20 November 23rd, 1946
Link to Forverts edition
How Yiddish theater used to be performed in the provinces. – The true owners of the plays were not the writers, but the suppliers.
Mr. Himmelfarb’s plan was comprised of this - he had established a club in Cincinnati into which he brought all the voyle yidn who truly loved the Yiddish theater with all their hearts. He made them members of the club: Everyone paid a certain amount, officials were elected, and meetings were held. It was decided that we would put on what the audience - meaning, the members of the club - asked us to.
– You understand, - Mr. Himmelfarb said to us, - here in Cincinnati, we love historical plays. Nu, we want your first performance to be Bar Kokhba. Can you play Bar Kokhba?
We didn’t need to think for a long time about how to answer. Our answer was very short:
– Nu, of course we can play Bar Kokhba. What can’t we play?…
It was really touching to see how the Jewish community in Cincinnati yearned for historical operettas like Goldfaden’s. So touching that, even if we didn’t know Bar Kokhba, or all of Goldfaden’s other historical operettas that we would later perform there, we would not have had the heart to refuse to them.
And you should have seen what joy there was in Cincinnati at our first performance of Bar Kokhba!
All the Jews of Cincinnati who came to see us perform Abraham Goldfaden’s hysterical operetta carried themselves with a poise that felt closer times of Bar Kokhba than to the times in which they lived. And when it came to the song "Lament of Zion’s daughters"1, there was no need for a choir at all, because almost everyone in the theater sang with us. You only had to start the song, and soon everyone sang along:
2Zion’s daughters are all crying,
Lament, children, all together,
Over our hardship in these dark times,
Over what has befallen our land.
Our star has fallen,
And the earth is sullied;
Broken is our star, our crown
That once adorned us.
Oi, God, look upon our tears,
Our suffering and pain;
We will not cease crying
Until you come to our aid.
The audience nodded along while singing. And they nodded along even more when we reached the part of the song about the khurbn3 of Jerusalem.
Rich as a king with diamonds
Was the holy city.
Dignified on all side,
It had such glory, so full of grace.
The stars amidst the moon,
We would gaze upon it;
And today she is a widow,
And we are orphaned from her.
And then again, louder than before:
Oi, God, look upon our tears,
Our suffering and pain;
We will not cease crying
Until you come to our aid.
The audience especially loved when we got to the song "A Pastekhl"4! They didn’t necessarily sing along all together, but they all sung the song with us in their hearts, and they lapped up every word and delighted in it:
5There once was a little shepherd
In the land of Canaan -
With sheep and cattle and even a goat
All under his care! -
And just as he became rich,
He traded rye,
And lost all of his money,
It was going poorly for him!
To avoid begging for his piece of bread,
He used to knead bricks,
Build houses and stores,
Working as a slave.
And here people would sing along with this beautiful and lively tune. As everyone knew:
Oi, yes it’s beautiful,
Yes, full of charm.
To tell and listen to this tale.
Yes, so sweet, not at all terrible,
To tell it to the end!
That’s how the song went in the form of a little tale, a story told in rhyme. And as it proceeded, people listened closely to the story. People could listen to it over and over, because how could they not - it was, after all, so beautiful and full of charm! They really implored us to sing it again:
Reb Moishe6 went the wrong way
And soon he realized!
“Yankele, is that you? A slave?” -
He wrung his hands.
To have such a father -
The richest of magnates,
And [can’t translate this],
That you should knead clay! -
“Your father’s land flows with
milk - sweet honey,
And why should you not partake of it?
Oh, come home to your land!”
We had to play Bar Kokhba several times in Cincinnati, and whenever we played this Goldfaden historical operetta, a large audience came. We also often played Shulamith, as well as other historical operettas. There was no need to worry about income at the cash register, because the members of the club that Mr. Himmelfarb established worked like bees; They sold tickets, they distributed leaflets, and in general they did everything in their power to make our performances a success. And that’s how Cincinnati became a good city for Yiddish theater, and during that time, there wasn’t a single Jewish household where songs from the historical Jewish operettas were not sung.
