Abraham Goldfaden (; born Avrum Goldnfoden; 24 July 1840 – 9 January 1908), also known as Avram Goldfaden, was a Russian-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in Yiddish and Hebrew languages and author of some 40 plays. Goldfaden is considered the father of modern Jewish theatre.Zalmen Zylbercweig, Leksikon fun yidishn teater, Volume 1, 275; English translation available online
In 1876, he founded in the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia what is generally credited as the world's first professional Yiddish-language theatre troupe. He was also responsible for the first Hebrew-language play performed in the United States. The Avram Goldfaden Festival of Iaşi, Romania, is named after him and held in his honour.
Jacob Sternberg called him "the Prince Charming who woke up the lethargic Romanian Jewish culture".Bercovici, 1998, 118 Israil Bercovici wrote of his works: "we find points in common with what we now call 'total theatre'. In many of his plays he alternates prose and verse, pantomime and dance, moments of acrobatics and some of juggling, and even of spiritualism..."Bercovici, 1998, 237-238
Early life (1840–1876) Goldfaden was born on in Starokonstantinov in Volhynia Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in Ukraine). He attended a Jewish religious school (a cheder), but his middle-class family was strongly associated with the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, and his father, a watchmaker,Berkowitz, 2004, 12 arranged that he receive private lessons in German and Russian. As a child, he is said to have appreciated and imitated the performances of wedding jesters and Brody singers to the degree that he acquired the nickname Avromele Badkhen, "Abie the Jester."Sandrow, 2003 In 1857, he began studies at the government-run rabbinical school at Zhitomir,Wolitz, Seth L. (August 9, 2010). "Goldfadn, Avrom." YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. Retrieved 2017-03-03. from which he emerged in 1866 as a teacher and a poet (with some experience in amateur theatre), but he never led a congregation.
Goldfaden's first published poem was called "Progress"; his The New York Times obituary described it as "a plea for Zionism years before that movement developed"."Noted Jewish Bard Dead" (January 10, 1908). The New York Times. In 1865 he published his first book of poetry, Tzitzim u-Ferahim (in Hebrew); The Jewish Encyclopaedia (1901–1906) says that "Goldfaden's Hebrew poetry ... possesses considerable merit, but it has been eclipsed by his Yiddish poetry, which, for strength of expression and for depth of true Jewish feeling, remains unrivalled". The first book of verse in Yiddish was published in 1866, and in 1867 he took a job teaching in Simferopol on the Crimean Peninsula.
A year later, he moved on to Odessa. He lived initially in his uncle's house, where a cousin who was a good pianist helped him set some of his poems to music. In Odessa, Goldfaden renewed his acquaintance with fellow Yiddish-language writer Yitzkhok Yoel Linetzky, whom he knew from Zhitomir, and met Hebrew-language poet Eliahu Mordechai Werbel (whose daughter Paulina would become Goldfaden's wife) and published poems in the newspaper Kol-Mevaser. He also wrote his first two plays, Die Tzwei Sheines (The Two Neighbours) and Die Murneh Sosfeh (Aunt Susie), included with some verses in a modestly successful 1869 book Die Yidene (The Jewish Woman), which went through three editions in three years. At this time, he and Paulina were living mainly on his meagre teacher's salary of 18 rubles a year, supplemented by his giving private lessons and taking a job as a cashier in a hat shop.
In 1875, Goldfaden headed for Munich, intending to study medicine. This did not work out, and he headed for Lvov/Lemberg in Habsburg-ruled Galicia, where he again met up with Linetsky, now editor of a weekly paper, Isrulik or Der Alter Yisrulik (which was well reputed, but was soon shut by the government). A year later, he moved on to Chernivtsi in Habsburg Bukovina, where he edited the Yiddish-language daily Dos Bukoviner Israelitische Folksblatt (lit. 'The Israelite People's Journal of Bukovina'). The limits of the economic sense of this enterprise can be gauged from his inability to pay a registration fee of 3000 ducats. He tried unsuccessfully to operate the paper under a different name, but soon moved on to Iaşi in Moldavia on the invitation of Isaac Librescu (1850–1930), a young wealthy community activist interested in theatre.
Iaşi
Arriving in Iaşi (Jassy) in 1876, Goldfaden was fortunate to be better known as a good poet — many of whose poems had been set to music and had become popular songs — than as a less-than-successful businessman. Nevertheless, when he sought funds from Isaac Librescu for another newspaper, Librescu was uninterested in that proposition. Librescu's wife remarked that Yiddish-language journalism was just a way to starve and suggested that there would be a lot more of a market for Yiddish-language theatre. Librescu offered Goldfaden 100 francs for a public recital of his songs in the garden of Shimen Mark, Grădina Pomul Verde ("the Green Fruit-Tree Garden").
Instead of a simple recital, Goldfaden expanded the program into something of a vaudeville performance; either this or an indoor performance he and his fellow performers gave later that year in Botoşani is generally counted as the first professional Yiddish theatre performance. However, in the circumstances, the designation of a single performance as "the first" may be nominal: Goldfaden's first actor, Israel Grodner, was already singing Goldfaden's songs (and others) in the salons of Iaşi. Also, in 1873, Grodner sang in a concert in Odessa (songs by Goldfaden, among others) that apparently included significant improvised material between songs, although no actual script.
