JOINT ISSUE _The Mendele Review_: Yiddish Literature and Language (A Companion to _MENDELE_) and _Yiddish Theater Forum_ [_YTF_] ______________________________________________________ Contents of Vol. 06.008 _TMR_ and Vol. 01.001 _YTF_ 31 August 2002 1) Introducing the _Yiddish Theater Forum_ (Leonard Prager) 2) Realizing the Vision of Oxford, Summer 1999 (Joel Berkowitz) 3) _King Lear_ on Orchard Street: Louis Kramer's _di amerikaner kinder_ (Leonard Prager) 4) Coming Issues of the _YTF_ (Joel Berkowitz) 1)---------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 August 2002 From: Leonard Prager Subject: Joint Issue of _Yiddish Theater Forum_ and _The Mendele Review_ At the International Academic Workshop On Yiddish Drama, Theater, and Performing Arts held in Oxford in the Summer of 1999 (29 June - 2 July) [see http://members.tripod.com/jtheater/oxford.htm], participants felt that an electronic bulletin and eventually a hardcopy journal devoted to Yiddish theater research would stimulate this neglected area of Yiddish studies. I suggested that the _Yiddish Theater Forum_ be a part of the cybernetic Mendele family, making use of _Mendele_, the foremost medium for "notes and queries" (or "shayles tshuves") in the Yiddish world. I also suggested that joint issues of the _Forum_ be produced with _The Mendele Review_ until such time as the new organ is firmly established and widely known. The title _Yiddish Theater Forum_ was decided on at Oxford, but not much more was concluded. The present joint issue is a first step towards awakening the creative energies manifest at the conference. 2)----------------------------------------------------- Date: 31 August 2002 From: Joel Berkowitz Subject: Realizing the Vision of Oxford, Summer 1999 Realizing the Vision of Oxford, Summer 1999 by Joel Berkowitz First of all, I am grateful to Leonard Prager for his energetic leadership, which has made it possible to launch and disseminate _The Yiddish Theatre Forum_. This venture has also been inspired by the talented scholars and performers who came together during a few hot summer days in Oxford to share their work on Yiddish theatre and drama, and their ideas for furthering our understanding of the subject. It is not so long ago that such a venture would have seemed inconceivable to me. When I first began studying the Yiddish theatre in the early 1990s, I could count the people with whom I shared my interest on the fingers of one hand -- or more precisely, on my index finger. At the time, Nina Warnke was the only person I knew who shared my enthusiasm for the subject. We used to meet periodically to discuss Yiddish plays, using these sessions as a chance to familiarize ourselves with the repertoire -- particularly the popular dramas that delighted audiences and appalled critics to approximately equal degrees. Nina and I each arrived at our meetings full of questions. What was the significance of the topical references in that Lateiner melodrama? Just how scandalous or how conventional was that problem play by Gordin? How similar were these plays to what was then being staged uptown on Broadway, or in Yiddish theatres in Europe, South America, or Johannesburg? Finding answers often felt like a case of the blind leading the blind. There was so little scholarship to turn to, so few mentors, and but a handful of surviving veterans of the Yiddish stage. We thought it not unlikely that we were the only people in the world who would actually read a Hurwitz or Lateiner play (not that those writers' many fans had _read_ the plays either -- humbling thought whenever I tried to imagine what _Dos yidishe harts_ or _Dos pintele yid_ had actually looked sounded smelled like). Not unlikely -- yet we turned out to be blissfully mistaken. Since then, I have crossed paths with dozens of fellow students of the Yiddish theatre, ranging within the academy from seasoned scholars to young professors to graduate students, and outside it, from directors, actors, and musicians to librarians and museum curators. They include those whose work revolves primarily around the Yiddish theatre, others with expertise in related fields, and still others drawn to the subject for any number of reasons. These people should be talking to each other. Of course, many of them already are, after having met at a conference, read each other's work, or been referred by librarians or colleagues. Such exchanges are importantbut something more is needed: a centralized, regular forum in which we can learn from each other and help shape the future direction of Yiddish theatre studies. The Oxford workshop was just one of many signs that our field, however small in absolute terms, is vital -- in more than one sense of the word -- and growing. We hope that you will join us to help make the _YTF_ an ongoing, international, multi-disciplinary discussion that will help all of us gain a greater understanding of Yiddish theatre, drama, and performance, and solidify a network of enthusiasts who can turn to each other as living resources. 