50 Years: Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre

WHAT IS YIDDISH ?

In a figurative way, Yiddish is the wise and humble language of us all, the idiom of a frightened and hopeful humanity. Issac Bashevis Singer. Novelist, 1978 Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature and playwright of 7 Dora Wasserman Yiddish Theatre Productions

Overview

"Yiddish", which simply means "Jewish", can mean both the language and its culture.

For nearly 1,000 years, Yiddish was the primary language of three quarters of the world's Jews, the most widely used and spoken of the Jewish languages.

Yiddish was the language of the heart, of feeling, of family, of commerce and community while Hebrew, the official language of the State of Israel, was the language of the soul, used primarily in prayer and scriptures.

In the 10th Century, Jews from France and Italy began to establish communities along the Rhine. For the next millennium, Yiddish was the common language of communication among Jews from Holland to Russia, from the Baltic States to Romania and even Palestine. It was a "World of Yiddish", a time when Jews lived their lives in Yiddish.

During the 19th Century, Yiddish literature, theatre, music and scholarship blossomed. These Yiddish cultural treasures played an important role in educating and lifting the spirits of the masses of Yiddish speakers.

From 1850 onwards, Yiddish moved around the world as European Jews began to migrate to North and South America, South Africa and Australia. By the first part of the 20th century, 90% of European Jews and large portions of Western Jewry spoke Yiddish.

Yiddish largely succumbed to the onslaught of the 20th century catastrophes including Hitler's Holocaust and Stalin's persecutions. By the end of the Holocaust in 1945, the Nazis had annihilated 6 million European Jews, a third of the Jewish people. Yet their hopes for the continuity of their culture lived on.

This legacy of spiritual resistance, of maintaining Yiddish culture has continued in isolated pockets and produced a Yiddish revival. There is a growing interest in Yiddish among Jewish young people as a way to link to their heritage. There is a rising tide of university courses on Yiddish and a growing number of festivals and Yiddish clubs.

While many Yiddish theatres have disappeared, a few have survived against all odds.

THE DORA WASSERMAN YIDDISH THEATRE IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF THE YIDDISH REVIVAL.

A Fusion Language

Yiddish, much like English, fused several linguistic stocks into one new language.

A millennium ago, Jews arrived in the Rhine Valley speaking a French-Jewish dialect called Laaz. To the German rootstock, they grafted of their neighbours and added biblical Hebrew. Thus Yiddish is closer to High Middle Age German than to modern German. As Jews migrated or were forced from Western Europe into Eastern Europe, they also absorbed many words from English and French and Slavic languages such as Polish and Russian.

Yiddish expresses both the isolation and the pluralism of Jewish life. It was one of the strong bonds uniting the Jews of Europe while at the same time absorbing terms from the surrounding peoples. Jews were often kept isolated, which encouraged the language to move off in its own directions. And, of course, they also developed terms to reflect their own culture and concerns.

Many Dialects

Yiddish grew organically and there were many regional dialects. One main dialect was spoken in Western Europe and another in Central Europe. Lithuania, Polish and Ukraine had the greatest numbers of Yiddish speakers and a variety of dialects and sub-dialects. In Poland alone there were seven main sub-dialects.

It was only early in the 20th Century that a modern standardized Yiddish was developed by YIVO in Vilna.

Yiddish Theatre Dialect and Use of French Terms

Russian Yiddish theatre primarily used a Ukrainian dialect also called Voliner. Dora Wasserman Yiddish theatre actors jokingly refer to it as "BBC Yiddish".

Many of the terms used in Yiddish theatre are drawn from the French.
e.g.

  • Mise en scene in Yiddish refers to the structure of a scene; in current French, it refers to the directing of a play
  • Coulissen - coulisse - wings of the stage
  • Regie means direction in Yiddish; in French it refers to stage management
  • Costume - same word
  • Texte - same word
  • Scenario - same word
  • Théâtre / Tey-a-ter - same word theatre

Written Yiddish

Yiddish and Hebrew are very different languages. However as English and French use Roman letters, Yiddish uses Hebrew letters and is written from right to left. Unlike Hebrew, the vowels are written and each of the 26 letters has a specific sound.

Yiddish as a Cultural Expression

Literature

The development of a self-conscious Yiddish literature and a brand new literary culture began in the mid- 19th Century with a tremendous creative energy poured into novels, poetry and short stories. The leading writers of that era, Mendele Mocher Sforim, Sholem Aleichem and Isaac Peretz are called the fathers of Yiddish literature.

Some 50,000 Yiddish titles were published in the 75 years prior to WWII, including novels, plays, essays, poems, short stories, social theory and scholarly research.

