Sholem Asch, Isaac Babel, Franz Kafka, and the Yiddish Theater

VERY DIFFERENT KINDS OF YIDDISH WRITERS OF THE 20TH CENTURY Sholem Asch Sholem Asch From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Born: Szalom Asz 1 November 1880 Kutno, Poland Died: 10 July 1957 (aged 76) London, England

Asch was born Szalom Asz in Kutno, Poland, one of ten children of Moszek Asz (1825, Gąbin – 1905, Kutno), a cattle-dealer and innkeeper, and Frajda Malka, née Widawska (born 1850, Łęczyca), and received a traditional Jewish education. As a young man he followed that with a more liberal education obtained at Włocławek, where he supported himself as a letter writer for the illiterate Jewish townspeople.

From there he moved to Warsaw, where he met and married Mathilde Shapiro, the daughter of the Polish-Jewish writer, M. M. Shapiro. Influenced by the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment), initially Asch wrote in Hebrew, but I. L. Peretz convinced him to switch to Yiddish.

He attended the Czernowitz Yiddish Language Conference of 1908, which declared Yiddish to be "a national language of the Jewish people". He traveled to Palestine in 1908 and the United States in 1910. He sat out World War I in the United States where he became a naturalized citizen in 1920. He returned to Poland and later moved to France.

His great-grandson David Mazower is also a writer, as well as a BBC Journalist.[1][2] His Kiddush ha-Shem (1919) is one of the earliest historical novels in modern Yiddish literature, about the anti-Jewish and anti-Polish Chmielnicki Uprising in mid-17th century Ukraine and Poland. When his 1907 drama, God of Vengeance — which is set in a brothel and whose plot features a lesbian relationship — was performed on Broadway in 1923, the entire cast was arrested and successfully prosecuted on obscenity charges, despite the fact that the play was sufficiently highly esteemed in Europe to have already been translated into German, Russian, Polish, Hebrew, Italian, Czech and Norwegian.

His 1929–31 trilogy, Farn Mabul (Before the Flood, translated as Three Cities) describes early 20th century Jewish life in St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and Moscow. His Bayrn Opgrunt (1937, translated as The Precipice), is set in Germany during the hyperinflation of the 1920s. Dos Gezang fun Tol (The Song of the Valley) is about the halutzim (Jewish-Zionist pioneers in Palestine), and reflects his 1936 visit to that region.

He visited Palestine again in 1936, and returned to settle in the United States in 1938. However, he later offended Jewish sensibilities with his 1939–1949 trilogy, The Nazarene, The Apostle, and Mary, which dealt with New Testament subjects. The Forward, New York's leading Yiddish-language newspaper, not only dropped him as a writer, but also openly attacked him for promoting Christianity. Death and legacy Asch spent most of his last two years in Bat Yam near Tel Aviv, Israel, although he died in London.

His house in Bat Yam is now the Sholem Asch Museum. The bulk of his library, containing rare Yiddish books and manuscripts, including the manuscripts of some of his own works, is held at Yale University.

His sons were Moszek Asz Moses "Moe" Asch (12 February 1905, Warsaw – 19 October 1986, United States), the founder and head of Folkways Records, and Natan Asz/Nathan Asch (1902, Warsaw – 1964, United States), also a writer. Short stories from “The Little Town” in Tales of My People, 1948

“Reb Yechezkiel’s Place”

“The Dowry” With which other authors can you compare Sholem Asch’s style? Isaac Babel

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (Russian: Исаа́к Эммануи́лович Ба́бель; July 13, 1894 – January 27, 1940) was a Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer.

He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, “The Story of My Dovecote”, and Tales of Odessa, all of which are considered masterpieces of Russian literature. Isaac Babel was born in the Moldavanka section of Odessa to Manus and Feyga Bobel. Soon after his birth, the Babel family moved to the port city of Mykolaiv. They later returned to live in a more fashionable part of Odessa in 1906. Babel used Moldavanka as the setting for The Odessa Tales and the play Sunset.