3)------------------------------------------------------ Date: 31 August 2002 From: Leonard Prager Subject: _King Lear_ on Orchard Street: Louis Kramer's _di amerikaner kinder_ (1) Some time ago I randomly selected and downloaded one of the seventy-seven digitalized manuscript and typescript plays in the Library of Congress's magnificent Marwick Collection.(2) I chose a play whose title clearly placed it in a huge class of Yiddish plays built around the family complex. (Even a superficial search among Yiddish play titles brings up multiple instances of "children," "sons," "daughters," "husbands," "wives,' "fathers," "uncles," "aunts.") I did not anticipate any great surprizes. A downloaded manuscript is not the manuscript per se and there are sometimes points to be learned only from the original paper source -- yet what a boon to be able to summon a true likeness of the manuscript by a mere click. After printing the twenty-eight page manuscript of the one-act play I had selected, I proceeded to examine it. Who was the author? Was the ms. in his own hand? Was the title a single or double one? What genre did the author assign to the play? Who were the dramatis personae and what could one learn from their names? How apt was the characterization? Did the characters have individual voices? When was the play written and in what period did its action transpire? How skilfully was the plot structured and what were the author's stage directions? How rich was the Yiddish, how colloquial, how Americanized? What were the principal themes? Was the play ever performed? Was it ever translated or ever published? The first matter to claim my attention was the title, not its short form but the full moniker: _Di amerikaner kinder_ fun Luis Kremer [Louis Kramer]. Lebensbild [Lebnsbild]. The very first page [=image] of this ms. play, Image 1 of 28, has a hand-written Yiddish title "amerikaner kinder". Image 2 gives us, both in Yiddish and English, "American Children Comedy in One Act." But Image 4 alters the title slightly by adding the definite article; moreover, the descriptor is "life picture" rather than "comedy." The term _lebnsbild_ is a very common one in the Yiddish theater and I assume that its original force derives from the popular belief that dramas of "real life" are somehow more serious or more valid than merely invented ones. But it suddenly occurs to me that I do not really know the origin of this term. The NHG _Lebensbild_ is defined by Cassell's _New German Dictionary_ (12th edition, 1969) as 'sketch of a person's life; short biography' and Langenscheidt's _Handwoerterbich Englisch_ does not include the word at all. Did the sense 'a realistic drama' exist somewhere in German or another language or was the term perhaps created in Yiddish? Why is the word missing in the main Yiddish dictionaries (MEYYED, Stutshkov and Harkavi)? One desideratum of Yiddish theater studies is a lexicon of Yiddish theater argot (e.g. _dos kintsele_, _bombe-role_, _bulbe_, etc. ). It transpires that the play before us can be played as pure melodrama, but it works better as comedy. The central anxiety explored in "Di amerikaner kinder" is that of aged parents. The title itself suggests the implicit question, "Will _American_ children care for their parents in their old age as children were wont to do -- or at least expected to do -- in the Old Country?" The author may not have been sure himself which track he was following -- melodrama or comedy. At one moment the "good" son is bright and at another is something of a simpleton, a contrast doubtless originating in the profound union of simplicity and moral depth in Shakespeare's Cordelia. The plot unfolds in New York during World War One, after Germany invaded Russia. It is a time of pogroms and unrest in Eastern Europe and Father has fled from his home in Bialistok. His arrival in America is imminent. He has sent money to his children over the years, enabling his son Izidor to become a doctor and his daughter Line's husband to become a lawyer -- medicine and law were the immigrant generation's most respected callings. His third child, Khom, sells bananas from a pushcart at the corner of Ludlow and Orchard Streets in the Lower East Side of New York. Looked down upon by his parvenu siblings, Khom is a family disgrace; they call him _pedleruk_.(3) The three children meet at the daugher's home to wait for their father. They insult Khom (who has dignity and is not ashamed of his occupation), and argue as to which of the three the father will live with. Each wants him. When the father arrives and tells the children he is penniless, things suddenly change. This one-acter has been directly influenced by Shakespeare's _King Lear_, probably via Yankev Gordin's _Der yidisher kenig lir_, but there is no dashing between castles on a stormy night. The entire action takes place in "eyn parler sheyn oyfgefikst" ('a nicely furnished apartment').