23  December 5th, 1946

This article is not available from the National Library of Israel. The article was obtained from the New York Public Library’s microfiche archives.

Simonoff’s constant “no” in the Hebrew Actors' Union. - Ivan Abramson and the comedian Berl Bernstein. - Why people called him "Berele hop".

The strike that the Hebrew Actors' Union waged in New York’s People’s Theater led to a complete revolution in our little theater world. The union won the strike, and from then on the actors stopped playing for “stamps” and started receiving weekly salaries.

When we heard in Chicago that the strikers at the People’s Theater in New York had won, we were very happy about it. And after we finished the season in Chicago, I left for New York. I was sure that the union would accept me very soon, because they knew how I turned down the People’s Theater offer to play during the strike.

That I behaved like a good union man even before I was accepted into the union should be, in my opinion, enough for them to see me as one of them, as someone who deserves to be a union member - not to mention the fact that I already had made a name as a good comedian, and people had already heard a lot about me in the Jewish circles in New York.

At that time, I wanted very much to be admitted to the union and to be able to settle in New York with my family, because I was tired, so very tired, of schlepping around the cities and towns where you never knew what would happen to you or where you would end up next. I was sick of wandering around, and I wanted to have a permanent home.

But they still didn’t want to admit me to the Hebrew Actors' Union. They locked their doors to me, and I remember how at that time I heard that the actor Simonoff waged a campaign - for every candidate who came to try out for the union, the vote should be - “No.”

People in the theater circles joked a lot about Simonoff’s constant “No” vote for new candidates. Jokes that really made you laugh out loud. But I did not find it funny, and I left New York with a deep sorrow in my heart and settled again in Philadelphia, as I always used to do when I was eagerly on the lookout for my next steps and racking my brain about what I should do.

From the experiences I had already had, I knew that I would not fail; I’d find something somewhere to earn my piece of bread. And so it was.

Before the summer ended1, a Jew with a big name in the Yiddish theater world came to Philadelphia, and soon it became known that he was putting together a troupe, a Yiddish troupe, who would play the whole season in Columbia Theatre2.

That Jew was named Ivan Abramson. He was the husband of the Yiddish actress Lisa Einhorn, who played the first Shulamith on the Yiddish stage in 1880. Ivan Abramson came from Russia, and it was said that he came to America when he was still a young man of 16 or 17 years old, and he was one of Gordin’s first followers. He loved Yiddish theater, and he had literary pretensions and had once published a humorous weekly in New York called Der Yidisher Pok3.

In general, Ivan was one of those people who threw money around. Whenever he took on something new, he enthusiastically talked it up as something grand, very grand. When he began to assemble the troupe in Philadelphia, he also talked about it like this - that it could really mean that soon Philadelphia could surpass New York. When he engaged me to play with him at the Columbia Theater, I was very pleased and I did not complain about the wages; It turned out that my wife and I, together, would both receive $25 a week.

The troupe consisted of actors who were already known. I remember that these actors played in the troupe: Joe Kessler, Elias Rothstein, Samuel Shneyer, Madame Rae Shneyer and many others. But the leading actor was Berl Bernstein, who was known as a very good comedian, and audiences loved him very much.

It was not easy to get along with the comedian Bernstein in a troupe because he was a very jealous man. If he ever saw that another actor was a big hit with audiences in a role, he couldn’t rest and he ate himself alive over it.

That’s the kind of person Bernstein was, and he couldn’t be different even if he wanted to. It could not have been pleasant for him, because it took a real toll on his health, but he couldn’t help his own nature. And in the theater circles, people called him "Berele hop".

He was given this nickname because, in every role he played, he would frolic and skip around, and it was impossible to get him to stop4. In general, he was one of those actors who usually played “solo” and was so engrossed in his own role, and it didn’t matter to him that he often took it so far, that it didn’t even make sense with with plot of the piece…

I had to put up with a lot from Bernstein in Abramson’s Philadelphia troupe, because as soon as I was selected for a role, he couldn’t stand it and he treated me with scorn….

The first time I swallowed everything, but after that it started to irritate me, and I looked for ways to show him that I would not be intimidated.

One time, when we put on Lateiner’s piece Blimele, I was asked to play the role of Zeligl, a role in which Mogulesko himself really excelled. And as always, when I only had to play a role in which Mogulesko himself excelled, I worked really hard to prepare, and this time was no exception. I studied the role of Zeligl, and above all I studied the couplet which Zeligl sand as a duet with Zirele:

Lyrics.

I was very familiar with all of the little charming idiosyncrasies and gestures that Mogulesko did during the song, because I had seen him many times in the role of Zeligl. I tried to imitate him as much as I could, and I was very eager to see how it would go for me on stage.

I was really looking forward to the moment when I would appear on stage in the role of Zeligl the poet in Lateiner’s play Blimele, which was so popular with the audiences. But suddenly when the play was announced, my name was left out.

This really angered me, and I complained to the director Ivan Abramson:

– What is this, not announcing me in the role of Zeligl? What, are you ashamed of me?

Just then, when I went to Abramson, Berl Bernstein was also sitting there and he said something to me like - I shouldn’t be upset about it because I should be pleased that I got to play on the same stage with such an actor as Berl Bernstein…

His behavior toward me offended me, and I spoke up for myself:

– What was that, "Berele hop"? I will not stand for this!

And I told him angrily that he would also not be able to perform in Blimele either, because since I was not announced, I wouldn’t play the role of Zeligl at all, so the play wouldn’t be able to go on either.

When Bernstein heard this, he immediately softened and started to persuade me that this omission was nothing more than an oversight. Abramson also persuaded me that no one was trying to offend me. And I forgave them and ended up I playing the role, and I was a big hit on the stage.

But my heart still told me that this was not an oversight, but that they were actually trying to suppress me. And afterwards I found out that I was indeed correct, as I will explain later. And I can assure you that it will be interesting, because it is related to the theater politics of those times.

  1. the summer of 1900↩︎

  2. Located at 3rd and Green, in the Northern Liberties neighborhood↩︎

  3. This was a satirical paper published in New York from 1894-1986. According to this book chapter, “Der Yidisher Pok (its editors rendered it as the Hebrew Puck) was a vaguely socialistic, humorous monthly, and eventually weekly, which contained cartoon images mainly stolen from the popular American and German-language satirical press and re-captioned in Yiddish.”↩︎

  4. In other words, he dominated and took over the whole stage. Boaz Young also describes this nickname in his memoirs; He was called "Berele hop" because of how “he would jump and skip around and act like a buffoon.”↩︎