America and the Shtetl in Sholem Aleichem's Di Goldgreber [The Golddiggers

Abstract

in 1906-1907 and 1914-1919 with the clear intention to live and work there, and in particular to conquer the American-Yiddish stage.' He died during his second visit and was buried in New York in 1916, when over 50,000 people attended his funeral (Kellman). At the time of his first visit to America, Sholem Aleichem was already immensely famous, thanks to his many novels and humoristic stories set in the traditional world of Eastern European Jewry. But he had almost written for the stage, mainly because the development of Yiddish theater had been drastically impeded in Czarist Russia through a ban on Yiddish language performances instated in 1878, just a few years after Abraham Goldfaden had almost single-handedly created modem Yiddish theater. As a result, a Yiddish theater geared to the popular entertainment of the immigrant Jewish masses had developed independently in America, and was flourishing on Second Avenue. Shund, a derogatory term designating a sensationalist popular literature, was the most represented genre, with authors such as Shomer, Latteiner, and Hurwitz. In 1905, the ban on Yiddish theater was finally lifted in Russia, and Sholem Aleichem immediately supported its renaissance, starting to work on several plays. However, the failed revolution was followed by a wave of pogroms, of which he was personally a victim. Sholem Aleichem turned to America, attempting simultaneously to flee antisemitism, to straighten out his financial situation, and to conquer the golden land. Given the sociology and the taste of the American Yiddish audience, which was often uneducated, if not illiterate, this conquest had to be made through the stage. Through the intercession of Dr. Fishberg from New York University, Sholem Aleichem attempted to place two newly written plays (Stempenyu and Der letster korbn [The Last victim]) with the theaters of Second Avenue (Shulman). In a letter to Dr. Fishberg, he even asserted, by way of prevention, that he would never allow himself to give in to American