It is not memoirs that I am writing. I just wish to restore that lively atmosphere on “the planet which is called Mikhoels.”
These are the words Solomon Mikhoels’ wife, Anastasia Pototskaya-Mikhoels, who probably left the most reliable memories of her husband, fragments of which we are planning to publish here in English.
It was the year 1987. After almost ten years of being denied exit visas, Moscow Jews started to emigrate to Israel and America.
My closest friend Mikhail Feinberg, who had received then the permission to leave Russia, called me and asked me to meet him together with his “accomplice” Valentin Pulver, also a refusenik who was going to leave the USSR.
We called Valentin an “accomplice” due to the fact that both he and Mikhail, a highly talented mathematician who would in the future become the creator of unique IT products for telecommunications and cancer treatment methods, during those visa refusal years were repairing people’s cars on the side in order to earn a living. I was also already seriously considering leaving the country, having offered to run a music-oriented publishing company in New Jersey. It turned out that this was precisely what their visit was about.
Mark Zilberquit
Nowadays only a few people, primarily historians of theater, are familiar with the name of Alexander Deytch. Yet, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was a very famous and authoritative Jewish theater critic.
His Russian book “Маски еврейского театра” (“Masks of Jewish Theater), available here to download, is written not in a scientific, but rather in a fictional way. It describes the beginnings of the Jewish professional theatrical performances — virtually all in Yiddish — from their inception till their first great successes and establishment as a worldwide cultural phenomenon of the early 20th century.
Like a talented painter, the writer portrays such important Yiddish figures as “the grandfather of the Jewish theater” Avrom Goldfaden, the classic writer and playwright Yitskhok-Leybush Peretz, the Moscow GOSET’s founder Alexis Granowsky (also one of the founders of the Russian Jewish theater in general), the composer Alexander Krein and even the painter Robert Falk, who would only become famous as a great artist decades after Deytch’s book was published.
The Jewish theater mainly arose and developed within the vernacular Ashkenazi tradition with its colloquial language — Yiddish. Its origins can be traced to the 15th and 16th centuries, when the profession of badchens, jesters who entertained guests at weddings and other family celebrations, endowed with artistic (usually comical) abilities, was formed. In the German-speaking countries, these entertainers who mastered the skill of poetic improvisation found admirers not only among Jews, but were also popular among the general population.
After the nearly complete disappearance of Yiddish in Central and Western Europe by the end of the 18th century, the badchen art continued to develop in the Jewish communities of Poland, Romania and the Russian Empire. In these regions, such folk actors also often served as court jesters of the Hasidic tzaddikim, the most famous example being Hershele Ostropoler. Many badchens were also gifted musicians who performed with klezmers and composed music for their own poems.
Sender Badkhan (Eliyohu-Alexander Fidelman, 1825–1892), Sonie Badkhan (Isroel Zadrunsky, 1850–1928) and Elyokem Tsunzer (1835–1913) were among the most famous poets and composers of this type who lived in the 19th and 20th century. Already during their lifetime, their songs became known as masterpieces of Yiddish folklore. This profession played an important role in the traditional Jewish communities of Romania and Poland until WWII.
Abraham Goldfaden’s play The Two Kuni-Lemls
The Purimshpil tradition, performances associated primarily with the holiday of Purim and with the plot of the Book of Esther, occupy a special place in the history of Jewish theater. Similar plays based on other Biblical stories were also performed during other Jewish holidays, such as Hanukkah.
The earliest known samples of Purimshpil plays, written at the end of the 17th century, were presumably produced within religiously educated yeshiva circles. Soon after its appearance, it took root in various oral forms and became an important trait of the Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish folkloric tradition and popular culture.
Hillel Kazovsky