Streams of talented writers and poets found their way to the cafes and literary salons of Warsaw, Vilna, Kiev, and other large cities in Eastern Europe where literary styles and quality were debated and developed. {Groups of writers formed around Peretz' literary salon (Avrom Reisen, Chaim Grade, Sholem Asch,) Yung Vilna (Young Vilnius) the poets Avrom Sutzkever, Schmerke Kacaginski, Peretz Miransky, Shimshon Kahen, Moshe Levin, Itzik Manger) and in Warsaw they formed the Chalastre (The Gang) (I.I. Singer, Peretz Markesh and Melech Ravitch).}

The literature spawned active public involvement. Readers participated in lectures, meetings and discussions and other cultural activities. Almost every town and village had a library, a dramatic circle, and numerous political movements, each with their own youth wings. Yiddish theatre troupes criss-crossed the countryside.

The Yiddish press flourished with competing daily Yiddish newspapers in the larger cities such as the Folkstzitung (People's Press) and Express in Warsaw. Journals and magazines of all stripes on everything from health to politics were also popular.

Yiddish music has many forms including liturgical (ritual)music, theatre songs, klezmer music, songs of commemoration and popular folksongs. They were composed by cantors, trained musicians, klezmer groups, poets and the average working man.

A secular education system with research and teacher training institutes, existed side by side with religious schools (cheders) and Yeshivas (academies)

For example, the city of Vilna (Vilnius), called the "Jerusalem of the East", had 3 Yiddish kindergartens, 8 Yiddish secular schools, 3 gymnasiums (like today's colleges), a Yiddish Teacher Training Seminar along with two Hebrew training seminars and a Yiddish theatre.

Under the early Soviet regime, the Yiddish language enjoyed a renaissance. By the 1930's there were more than 1,200 Yiddish schools and several teacher-training institutions, as well as departments of Jewish studies at the Universities of Moscow, Kiev and Minsk. Yiddish daily newspapers, periodicals and repertory theatres flourished in the Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian Republics. There was even an official Jewish state of the USSR, Birobijan, but it was an artificial puppet state not accepted by most Jews.

Canada

Canada's multicultural policy encouraged ethnic development. Yiddish secular schools in Montreal and Winnipeg were built. The earlier community of Yiddish speakers was reinforced by the arrival of Holocaust survivors. JPPS and Bialik High School still teach Yiddish. It is therefore not surprising that several of the world's leading Yiddish scholars have Canadian origins.

Yiddish Ripped Out

On the eve of WWII, there were 11 million Yiddish speakers out of 16 million Jews worldwide. This language and culture could not withstand the combination of forces pitted against them.

Europe

By the end of the Holocaust, the Nazis annihilated two thirds of European Jewry. "The Yiddish language and culture was one of the victims of the Holocaust along with the people." (Encyclopaedia Judaica) See The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (http://www.yivoinstitute.org/index.php?aid=269&tid=109)

USSRStalin embarked upon a policy of eradicating Jewish institutions. In 1948, he ordered the murder of the noted actor-director Solomon Michoels and the subsequent closing of the Yiddish State Theatre in Moscow. This was followed by mass arrests of Yiddish writers. Some 30 Yiddish writers were executed on Aug. 12, 1952.

Israel

When the State of Israel was being planned, the Zionists wanted a fresh start and to distance themselves from victimization. They also wanted to bring together the Jews from the Arab lands with the Jews of Euurope. Israel chose Hebrew over Yiddish. In fact, the use of Yiddish was actively discouraged.

North America

Yiddish was also "killed with a kiss". Jews, long hounded by anti-Semitism, saw a chance to join the mainstream in the United States, Canada and other parts of the Western world. As society became more open and accepting, it encouraged assimilation. Yiddish language and culture became an 'option' rather than an integral part of one's identity. Most Jews dropped their Yiddish and by the second post-immigrant generation, it stopped being the language of daily communication.

A Yiddish Revival

Much of Jewish identity comes from historical memory and from culture. Yiddish has become "A Bridge to the Past", a bridge for young people searching for their sense of identity and roots. They have begun to look to Yiddish and Yiddish culture to find what was missing in their sense of identity. It is hard to connect with age-old Jewish history, if the most recent millennium of Jewish history is ignored.

There are now an ever-growing number of Yiddish university courses, concerts, festivals and clubs right across Israel, Europe and North America. There is a greater than ever interest in the language, the history and the cultural context. Yiddish books (in their original or in translation) are read for their artistic merit and universal themes. There are young Yiddish poets, writers and performers.

YIVO, the National Yiddish Book Center and the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University and many university departments ( i.e. are among the leading institutions promoting Yiddish culture.

THE DORA WASSERMAN YIDDISH THEATRE IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF THE YIDDISH REVIVAL
One of the most accessible forms of Yiddish culture