The members of the club treated all three of us - Frank, Jakele Cone, and I - with the greatest deference, and they were ready to do anything in the world for us. Whatever we wanted, they did it. Nothing was too difficult for them to do to satisfy us. And they also did a lot for us, because we had agreed that, whatever kind of play they wanted to see, we would play it for them. Everything was, as we say in the theater dialect7 - “at the request of the highly esteemed public.”
I remember how once Mr. Himmelfarb said to us, that the public requests that we play Blimele8… They wanted to see Blimele because they had heard a lot about it, and they wanted to know if we were familiar with the play Blimele.
When we heard this, we were faced with a big dilemma because none of us has see Blimele before, and we also didn’t have a copy of the play.
But Jakele Cone knew one thing - you don’t turn down Himmelfarb. So he answered right there on the spot:
– Good! You want us to put on Blimele for you, so we will put on Blimele. Just give us a little time and everything will be alright.
In those times, actors in the provinces generally didn’t care much about such a thing as paying “royalties” to the playwrights; Nobody asked them for permission to put on their play, and nobody paid them. Many of the plays that were performed were printed in special little books that you could buy for a few cents. And those that were not re-printed but remained as manuscripts also passed from hand to hand. It wasn’t difficult to get a copy and put on the play when you wanted, where you wanted, and as many times as you wanted.
You could usually get those kinds of copies from suppliers for the New York Yiddish theaters. They used to simply rewrite each play, make several copies of it, and sell those copies to anyone who was interested in buying them. And the most skilled of them were two suppliers, who have since passed away. You could get any kind of play you wanted from you, and it didn’t cost much - for one dollar you could get a copy of a rewritten play, an old one or a new one. And if you ever paid two dollars, you were really overpaying…
That’s how it was in those days. For a dollar or two, you could buy a play and then you became its owner. Playwrights did not think about being paid “royalties.” It had not occurred to anyone that this was necessary, and that the true owner of the play was the playwright and not the supplier who had rewritten it.
This is how we got Lateiner’s piece Blimele, which was also called Graff un Yude. For one dollar, one of those two suppliers sent us a scribbled copy of the piece, and the parts of the script that we couldn’t make out, well, we wrote them ourselves. Jakele Cone tried his hand at it, and he simply wrote whatever he wanted or whatever occurred to him. We also added scenes of our own. And soon roles were assigned, rehearsals were held, and when it was ready, we performed Blimele with such a bang that everyone was very impressed.
It was such a hit, that when another troupe came to Cincinnati some time later and played Lateiner’s Blimele exactly as it was written, people turned their noses up and said:
– No, that’s not it…
We had quite the experience playing Blimele in Cincinnati.
All in all, we played in Cincinnati for six months, and during those six months things were really good. And, as it usually goes with actors, we all started to dress “in vinegar and honey”9, and we bought the best diamond rings and nice gold watches, and we were able to save a little money too. And our imaginations started running wild about how it will go later, and we really thought that we would conquer the world.
But there’s no telling where the imagination leads you, an ordinary person, especially an actor…
Sam calls this song “Zion’s daughters are all crying,” which is actually the first line of the song but not its actual title.↩︎
Translation by me, hopefully not too bad!↩︎
“destruction.” This Yiddish term specifically implies a catastrophic event in the Jewish collective memory. It is used for the destruction of the first and second Temples, as well as the Holocaust.↩︎
“A little shepherd.” Listen here on Spotify!↩︎
Again, translated by me, but this translation also exists↩︎
Moses↩︎
Literally a Yiddish dialect that grew around the theater: טעאטער–לשון↩︎
A program from a Boris Thomashefsky production of this Joseph Lateiner play in 1910↩︎
dressed to the nines↩︎