19  November 21st, 1946

Link to Forverts edition

Our troupe puts on Gordin’s plays in Cincinnati and wins the trust of the Jewish theater world. - How Clara Rafalo became an actress.

No one in Cincinnati wanted to help us take the first step to play Yiddish theater and earn a little money. It was as if all the voyle yidn in the city had suddenly all agreed to “blow cold,” because they had just been burned. And this really irritated us since we wanted to show that we were good people. On top of that, we had to do something about our situation because we didn’t have much to live on.

With the few pennies we still had, we went to look for a suitable hall where we could play at least one show. The hall we found requested merely 15 dollars for the evening.

– We have to play here - Jakele Cone said. - Come thunder and lightning, we will give a performance here. And we’ll put on Jacob Gordin’s Der Yidishe Galekh, a powerful melodrama that we will blow the audiences away with…

But where could we get a little money for the necessary expenses?

– Here’s a thought! - I said. - Let’s sell our wristwatches…

– And we’ll also need to sell our coats. - Frank replied.

This made us laugh because he, "der royter"¹ as we called Frank, wore such a shabby coat that no one would have given him even three bucks for it…

Then we sold the watches and some of our other valuables, which gave us the chance to take matters into our own hands. After we put a down payment on the hall and printed tickets, we went back to Mr. Himmelfarb with a request - indeed, the same request that we had had for him before:

– Do us a toive, Mr. Himmelfarb, and sell tickets to our show; We already have a hall to play in and a piece to perform. You will see soon enough…

This time Mr. Himmelfarb did not drive us out. He listened to us calmly and peacefully, and then he said:

– Nu, meyle², I will take tickets from you to sell, but I will not hand over the money I collect from selling the tickets right away; You’ll get it only after you perform the play…

Apparently, he was still afraid that we would take the money and run off. And we couldn’t blame him. We told him that we didn’t think it should be any other way - we indeed get the money only after we put on the performance.

Just then, there was another Jew in the store, and when he heard us doing business, he said that he too would take tickets to sell; And just like Mr. Himmelfarb, he too will only give us the money after first the performance, not before.

That Jew, by the way, was more sympathetic to us from the beginning than was Mr. Himmelfarb, who was obviously always afraid that we were going to make a fool of him. He brought in his daughter to join us, a young lady³ who had a strong desire to play theater. And as we were looking to bring in a young lady for a role in Jacob Gordin’s play Der Yidishe Galekh, we gave her the opportunity to play. Afterwards, she remained an actress and made a name for herself on the Yiddish stage in the provinces, and later also in New York. She was the actress Clara Rafalo.

At the time, we didn’t have anything to eat besides bread and herring, and all the energy we had, we exerted to show the Jews in Cincinnati that actors aren’t “runners” or lawless delinquents, and we don’t just grab any money and run off with it…

It was simply our mission in life to show them this. It was as though it fell upon the three of us - Frank, Jakele Cone, and me - to rescue the honor of the Yiddish theater profession in the eyes of the Cincinnati Jews…

The three of us decided to perform as though the audience was full of of the greatest theater connoisseurs. And we therefore worked diligently during our rehearsals. And all-in-all, it was very difficult, because the troupe we had quickly assembled consisted of beginners, as it usually went when performing in the provinces. Frank, Jakele Cone, and I took it upon ourselves to play two roles each, and we generally divided up tasks and roles so that everything would be taken care of.

In no other city did we prepare for a performance the way we prepared for that performance in Cincinnati. But then just my chance, in the early morning hours of the day of the performance, it began to snow - a snow that really chilled you to the bone. When they opened the box office that evening, our eyes grew darker and darker because the number of the Jews who came to the box office to buy tickets was so small that only God could take pity on us…

All in all, we brought in no more than twenty dollars at the register, and we immediately had to return the wardrobe of the clothes we had borrowed for the play Der Yidishe Galekh. After all, you can’t perform without it.⁴

All three of us then felt miserable in our hearts, very miserable. Every time we came into the theater, which could seat up to 500 people, we saw how people sat here and there amid an emptiness that really stung the eyes. We felt a kind of pain that cannot be expressed in words…

And just then we also saw that the two Jews who had taken tickets to sell for us - Mr. Himmelfarb and the father of Clara Rafalo - were standing by a door and whispering to one another, the whole time looking at us without looking away…

Apparently, they thought that by now we would run off - that we would take the little money that was brought in at the cash register and we would disappear, just like those “runners” who had brought shame on our people⁵.

