Read Online Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy, and Meshugas of the Yiddish Theater in America by Stefan Kanfer - Free Book Online

pictures of Judas Iscariot”).
    But from 1881 on, wave upon wave of Hebrews fled Eastern Europeand sailed for the United States. It made no difference that another American president, James Garfield, had just been shot to death. The carnage of war and assassination was now commonplace to Russian Jews; notions of wild Indians and criminal gangs no longer served to intimidate. They had seen worse, and there were more horrors to come.
    This mass exodus, some twenty million souls when the final tally was in, was prompted by a series of pogroms—the Russian term for devastations—sponsored by czarist officials. Among the incidents were house burnings, beatings, theft, massacres of men, women, and children. The violence culminated in the May Laws of 1882, restricting Jews from owning land, practicing a profession or craft, or attending schools and universities. The decrees immediately altered the villages and cities of Imperial Russia. Anti-Semitism had been granted official sanction and “spontaneous” riots broke out in carefully selected cities. The Yiddish troupes, fragmented and jittery, scattered in the aftermath of Alexander's murder, waiting for the ax to fall. On August 7 of the following year, it did. A decree was nailed up in every town square. Henceforth, it said, Yiddish Theater was forbidden throughout the land.
    Jacob, now married and the father of a young girl, spoke for the actors, designers, directors, and hangers-on. “There was no way around the ukase. It was steel and iron—the law. Nothing remained then but to leave Russia entirely. But where were we to go?” Rosenberg stayed behind in Russia; he saw himself as a crafty loner whose silver tongue and quick hands could get him through any conditions. The others, including Spivakovsky, abandoned theater for other jobs, or toured as street entertainers. To get around the authorities, they called their presentations “German concerts.”
    Jacob refused to follow their lead. He informed the few remaining members of his company that there was “one piece of light still visible above the flood. London.” Privately he had doubts: “Would we survive there? Would Yiddish Theater be possible? Could we play, earn our bread?” There was only one way to find out, and on a cold November day he and his fellow émigrés sailed off to England with little more than the clothes on their backs and the costumes in their trunks.
    Aside from a restaurant owner who could feed them for a night or two, Adler knew the name of only one other Englishman. Happily, he was Jacob's distant cousin, Rabbi Nissim Hillel Adler, one of the most influential Jews in the city. The spiritual leader of London's Jewrygranted an audience. The clergyman looked down his nose at the actor. Adler remembered that “the very twist of his mouth as he pronounced the word ‘Yiddish' told me our beloved language had no place in his heart. And I had come to spread this ‘jargon' further, popularize it still more? Worst of all, to do so in a theatre where, God forbid, strangers might come and jeer?”
    Faced with such a firm refusal, Jacob had no choice; he put ads in the Jewish papers, asking for financial aid. Some businessmen kicked in enough for several bare-bones productions. He paused, uncertain of how to proceed. The Goldfaden repertoire had always made him uncomfortable—too many bromides, too many fools, too many crowdpleasing numbers at the expense of character. He wanted to play complex, credible figures, men like himself who spoke from the heart without breaking into song. Yet no one had dared to produce really serious Yiddish Theater, and it could very well be that there was no audience for such dramas. Jacob's ambition had a poignance about it; within him was an uneasy mix of Jewish tradition and
Haskalah
freedom. He knew that the conflict would either tear him apart or help him to bring a new intelligence and art to his chosen profession.
    Two plays seemed to fill the bill. Jacob knew