New York's Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway

Abstract

New York's Yiddish theater holds a special fascination for many scholars of modern Jewish culture, American immigrant experience, drama, and performance studies. During its brief heyday, from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, this art form burgeoned and then, almost as abruptly as it had begun, went into decline. At its height, Yiddish theater was a fixture of immigrant Jewish life and an object of fascination for others. It was a phenomenon distinguished by the outsized passions professed on both sides of the footlights; the histrionics of Yiddish theater's stars matched the zeal of its patriotn, as die-hard fans were called. This volume, a catalog accompanying the eponymous exhibition that was on view from March 9 to August 14, 2016, at the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY), provides a lively overview of the city's Yiddish theater, exemplifying the hybrid nature of immigrant culture and the internal diversity of America's Yiddish-speaking Jews.