Although Babel's short stories present his family as "destitute and muddle-headed", they were relatively well-off.[2] According to his autobiographical statements, Babel's father, Manus, was an impoverished shopkeeper. Babel's daughter, Nathalie Babel Brown, stated that her father fabricated this and other biographical details in order to "present an appropriate past for a young Soviet writer who was not a member of the Communist Party." In fact, Babel's father was a dealer in farm implements and owned a large warehouse. In his teens, Babel hoped to get into the preparatory class of the Nicolas I Odessa Commercial School. However, he first had to overcome the Jewish quota. Despite the fact that Babel received passing grades, his place was given to another boy, whose parents had bribed school officials.[citation needed] As a result, he was schooled at home by private tutors.

In addition to regular school subjects, Babel studied the Talmud and music. According to Cynthia Ozick,

"Though he was at home in Yiddish and Hebrew, and was familiar with the traditional texts and their demanding commentaries, he added to these a lifelong fascination with Maupassant and Flaubert. His first stories were composed in fluent literary French. The breadth and scope of his social compass enabled him to see through the eyes of peasants, soldiers, priests, rabbis, children, artists, actors, women of all classes. He befriended whores, cabdrivers, jockeys; he knew what it was like to be penniless, to live on the edge and off the beaten track."[3] In 1915, Babel graduated and moved to Petrograd, in defiance of laws restricting Jews to living within the Pale of Settlement.

Babel was fluent in French, besides Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish, and his earliest works were written in French. However, none of his stories in that language have survived.

In St. Petersburg, Babel met Maxim Gorky, who published some of Babel's stories in his literary magazine Letopis (Летопись, "Chronicle"). Gorky advised the aspiring writer to gain more life experience; Babel wrote in his autobiography, "... I owe everything to that meeting and still pronounce the name of Alexey Maksimovich Gorky with love and admiration." One of his most famous semi- autobiographical short stories, "The Story of My Dovecote" (История моей голубятни, Istoriya moey golubyatni), was dedicated to Gorky. There is very little information about Babel's whereabouts during and after the October Revolution. According to one of his stories, "The Road" ("Дорога", "Doroga"), he served on the Romanian front until early December 1917. He resurfaced in Petrograd in March 1918 as a reporter for Gorky's Menshevik newspaper, Novaya zhizn (Новая жизнь, "New Life"). Babel continued publishing there until Novaya zhizn was forcibly closed on Lenin's orders in July 1918.

Babel later recalled,

"My journalistic work gave me a lot, especially in the sense of material. I managed to amass an incredible number of facts, which proved to be an invaluable creative tool. I struck up friendships with morgue attendants, criminal investigators, and government clerks. Later, when I began writing fiction, I found myself always returning to these 'subjects', which were so close to me, in order to put character types, situations, and everyday life into perspective. Journalistic work is full of adventure."[4] Babel has also been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry". Loyal to, but not uncritical of, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Babel fell victim to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge as the result of his long-term affair with the wife of NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov. Babel was arrested by the NKVD at Peredelkino on the night of 15 May 1939. After confessing under interrogation to being a Trotskyist terrorist and foreign spy, he was shot on 27 January 1940. From, Early Stories: “Old Shloyme”

From Autobiographical Stories: “The Story of my Dovecot”

From Red Cavalry: “My First Goose” “The King” read by Jeff Goldblum Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was born into a middle-class, German- speaking Jewish family on July 3, 1883 in Prague His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described as a huge ill-tempered domestic tyrant, who on many occasions directed his anger towards his son and was disrespectful towards his escape into literature.

From 1889 to 1893, Franz attended the Deutsche Knabenschule, the boys elementary school in Prague. He was sent to German schools, not Czech, which demonstrates his father's desire for social advancement. His Jewish upbringing was limited mostly to his bar mitzvah and going to the synagogue four times a year with his father,

After secondary school he went on to Charles Ferdinand University, where at first he decided to study chemistry, but switched after two weeks to law. Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law on June 18, 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts. At the end of 1907 Kafka started working in a huge Italian insurance company, where he stayed for nearly a year.