(4) Kramer's play can well be called a comedy. The father has only been testing his children. In a swift reversal he reveals he has not lost his fortune, which he awards to the faithful son Khom. In Kremer's _Di amerikaner kinder_, children who have received a father's bounty when he was able to give are placed in a position to return the father's kindness. Izidor (who used to be Yisrolik) and Line (who used to be Leyele) mimic the infamous Goneril and Regan in refusing their father asylum. The poor son Khom sells _pinenes_ from a pushcart. Many Yiddish-speakers of the day surely pronounced the word _bananas_ in this way; Khom's use of it here seems aimed at undercutting the pretentious siblings. Khom is not mentioned as having received monetary help from the father; he is self-reliant, dignified and is temperamentally as well as socially at odds with his sister's world. He regards his lawyer brother-in-law as fraudulent. He voices a vigorous American patriotism -- America offers opportunity to all. We have delved into the play and of course the play is the thing, but what about the playwright? How many of us have ever heard of Louis Kramer? [Yiddish: Luis Kremer] In the course of reading the manuscript one gets the impression the author is a plebeian, a self-taught proletarian who invariably misspells words of Hebrew-Aramaic origin -- one who writes "Noyekh mit zibn grayzn." But he not only seems to have had a limited kheyder education -- in reality Kramer studied in a yeshiva and had wealthy parents -- he also gives signs of suffering from dyslexia, for he often transposes the letters of words. He writes _sroykhes_ for _skhoyres_, _khoyver makhn_ for _khorev makhn_. In addition to his disturbed spellings, many more are naive and point to his pronunciation. He writes _ot_ for _hot_, sometimes with a _hey_ between _komets alef_ and _tes_. and generally drops initial aspirates. He has obviously been in America long enough to learn words like _klin_ 'clean' _feyker_ 'faker', _blufer_ 'bluffer', _oyfgefikst_ 'fixed up' -- an American neologism. But he can distinguish _vinde_ from _fenster_ when he so wishes. There is no substitute for looking at the actual handwriting. Again I remind readers that a ms. of this play -- which was never published, as far as I can tell -- may be viewed online at the Library of Congress Yiddish play collections.(5) But who was the author? There are not many places students of Yiddish theater can look for biographic information.(6) Fortunately there is Zalmen Zilbertsvayg's six-volume _Leksikon fun yidishn teater_, an unindexed wild growth of a work but indispensable. [An important chore for Yiddish theater researchers: A Subject and Name Index to the _Leksikon fun yidishn teater_). According to Zilbertsvayg, Luis Kremer [Louis Kramer] (1876-1964) was born in Grodno, Belarus and therefore was a native speaker of Litvish [the "Lithuanian " dialect]. However, he arrived in New York with his family in 1888 at age twelve, and was thus subject to the influence of a variety of Yiddish dialects (in addition to English dialects). He was active in the Jewish labor movement until 1902 and then became a professional Yiddish actor and theater director. Numerous of his plays were staged but not a single one is listed by Lahad as having been published.(7) One of his plays was entitled _Di gedemedzhed familye_ ['The Damaged Family'], which could well have been the title of _Di amerikaner kinder_ or of several of his other apparently melodramatic plays. His Yiddish is sprinkled with Americanisms and there is evidence that he was in close touch with the English language stage. His comedy _Shnayders shpiln teater_ is said to have been very popular, evidence that he could write humorously as well as pathetically for the stage. A ms. play can tell us much but we need outside information and contextual elaboration before even a simple primitive melodrama yields all its secrets. I can only speculate about the author's (or amenuensis's) dyslexia and wonder how one who studied at a Yeshiva can write _taynes_ tes hey nun tof! Kremer was born into a rich family yet was a garment worker in New York and a leader and popular speaker in the Jewish labor movement. He moved from labor politics to the Yiddish theater, from commedia dell' arte vaudeville appearances in beer halls (improvised dialogue in set scenarios) to legitimate theater, and back back again to vaudeville. A popular performing star he was also a profuse composer of stage plays. He moved from the Yiddish to the English-language stage and back to the Yiddish stage. The most striking movement in his life was from fame to obscurity.(8) Why should we prevent once-famous but presently forgotten figures from being totally forgotten, especially when they were practitioners of a plebeian vaudeville art that is intrinsically ephemeral? I picked the Kremer play by chance but it may prove a litmus paper for the airing of larger questions that must engage students of the Yiddish theater and of the recent Jewish past generally. ----------------- Endnotes 1. _Di amerikaner kinder_ fun Luis Kremer [Louis Kramer]. Lebensbild [=Lebnsbild]. Haltung: Nyu york. Tsayt: Gegenvart (< NHG _Gegenwart_). Perzonen: R' Avrom Halperin; D"r Izidor, Line [Lina], Khom = zayne kinder. Eyn parler sheyn oyfgefikst. 