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.

Yidishland: Issue 24

The 24th issue of the quarterly magazine Yidishland, notable for its exclusively Yiddish material, was published in parallel print runs in Israel and Sweden. It features new chapters of novels by Klara-Bel and Mikhoel Felsenbaum, a short story by Velvl Chernin, several philological and historical research articles. The issue is rich in poetic works and includes poems by Felix Khaimovich, David Omar Cohen, Hillel Kazovsky, Osher Gal, Katerina Kuznetsova, Boris Karloff and Jake Schneider.

The Shvesters Tour New York

The Shvesters, a vocal duo who recently began their music career in Detroit, performed several concerts in New York. On August 22 and 25, 2024, the Museum of Jewish Heritage hosted their performances twice, accompanied by the renowned guitarist Omri Bar Giora. On September 17 the duo had a concert at the Altneu, a relatively new Modern Orthodox synagogue launched in Manhattan’s Upper East Side in 2022.

During the last couple of years, the two singers, Chava Levi and Polina Fradkin, gained their reputation on social media for their perfectly synchronized voices and matching outfits, which resulted in a series of successful concerts in the US and Israel. Levi and Fradkin transform classic Yiddish melodies into sophisticated, contemporary harmonic jazz arrangements. As noted by one of their critics, Tel Aviv-based journalist Blake Flayton, “The Shvesters do not just make us want to move our feet to Yiddish; their music makes us long for Yiddish”.

Sholom Secunda’s Anniversary in New York

On September 14, 2024, the Merkin Hall of the Kaufman Music Center in New York hosted the concert Sholom Secunda: A 130th Anniversary Spectacular, staring the Swedish singer Idun Carling, the ex-Soviet singer-songwriter Alexander Gorodnitsky, the jazz band of the Grammy-nominated saxophonist Yaacov Mayman, and other prominent musicians.

Sholom Secunda (1894 – 1974) was an American composer of Ukrainian-Jewish descent, known for some of the most popular Yiddish songs, including “Bay mir bistu sheyn“. Although he emigrated from Russia in 1907, his tunes remain well known in post-Soviet countries as well as in the US, where he is considered one of the greatest 20th century composers of New York’s historical Yiddish Theater District.

Almanac Birobidzhan 2024

On September 13, 2024, the official Russian TV channel Bira presented a new episode of its Yiddish-oriented weekly program Yiddishkeit dedicated to the recently published 19th issue of the annual almanac Birobidzhan — a book-sized 260-page journal largely devoted to the 90th anniversary of the Jewish Autonomous Region of Russia, established by the Soviet government in 1934.

The almanac includes a large Yiddish section, featuring historical poetry of Birobidzhan authors and a science fiction story by Yoel Matveyev, a St. Petersburg-based contemporary Yiddish writer. The Russian part contains an anthology of poems about tayga translated from Yiddish. Besides unique and diverse historical materials written in both languages, this year’s issue of the almanac also contains two separate art sections.

Read the almanac online

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).