe to come to Odessa in
   Ukraine, which was then part of Imperial Russia. The timing was
   opportune: the end of the war meant that much of his best audience were
   now in Odessa rather than Bucharest; Rosenberg had already quit
   Goldfaden's troupe and was performing the Goldfadenian repertoire in
   Odessa.

   With a loan from Librescu, Goldfaden headed east with a group of 42
   people, including performers, musicians, and their families. After the
   end of the Russo-Turkish War he and his troupe travelled extensively
   through Imperial Russia, notably to Kharkov (also in Ukraine), Moscow,
   and Saint Petersburg. Jacob Adler later described him at this time as
   "a bon vivant", "a cavalier", "as difficult to approach as an emperor".
   He continued to turn out plays at a prolific pace, now mostly serious
   pieces such as Doctor Almasada, oder Die Yiden in Palermo ( Doctor
   Almasada, or The Jews of Palermo), Shulamith, and Bar Kokhba, the last
   being a rather dark play about Bar Kokhba's revolt, written after the
   pogroms following the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II, as the
   tide turned against Jewish emancipation.

   As it happens, a Frenchman named Victor Tissot happened to be in
   Berdichev when Goldfaden's company was there. He saw two plays – Di
   Rekruten, first premiered in Botoşani, and the later Di Shvebleh
   (Matches), a play of intrigue. Tissot's account of what he saw gives an
   interesting picture of the theaters and audiences Goldfaden's troupe
   encountered outside of the big cities. "Berdichev," he begins, "has not
   one cafe, not one restaurant. Berdichev, which is a boring and sad
   city, nonetheless has a theatrical hall, a big building made of rough
   boards, where theatre troupes passing through now and then put on a
   play." Although there was a proper stage with a curtain, the cheap
   seats were bare benches, the more expensive ones were benches covered
   in red percale. Although there were many full beards, "there were no
   long caftans, no skullcaps." Some of the audience were quite poor, but
   these were assimilated Jews, basically secular. The audience also
   included Russian officers with their wives or girlfriends.

   In Russia, Goldfaden and his troupe drew large audiences and were
   generally popular with progressive Jewish intellectuals, but slowly ran
   afoul of both the Czarist government and conservative elements in the
   Jewish community. Goldfaden was calling for change in the Jewish world:

          Wake up my people
          From your sleep, wake up
          And believe no more in foolishness.

   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 quarelled (and settled) several times over rights to plays, and
   Mogulescu and his partner Moishe "Maurice" Finkel now dominated Yiddish
   theater in Romania, with about ten lesser companies competing as well.
   Mogulescu was a towering figure in Bucharest theater 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 January 11, 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 [Adler, 1999, 262
   commentary]). In October 1889 he scraped together the money to get to
   Lvov, where his reputation as a poet again came to his rescue.

Lvov

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

   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's brief time in Lvov as greatly strengthening the caliber of
   performance there, working with every actor on understanding his or her
   character, making sure that the play was more than just a series of
   songs and effects, respected by all.

Back to 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 Holfernes and a translation of
   Johann Strauss's Gypsy Baron.

   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 cutthroat competition: on one occasion in
   1895, a young man named Bernfeld attended multiple performances of
   Goldfaden's Story of Isaac, memorized it all (including the songs), and
   took the whole package to Kalman Juvilier, who put on an unauthorized
   production in Iaşi. Such outright theft was possible because once Ion
   Ghica headed off on a diplomatic career, the National Theater, which
   was supposed to adjudicate issues like unauthorized performances of
   plays, was no longer paying much attention to Yiddish theatre.
   (Juvilier and Goldfaden finally reached an out-of-court settlement.)

   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 intellecuals particularly likely
   to leave, and those intellecuals 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 theater 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 theater – 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, authorizing 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

   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.

   He died in New York City in 1908. At the time of his death, the New
   York Times called him not only "the Yiddish Shakespeare", but "both a
   poet and a prophet", and added that "...there is 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." An estimated 75,000 attended his
   funeral procession from the People's Theatre in the Bowery to
   Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Goldfaden and 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.
   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.

