Preservation of Yiddish Culture

Preservation of Yiddish Culture and Heritage

Сохранение культуры идиша

אָפּהיטן אונדזער ייִדישע קולטור־ירושה

לשמור על תרבות היידיש

Yiddish Golem in Paris

Yiddish Golem in Paris

Yiddish Golem in Paris

On March 4, 2025, the Parisian Théâtre national de la Colline premiered a new staged version of Isaac Bashevis’ short story The Golem. Over one third of the play, written and directed by Amos Gitaï and performed by a small troupe of seven actors, is in Yiddish with French and English subtitles. The performance is accompanied by both instrumental music and modern arrangements of traditional Yiddish songs sung by professional opera singers.

Amos Gitaï is a well known Israeli filmmaker, playwright and artist who lives part-time in Paris. He grew up in a Yiddish-speaking family. None of the actors had any knowledge of the language; they all studied Yiddish specifically for this performance under the guidance of the Paris-based Yiddishist Shahar Feinberg, himself an actor and the director of the Parisian Yiddish theater Troïm-Teater.

Manger’s Book of Paradise in New St. Petersburg Theater

Manger’s Book of Paradise in New St. Petersburg Theater

Manger’s Book of Paradise in New St. Petersburg Theater

A new Russian-language Jewish theater was founded in February 2025 in Saint Petersburg. Directed by Leonid Kolton under the umbrella of the charity organization Chesed Abraham and located at the Jewish cultural center Yesod, this new stage was named the Raznochinnaya Theater (named after the street where it is located, as typical for many other Russian theaters). On February 25 it performed The Book of Paradise premiered over a year ago by the collective Post-Traumatic Theater. The musical play is based on Itzik Manger’s Yiddish classic.

Sonia Dymshits

The collective’s director Sonia Dymshits shared with us photos of the new performance and told us that while her troupe is meant to be “vagabond, traveling from space to space”, it is resident to the Raznochinnaya Theater. The Book of Paradise is scheduled to be performed again on the same stage on March 19. Manger’s classic has been translated from Yiddish into Russian by Sonia Dymshits’s father, the renowned Yiddish researcher Valery Dymshits, and published in 2008. Written in 1939 and merging elements of Biblical apocrypha, 18th century philosophical satire and pre-WWII Polish cabaret, this book is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of Yiddish literature.

Currently (as of February 27, 2025), the Raznochinnaya Theater’s repertoire features 11 very diverse performances. Like the Moscow theater Shalom, they are geared toward general audience and are not limited to Jewish themes.

Photo credit: Post-Traumatic Theater

Theater of Sholem Asch

Theater of Sholem Asch

Land of My Soul:

The Theater of Sholem Asch

On September 19, 2024, the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York hosted the one-person performance Land of My Soul: The Theater of Sholem Asch by the actress, translator. theater director, writer and Yiddish activist Caraid O’Brien who performed some excerpts from the most successful and controversial dramas by Sholem Asch, including the monologues from his plays God of Vengeance, Motke Thief and The Dead Man translated by O’Brien for the first time into English.

The performance was followed by a talkback with Asch’s great-grandson David Mazower and Lisa Newman, the heads of the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst. The event was also streamed live online. Caraid O’Brien, born in Ireland, is based in New York and is best known for her work with material originally written in Yiddish.

From GOSET to Shalom

From GOSET to Shalom

From GOSET to Shalom

On September 14, 2024, the Moscow Shalom Theater began its current season by opening the new exhibition From GOSET to Shalom, dedicated to the contribution of Jewish and Yiddish culture to the development of performing arts in general and to the history of the Soviet state Jewish theater.

The Shalom Theater considers itself a direct heir and successor of the famous GOSET, the Moscow State Jewish Theater directed by Solomon Mikhoels, whose history dates back to 1917, when the Pale of Settlement was abolished, and to 1919, when the first Soviet Jewish theater was established in Petrograd by the Theater Department of the People’s Commissariat of Education.

GOSET was closed in 1949. After a long break, in the fall of 1962, the Moscow Jewish Drama Ensemble (MEDA) was created by the cultural organizarion Mosconcert and Veniamin (Binyomin) Schwarzer became its artistic director. Some of the GOSET artists joined the ensemble. In 1986, MEDA was transformed into the Moscow Jewish Drama Theater Studio, and in 1988 it was given its current name Shalom.

The curators of the exhibition, historian and journalist Evgenia Gershkovich, artist and designer Natalya Shendrik, historian Irina Pekarskaya focus on the bright personalities of the Jewish theater’s directors through the entire period from the original GOSET to Shalom. The directors’ portrait gallery was created by the graphic artist Vladimir Tyan. Tribute is also paid to the actors who dedicated their lives to the Jewish theater. One can see their faces and names in the photographs and videos of Oleg Lipovetsky’s concert performance Shalom 48-23.

In addition, the exhibition presents rare archival materials related to the history of GOSET, including scenery models, posters, Solomon Mikhoels’ desk and armchair, and a full-size copy of Marc Chagall’s panel from the cycle Introduction to the Jewish Theater.

The exhibition’s partners are the Tretyakov Gallery, the Moscow Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center, the Bakhrushin Theatre Museum and the The Comité Marc Chagall (France).

 © Photo credit: 2024 Polina Kukushkina. All rights reserved.

Memories of Mazltov Theater in Kiev

Memories of Mazltov Theater in Kiev

Memories of Mazltov Theater in Kiev

The Kiev publishing house Duh i Litera (“Spirit and Letter”) published a book in Ukrainian titled “Georgy Melsky’s Kievan Jewish theater Mazltov in the memoirs of its participants.” The book’s editor, Svetlana Simakova, compiled the memories of people who participated in this professional stage collective. This theater performed in Ukraine’s capital in Yiddish from 1988 to 1995. Its first production was Sholem Aleichem’s play The Bloody Hoax known in its stage version as It’s Hard to be a Jew. The book is illustrated with photographs of actors, stage scenes and posters.

Book on Vilnius Jewish Folk Theater

Book on Vilnius Jewish Folk Theater

Book on Vilnius Jewish Folk Theater

On September 8, 2023, a presentation of Betzalel Frank’s newly published Russian language book “Vilnius Jewish Folk Theater. Pages of History” took place at the building of the Lithuanian Jewish Community in Vilnius.

In the late 1940s, during Stalin’s anti-Semitic campaign, virtually all public Jewish cultural events in the USSR were banned. This ban was lifted in 1956; Jewish amateur actors and singers then immediately reappeared in Vilnius, performing in Yiddish. The Vilnius Jewish Folk Theater, created in 1971, remained active until 1999. It ceased to exist due to the mass emigration of most Lithuanian Jews to Israel.

Betzalel (Tzalik) Frank is a former actor of the Vilnius Jewish Folk Theater who now lives in Israel. For many years he has been collecting materials related to this theater, which for almost three decades preserved not only the tradition of Jewish stage art in Lithuania, but also helped to preserve the Yiddish language itself. As a result of his labors, Frank presented in Vilnius his new richly illustrated book of memoirs.