2 American children : comedy in one act / [Amerikaner kinder : komedye in eyn akt] This is one of the seventy digitalized plays, part of the Marwick Collection. "The Lawrence Marwick Collection of Copyrighted Yiddish Plays in the Library of Congress consists of more than one thousand original Yiddish plays--in manuscript or typescript--written between the end of the nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century and submitted for copyright registration to the Library of Congress." [from the on-line description] The digitalized plays "may be examined in the American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment, 1870-1920 collection of American Memory in the section Yiddish Playscripts." [from the online description]. 3. The low status of pedler is lowered further by the pejorative suffix -uk. 4. The Gordin play was more popular and better known among Yiddish-language audiences than Shakespeare's. In contradistinction to its frequent melodramatic exploitation, Shakespare's _King Lear_ in Yiddish has achieved the greatest artistic realization of any Shakespeare play -- with the great Shloyme Mikhoels in the title role and Zuskin as the Fool (in the Moscaw Art Theatre's famous 1935 production). 5. On a preliminary page of the ms. appears the stamped date "April 20 1920" which is apparently the date the ms. was received by the Library of Congress. Internal evidence dates the play around 1918 and we can therefore fix its composition between 1918-1920. Next to the date is a stamped number "OLD 54342" which apparently was the classification number first given to the acquisition; it also appears on the first page of the ms. On the next-to-the-last page of the ms. appears the following stamped address: "Julius Blumberg / Stationer / Power Printer / ??? [illegible number] Grand St., NY." If the ms. is not in Kremer's handwriting, perhaps the amanuensis was someone associated with Blumberg. The latter seems to have had some function in transferring the ms. to the Library of congress, in compliance with the copyright law. Technical questions such as these can be resolved by studying the LC play collection. 6. The entry in the _Leksikon fun der nayer literatur_ (vol. 8, cols. 271-2), appears to be based wholly on Zilbertsvayg, vol. 6, which it cites. 7. The Zilbertsvayg entry (_Leksikon fun yidishn teater_, vol. 6, col. 4957) mentions publication of Kremer's "sharzh" ['caricature' < Fr. _charge_] _Khatskl der meylekh fun mitsrayim a moderne yidishe operete in dray aktn_ in the Argentinian _Penimer un penimlekh_ 48 (1925). 8. "Yidishe shrayber in amerike," _Ikuf-almanakh 1961_. New York: Ikuf farlag, 1961, pp. 551-562, does not include Luis Kremer, who was alive and in New York when the list was made. As early as 1939, the veteran _Morgn-zhurnal_ theater critic Yankev Kirshenboym wrote an article in his paper entitled "Luis kremer velkher hot gekenigt in vodevil, iz itst 'a fargesener'" ('Louis Kramer, who was a king of vaudeville, has been forgotten') [cited in Zilbertsvayg, vol.6. col. 4958]. 4)-------------------------------- Date: 31 August 2002 From: Joel Berkowitz Subject: Coming Issues of the _YTF_ Coming Issues of the _Yiddish Theater Forum_ by Joel Berkowitz It is up to the readers of the _YTF_ to help determine its content. Certainly it can be a medium for sharing questions and answers in much the way that Mendele and comparable user groups work. I also invite contributors to submit noteworthy texts and commentaries, or reflections on a text or a theatrical phenomenon, as Leonard Prager has done in the current issue. His article illustrates that the close examination of even a piece of light entertainment raises numerous methodological questions that historians of the Yiddish theatre grapple with on a regular basis. I encourage you to submit responses to, or ruminations upon, the questions he raises. More broadly, I would like to devote the second issue to our collective brainstorming: how can we best make use of the _Yiddish Theatre Forum_? I plan to share some preliminary thoughts on the matter; please feel free to join me. In the meantime, I wish you all a healthy and prosperous New Year. ___________________________________________________________________ End of _The Mendele Review_ 06.008 / _Yiddish Theater Forum_ 01.001 Leonard Prager, editor Joel Berkowitz, editor _Yiddish Theater Forum_ Honorary Board Raphael Goldwasser, Shifra Lerer, Bernard Mendelovich, Joseph Schein Advisory Council Dror Abend-David, Jean Baumgarten, Helen Beer, Paola Bertolone, Mendy Cahan, Jeremy Dauber, Jerold Frakes, Ben Furnish, Itsik Gottesman, Avraham Greenbaum, Nina Hein, Barbara Henry, Dov-Ber Kerler, John Klier, David Mazower, Laura Mincer, Edna Nahshon, Yitskhok Niborski, Leonard Prager, Alyssa Quint, Ron Robboy, Nahma Sandrow, Vassili Schedrin, Joseph Schein, Jutta Strauss, Jeffrey Veidlinger, Nina Warnke, Seth Wolitz, Moshe Yassur Subscribers to _Mendele_ (see below) automatically receive _The Mendele Review_ and all of the latter's joint issues with _Yiddish Theater Forum_. 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