He often referred to his job as insurance officer as a "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills. However, he did not show any signs of indifference towards his job, as the several promotions that he received during his career prove that he was a hardworking employee.

In 1917, Kafka began to suffer from tuberculosis, which would require frequent convalescence during which he was supported by his family, most notably his sister Ottla. In the early 1920s he developed an intense relationship with Czech journalist and writer Milena Jesenská. It is generally agreed that Kafka suffered from clinical depression and social anxiety throughout his entire life. He also suffered from migraines, insomnia, constipation, boils, and other ailments, all usually brought on by excessive stresses and strains. He attempted to counteract all of this by a regimen of naturopathic treatments, such as a vegetarian diet and the consumption of large quantities of unpasteurized milk.

Despite all that, his tuberculosis worsened; he returned to Prague, then went to Dr. Hoffmann sanatorium for treatment, where he died on June 3, 1924. His remains are buried alongside his parent's under a two-meter obelisk in Prague's New Jewish Cemetery in Olsanske. Kafka’s short story: “The Metamorphosis” Yiddish theater in Poland

The first permanent Jewish theater was founded in Lwow by J. B. Gimpl in 1888 (in existence until 1922). • In 1910, there were already approximately 360 itinerant theater groups, both professional and amateur. Most staged popular vaudevilles and comedies that were not of particularly high quality. • In 1900, A. I. Kamiński, together with his wife, E. R. Kaminska, founded an itinerant theater with an ambitious repertoire. This group helped establish Kaminska as the leading Jewish actress.

Kaminska Beginnings: • Yiddish theater in Europe started in the 1870s • Abraham Goldfaden wrote a dialogue Tsvey Shkheynes (Two Neighbors), apparently intended for the stage, and published with moderate success. • A short-lived Yiddish theater in Odessa in 1864 performed dramas Esther and Athalia. • Israel Aksenfeld (died c. 1868) wrote several dramas in Yiddish, which were probably not staged in his lifetime. • Another early Yiddish dramatist was Joel Baer Falkovich (Reb Chaimele der Koẓin, Odessa, 1866; Rochel die Singerin, Zhytomyr, 1868). Jews immigrate to America

“The Jewish Americans” PBS series

Ellis Island – entry to America Yiddish theater FROM EUROPE TO AMERICA Yiddish theater in America

The Grand Theatre in New York (1903), “providing amusement for the people of the Ghetto.“ (NY Times) The Yiddish Theater pioneers

Avrom Goldfaden

Jacob Adler Yiddish actors began to cross over to Broadway, first with Jacob Adler's tour de force performance as Shylock in a 1903 production of The Merchant of Venice, but also with performers such as Bertha Kalich, who moved back and forth between the city's leading Yiddish-language and English- language stages.

Jacob Adler as Berta Kalich Shylock THE HEYDAY OF YIDDISH THEATER

The Grand Theater • In 1926, developer Louis N. Jaffe had the Yiddish Art Theatre built for actor Maurice Schwartz, "Mr. Second Avenue". • The area was known as the "Jewish Rialto" at the time. • After four seasons it became the Yiddish Folk Theatre. • It was designated a New York City landmark in 1993. “The Golden Age of Second Avenue” • Famous plays of this second golden era were The Dybbuk (1919), by S. Ansky, considered a revolutionary play in both Yiddish and mainstream theatre. • It is now regarded as the crown jewel of the Jewish theatre. • Operas, ballets, symphonic suites and other musical compositions have been based on The Dybbuk.

Film version of "The Dybbuk" Bruce Adler

Great Songs of the Yiddish American Theater Yiddish theatre companies still perform in various Jewish communities. The Folksbiene (People's Theatre) company in New York City is still active 90 years after it was founded.

Folksbiene Director Zalmen Mlotek New Yiddish Rep, founded in New York City in 2007, has been very successful at producing Yiddish shows for a younger audience than the senior-citizen oriented Folksbiene.

“Waiting for Godot” From “Waiting for Godot” in Yiddish The Thomaschevskys

Boris Thomaschevsky “The Thomaschevskys” Next week: Yiddish on screen; contemporary Jewish writers