page_title: Abraham Goldfaden
section_title: Iaşi
hierarchical_section_title: Abraham Goldfaden / Iaşi
caption_attribution_description: Română: Bustul lui Avraham Goldfaden din Iaşi
context_page_description: Abraham Goldfaden was a Russian-born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays. Goldfaden is considered the father of modern Jewish theatre.
  In 1876 he founded in Romania what is generally credited as the world's first professional Yiddish-language theater 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 and held in his honour.
  Jacob Sternberg called him "the Prince Charming who woke up the lethargic Romanian Jewish culture." Israil Bercovici wrote of his works: "we find points in common with what we now call 'total theater'. In many of his plays he alternates prose and verse, pantomime and dance, moments of acrobatics and some of jonglerie, and even of spiritualism..."
context_section_description: 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; she suggested that there would be a lot more of a market for Yiddish-language theater. 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 theater, 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.
  As it happens, the famous Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu, then journalist, saw one of the Pomul Verde performances later that summer. He records 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 theater.) He was impressed by the quality of the singing and acting, but found the pieces "without much dramatic interest. His generally positive comments would seem to deserve to be taken seriously: Eminescu was known generally as "virulently antisemitic." 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 Junkman and His Servant Sider).
caption: Avram Goldfaden's statue near the Iaşi National Theatre
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