You could tell that’s what they were thinking from what Mr. Himmelfarb told us very openly:

– I sold around $70 worth of tickets - he told us, - and he too - he pointed to the father of Clara Rafalo - sold around $30 worth of tickets. All in all, we have about $100 for you. But I am, you understand me, a Jew of my word, and as I have already told you, I will not put any money in your hand until I am really sure that you will actually perform, and I will only be sure of this when I see you on stage…

He certainly meant no harm, Mr. Himmelfarb, who loved Yiddish theater very much; But he couldn’t forget that he had already paid dearly for putting his trust in the traveling Yiddish actors who played in the provinces. I remember how Frank, the comedian, suddenly became very serious - so serious that the whole expression on his face suddenly changed. And after the two Jews left, he said to us:

– Listen, children: Even if the world turns upside down, today we play theater, and indeed in such a way that they will never forget!…

As bad as the weather was outside, a crowd gradually arrived. Those who had already bought tickets from the two Jews showed up. And when we saw that there was already a crowd in the theater and that we couldn’t wait any longer, because nobody else was showing up anyways, we got dressed for the roles, and that’s it. We were so shaken and rattled that we hardly spoke to each other. And more on edge than all of us was Jakele Cone; He was pensive, serious, sullen - he was completely absorbed in himself. And when he finished dressing for the first role he had in the play, he came up to me and Frank and said:

– Listen, khevreh, if he, Mr. Himmelfarb, wants to give us the money for the tickets after the first act - don’t take it!… We have time until after the performance. But remember what I’m telling you and follow me - don’t take it!… But really, not even a penny, before the performance is over…

And Jakele Cone didn’t forget to mention one more thing:

– If he, Mr. Himmelfarb, tries to talk to us behind the scenes between the acts, tell him we are very busy and we have no time to talk to him…

And so it actually was. When Mr. Himmelfarb wanted to give us the money after the first act, we would not take it. We told him that an agreement is an agreement, a word is a word, and that we therefore do not want to take the money before the performance is over. And when he tried to say something to us, we nearly pushed him away:

– Leave us alone, we are busy now and we don’t have time to talk to you…

And the Jew shrugged⁶ his shoulders and he gaped…

He gaped not only because this, but also because of how we performed. He really liked us. And when he gave us the money after the performance, you could see that he felt like he owed us something. And a day later, he invited us to his home, and there he celebrated us in honor of the whole simkhe. And he himself, the “boss” who really loved Yiddish theater, always reminded us of what he said to us immediately after the performance:

– Now we won’t let you go that easily…

He asked us if we could play Jacob Gordin’s piece Der Yidisher Kenig Lir, and when we answered him that it was one of our favorites, he was very excited, and after we put on Der Yidisher Kenig Lir, he treated us with great deference. And when he invited us over again for a visit, he said that now he has big plans for us and we should completely rely on him.

And we relied on him, because we really saw that you could rely on such a mentsh as Mr. Himmelfarb…

And Jakele Cone was triumphant:

– Nu, khevreh, - he said, - you see now that I was right, eh?

He was very pleased about it all, because he knew right from the beginning how to deal with Mr. Himmelfarb, who wanted to drive us out at the first meeting with him. He was really pleased to not have been mistaken about it. And then, in a calm mood, he read Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” for the umpteenth time. He read it lying stretched out on the sofa, and while reading it he sometimes gave a shout:

– Oi, I’m telling you khevreh, this is a play! There aren’t a lot of plays like this in the world…

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1. “the red one”; he was a redhead

2. “so be it”

3. She would have been 14-16 years old

4. Something is wrong with this little paragraph but I can’t quite figure it out. Unclear if it’s about returning or borrowing.

5. referring to actors

6. May not be the correct verb, but I can’t translate it otherwise.