9  October 17th, 1946


  1. These are two separate taglines. These were not her last words to him.↩︎

  2. System of payment in which each actor in the company received an agreed percentage of any profits according to their “stamp.”↩︎

  3. my translation; Sam uses “poor, miserable”↩︎

  4. Phrase in Yiddish meaning to be dirt poor and starving. So, he was not making a living.↩︎

  5. Read his Lekiskon entry here.↩︎

  6. the “holy tongue”; refers to Hebrew↩︎

  7. “Sailor in Peril.” Based on Bessie Thomashefsky’s memoirs, this would have been during the first few days of Pesach; So, likely either late March 1888 or late April 1889.↩︎

  8. Located at the northeast corner of 5th and Gaskill, right above South Street.↩︎

  9. He would soon become a major figure in Yiddish theater in America; at this time, he was young and recently married to Bessie. It’s also worth noting that Boris & his troupe were already in Philadelphia in competition with Gartenstein, and moreover we know from Bessie’s memoir that in fact they approached Sam, and not vice versa, to invite him into their troupe. It was not too difficult to convince him, in part, because Sam and Bessie are cousins.↩︎

  10. Rabbi’s assistant, essentially; this would be an extremely religious character.↩︎

  11. According to Bessie’s memoirs, Sam played in their troupe during the summer of 1889.↩︎

  12. This is essentially part of the Alliance Colony, a Jewish agricultural colony in Cumberland County founded by Russian Jews who fled pogroms in 1881-2↩︎

  13. She uses an idiom here that I can’t find the right words for; she says “What can you to do help yourself…”↩︎