Works

Plays

   Sources disagree about the dates (and even the names) of some of
   Goldfaden's plays. As usual in transcribing Yiddish, spellings vary
   wildly.
     * Die Murneh Sosfeh (Aunt Susie) wr. 1869
     * Die Tzwei Sheines (The Two Neighbours) wr. 1869 (possibly the same
       as Die Sheines 1877
     * Polyeh Shikor (Polyeh, the Drunkard) 1871
     * Anonimeh Komedyeh (Anonymous Comedy) 1876
     * Die Rekruten (The Recruits) 1876, 1877
     * Dos Bintl Holtz (The Bundle of Sticks) 1876
     * Fishl der balegole un zain knecht Sider (Fishel the Junkman and His
       Servant Sider) 1876
     * Die Velt a Gan-Edn (The World and Paradise) 1876
     * Der Farlibter Maskil un der Oifgheklerter Hosid (The Infatuated
       Philosopher and the Enlightened Hasid) 1876
     * Der Shver mitn eidem (Father-in-Law and Son-in-Law) 1876
     * Die Bobeh mit die Einikel (The Grandmother and the Granddaughter)
       1876 presumably the same play as Die kaprizneh Kaleh-Moid (The
       Capricious Bridemaid) 1887
     * Yontl Shnaider (Yontl the Tailor) 1877
     * Vos tut men? (What Did He Do?) 1877
     * Die Shtumeh Kaleh (The Dumb Bride) 1877, 1887
     * Die Tzwei Toibe (The Two Deaf Men) 1877
     * Der Ghekoifter Shlof (The Purchased Sleep) 1877
     * Die Sheines (The Neighbors) 1877
     * Yukel un Yekel (Yukel and Yekel) 1877
     * Der Katar (Catarrh) 1877
     * Ix-Mix-Drix, 1877
     * Die Mumeh Sose (Mute Susie) 1877
     * Braindele Kozak ( Breindele Cossack), 1877
     * Der Podriatshik (The Purveyor), 1877
     * Die Alte Moid (The Old Maid) 1877
     * Die Tzvei fardulte (The Two Scatter-Brains) 1877
     * Die Shvebeleh (Matches) 1877
     * Fir Portselaiene Teler (Four Porcelain Plates) 1877
     * Der Shpigl (The Mirror) 1877
     * Toib, Shtum un Blind (Deaf, Dumb and Blind) 1878
     * Todres Bloz ( Todros, Blow or Todres the Trombonist) 1878
     * 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
     * Der Heker un der Bleher-iung (The Butcher and the Tinker) 1878
     * Die Kishufmacherin (The Sorceress, also known as The Witch of
       Botoşani) 1878, 1887
     * Soufflé, 1878
     * Doi Intriganten (Two Intriguers) 1878
     * Die tzwei Kuni-lemels (The Fanatic, or The Two Kuni-Lemls) 1880
     * Thiat Hametim (The Winter of Death) 1881
     * Shulamith ( Shulamith or The Daughter of Jerusalem) wr. 1880, 1881
     * Dos Zenteh Gebot, oder Lo Tachmod (The Tenth Commandment, or Thou
       Shalt Not Covet) 1882, 1887
     * Der Sambatien ( Sambation) 1882
     * Doctor Almasada, oder Die Yiden in Palermo (Doctor Almasada, or The
       Jews of Palermo also known as Doctor Almasado, Doctor Almaraso,
       Doctor Almasaro) 1880, 1883
     * Bar Kokhba, 1883, 1885
     * Akeidat Itzhak (The Sacrifice of Isaac), 1891
     * Dos Finfteh Gebot, oder Kibed Ov (The Fifth Commandment, or Thou
       Shalt Not Kill), 1892
     * Rabi Yoselman, oder Die Gzerot fun Alsas ( Rabbi Yoselman, or The
       Alsatian Decree) 1877, 1892
     * Judas Maccabeus, 1892
     * Judith and Holofernes, 1892
     * Mashiach Tzeiten?! (The Messianic Era?!) 1891, 1893
     * Yiddish translation of Johann Strauss's Gypsy Baron 1894
     * Sdom Veamora (Sodom and Gomorrah) 1895
     * Die Catastrofe fun Braila (The Catastrophe in Brăila) 1895
     * Meilits Ioisher (The Messenger of Justice) 1897
     * David ba-Milchama (David in the War) 1906, in Hebrew
     * Ben Ami (Son of My People) 1907, 1908
     * Der Ligner (The Liar) 1911 (posthumous)

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!")

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