Yiddish Theater

Yiddish theater was written and performed in the Yiddish language spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. Ashkenazi Jews are an ethnic group of Jewish people who settled in Germany in the early Middle Ages. Because the main centers of Jewish learning developed in Germany, many Jews in western and central Europe came to be called Ashkenazi after they adopted many of the same cultural and linguistic features, notably the use of Yiddish. The original Ashkenazi also migrated, forming communities throughout central and eastern Europe and Russia. Most of the Jewish immigrants to the United States were Ashkenazi or Sephardim, the Jewish community of Spain that later spread into France.

Yiddish developed among the Ashkenazi. Much as English is a Germanic language, with heavy Romance influences, Yiddish is a fusion of the Aramaic that the first Ashkenazi likely spoke, the Hebrew they learned for religious services, and the German dialects of the surrounding community. Slavic and Romance elements were incorporated as Ashkenazi migrated. Yiddish is written using the Hebrew alphabet. Today, Yiddish is the native language of about 1.8 million people, with at least another 10 million fluent in Yiddish as a second language. It was the primary language of the Ashkenazi Jews for centuries and is the primary language in most Hasidic communities; the use of Yiddish in Israel, where Hebrew and Arabic are the national languages, is subject to ongoing debate. The Holocaust not only destroyed the lives of many Yiddish speakers but also disrupted Yiddish-speaking culture.

Yiddish literary culture flourished in the 19th century, in parallel with the rise of modern Hebrew, after a brief decline during the Enlightenment. The popular stories of Sholem Aleichem about Tevye the Dairyman were later translated into English and were adapted into the Broadway musical (and film) Fiddler on the Roof. Yiddish film developed in the early 20th century, and the language was the official language of the Ukrainian People's Republic, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, and Belarus.

Early Yiddish Theater

Yiddish theater encompasses many genres, including musical comedies, naturalist dramas, [Page 2215]modernist drama, operettas, nostalgic revues, and satires. Religious plays were published in Yiddish in the early 18th century, and Yiddish theater as an art form hit its stride in the 19th and 20th centuries. The professional Yiddish theater began in 1876, and it quickly became widespread throughout the Ashkenazi diaspora, including eastern Europe and the United States, where many Ashkenazi Jews had immigrated. There were both permanent Yiddish theaters and traveling theater troupes, but the troupes were primarily responsible for the spread of the theater. Like the Italian traveling theater troupes, many Yiddish performances were based around standard types, like the villain and villainess, the comic, the prima donna, the lover, and a few distinctive roles called for by the plot, like a soldier or tailor. Troupes were originally all-male, but not for long.

A poster introducing the show King Solomon at the Thalia Theater, which was playing in New York in 1897. Yiddish theater grew quickly after the first troupes were formed as the result of a strong Jewish literary intellectual culture.

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