Although Goldfaden, by his own account, was familiar at this time with "practically all of Russian literature", and also had plenty of exposure to Polish theatre, and had even seen an African American tragedian, Ira Aldridge, performing Shakespeare, the performance at Grădina Pomul Verde was only a bit more of a play than Grodner had participated in three years earlier. The songs were strung together with a bit of character and plot and a good bit of improvisation. The performance by Goldfaden, Grodner, Sokher Goldstein, and possibly as many as three other men went over well. The first performance was either Di bobe mitn einikl (Grandmother and Granddaughter) or Dos bintl holts (The Bundle of sticks); sources disagree. (Some reports suggest that Goldfaden himself was a poor singer, or even a non-singer and poor actor; according to Bercovici, these reports stem from Goldfaden's own self-disparaging remarks or from his countenance as an old man in New York, but contemporary reports show him to have been a decent, though not earth-shattering, actor and singer.)
After that time, Goldfaden continued miscellaneous newspaper work, but the stage became his main focus.
Later that summer, the famous Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, then a journalist, saw one of the Pomul Verde performances. He recorded in his review that the company had six players. (A 1905 typographical error would turn this into a much-cited sixteen, suggesting a grander beginning for Yiddish theatre.) He was impressed by the quality of the singing and acting, but found the pieces "without much dramatic interest."Bercovici, 1998, 58 His generally positive comments would seem to deserve to be taken seriously: Eminescu was known generally as "virulently antisemitic."Riff, 1992, 201 Eminescu appears to have seen four of Goldfaden's early plays: a satiric musical revue Di velt a gan-edn (The World and Paradise), Der farlibter maskil un der oyfgeklerter hosid (a dialogue between "an infatuated philosopher" and "an enlightened Hasid"), another musical revue Der shver mitn eidem (Father-in-law and Son-in-Law), and a comedy, Fishl der balegole un zayn knecht Sider (Fishel the Carter and His Servant Sider).
Searching for a theatre As the season for outdoor performances was coming to a close, Goldfaden tried and failed to rent an appropriate theatre in Iaşi. A theatre owner named Reicher, presumably Jewish himself, told him that "a troupe of Jewish singers" would be "too dirty." Goldfaden, Grodner, and Goldstein headed first to Botoşani, where they lived in a garret and Goldfaden continued to churn out songs and plays. An initial successful performance of Di Rekruten (The Recruits) in an indoor theatre ("with loges!" as Goldfaden wrote) was followed by days of rain so torrential that no one would come out to the theatre; they pawned some possessions and left for Galaţi, which was to prove a bit more auspicious, with a successful three-week run.
In Galaţi they acquired their first serious set designer, a housepainter known as Reb Moishe Bas. He had no formal artistic training, but he proved to be good at the job, and joined the troupe, as did Sara Segal, their first actress. She was not yet out of her teens. After seeing her perform in their Galaţi premiere, her mother objected to her unmarried daughter cavorting on a stage. Goldstein – who, unlike Goldfaden and Grodner, was single – promptly married her and she remained with the troupe. (Besides being known as Sara Segal and Sofia Goldstein, she became best known as Sofia Karp, after a second marriage to actor Max Karp.)
After the successful run in Galaţi came a less successful attempt in Brăila, but by now the company had honed its act and it was time to go to the capital, Bucharest.
Bucharest As in Iași, Goldfaden arrived in Bucharest with his reputation already established. He and his players performed first in the early spring at the salon Lazăr Cafegiu on Calea Văcărești (Văcărești Avenue, in the heart of the Jewish quarter). Once the weather turned warm, Goldfaden performed at the Jignița garden, a beer garden on Str. Negru Vodă that had (up until then) drawn only a neighbourhood crowd. He drew from the talent pool of local synagogue cantors to fill out his cast. Goldfaden also recruited two classically trained prima donnas, the sisters Margaretta and Annetta Schwartz.
Among the cantors in his casts that year were Lazăr Zuckermann (also known as Laiser Zuckerman; as a song-and-dance man, he would eventually follow Goldfaden to New York and have a long stage career),Adler, 1999, 86 (commentary) Moishe Zilberman (also known as Silberman), and Simhe Dinman, as well as the 18-year-old Zigmund Mogulescu (Sigmund Mogulesko), who soon became a stage star. Orphaned by the time he reached his teen years, Mogulescu had already made his way in the world as a singer – not only as a soloist in the Great Synagogue of Bucharest but also as a performer in cafes, at parties, with a visiting French operetta company, and even in a church choir. Before his voice changed, he had sung with Zuckerman, Dinman, and Moses Wald in the "Israelite Chorus", performing at important ceremonies in the Jewish community. Mogulescu's audition for Goldfaden was a scene from Vlăduţu Mamei (Mama's Boy), which formed the basis later that year for Goldfaden's light comedy Shmendrik, oder Die Komishe Chaseneh (Shmendrik or The Comical Wedding), starring Mogulescu as the almost painfully clueless and hapless young man (a role later famously played in New York and elsewhere by actress Molly Picon).
This recruiting of cantors was not without controversy: Cantor Cuper (also known as Kupfer), the head cantor of the Great Synagogue, considered it "impious" that cantors should perform in a secular setting, to crowds where both sexes mingled freely, keeping people up late so that they might not be on time for morning prayers.