The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater

The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater
Author: Alyssa Quint
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2019-01-24
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0253038642

Jewish Book Award Finalist: “Turns the fascinating life of Avrom Goldfaden into a multi-dimensional history of the Yiddish theater’s formative years.” —Jeffery Veidinger, author of Jewish Public Culture in the Late Russian Empire In this book, Alyssa Quint focuses on the early years of the modern Yiddish theater, from roughly 1876 to 1883, through the works of one of its best-known and most colorful figures, Avrom Goldfaden. Goldfaden (né Goldenfaden, 1840-1908) was one of the first playwrights to stage a commercially viable Yiddish-language theater, first in Romania and then in Russia. Goldfaden’s work was rapidly disseminated in print and his plays were performed frequently for Jewish audiences. Sholem Aleichem considered him as a forger of a new language that “breathed the European spirit into our old jargon.” Quint uses Goldfaden’s theatrical works as a way to understand the social life of Jewish theater in Imperial Russia. Through a study of his libretti, she looks at the experiences of Russian Jewish actors, male and female, to explore connections between culture as artistic production and culture in the sense of broader social structures. Quint explores how Jewish actors who played Goldfaden’s work on stage absorbed the theater into their everyday lives. Goldfaden’s theater gives a rich view into the conduct, ideology, religion, and politics of Jews during an important moment in the history of late Imperial Russia.

Landmark Yiddish Plays

Landmark Yiddish Plays
Author:
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2010-03-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 079148162X

Offering snapshots of a pivotal era in which the Jews of Europe made the transition from a traditional to a more modern world, the Yiddish plays translated and collected here wrestle with issues that continue to concern us today: changing gender roles, generational conflict, class divisions, and religious persecution. In their introduction to the volume, Joel Berkowitz and Jeremy Dauber place the plays in the context of the development of modern drama and Yiddish drama and examine their treatment of social, political, and religious issues. The many ways in which the plays address these issues make them transcend their own time, exciting a new generation of readers and theatergoers.

Dogen on Meditation and Thinking

Dogen on Meditation and Thinking
Author: Hee-Jin Kim
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 2007-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0791469263

Looks at Dogen’s writings on meditation and thinking.

Directed by God

Directed by God
Author: Yaron Peleg
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2016-09-13
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1477309535

As part of its effort to forge a new secular Jewish nation, the nascent Israeli state tried to limit Jewish religiosity. However, with the steady growth of the ultraorthodox community and the expansion of the settler community, Israeli society is becoming increasingly religious. Although the arrival of religious discourse in Israeli politics has long been noticed, its cultural development has rarely been addressed. Directed by God explores how the country’s popular media, principally film and television, reflect this transformation. In doing so, it examines the changing nature of Zionism and the place of Judaism within it. Once the purview of secular culture, Israel’s media initially promoted alternatives to traditional religious expression; however, using films such as Kadosh, Waltz with Bashir, and Eyes Wide Open, Yaron Peleg shows how Israel’s contemporary film and television programs have been shaped by new religious trends and how secular Israeli culture has processed and reflected on its religious heritage. He investigates how shifting cinematic visions of Jewish masculinity and gender track transformations in the nation’s religious discourse. Moving beyond the secular/religious divide, Directed by God explores changing film and television representations of different Jewish religious groups, assessing what these representations may mean for the future of Israeli society.

Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage

Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage
Author: Joel Berkowitz
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2012
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0814335047

Collects leading scholars' insight on the plays, production, music, audiences, and political and aesthetic concerns of modern Yiddish theater. While Yiddish theater is best known as popular entertainment, it has been shaped by its creators' responses to changing social and political conditions. Inventing the Modern Yiddish Stage: Essays in Drama, Performance, and Show Business showcases the diversity of modern Yiddish theater by focusing on the relentless and far-ranging capacity of its performers, producers, critics, and audiences for self-invention. Editors Joel Berkowitz and Barbara Henry have assembled essays from leading scholars that trace the roots of modern Yiddish drama and performance in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe and span a century and a half and three continents, beyond the heyday of a Yiddish stage that was nearly eradicated by the Holocaust, to its post-war life in Western Europe and Israel. Each chapter takes its own distinct approach to its subject and is accompanied by an appendix consisting of primary material, much of it available in English translation for the first time, to enrich readers' appreciation of the issues explored and also to serve as supplementary classroom texts. Chapters explore Yiddish theater across a broad geographical span--from Poland and Russia to France, the United States, Argentina, and Israel and Palestine. Readers will spend time with notable individuals and troupes; meet creators, critics, and audiences; sample different dramatic genres; and learn about issues that preoccupied both artists and audiences. The final section presents an extensive bibliography of book-length works and scholarly articles on Yiddish drama and theater, the most comprehensive resource of its kind. Collectively these essays illuminate the modern Yiddish stage as a phenomenon that was constantly reinventing itself and simultaneously examining and questioning that very process. Scholars of Jewish performance and those interested in theater history will appreciate this wide-ranging volume.

Vagabond Stars

Vagabond Stars
Author: Nahma Sandrow
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Total Pages: 460
Release: 1996-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780815603290

Proceedings of a May 1994 symposium held to present cutting edge multidisciplinary work on the characterization of ancient materials; the technologies of selection, production, and usage by which materials are transformed into the objects and artifacts we find today; the science underlying their deterioration, preservation, and conservation; and sociocultural interpretation derived from an empirical methodology of observation, measurement, and experimentation. Over 70 contributions discuss topics that include the visual appearance and the imitation of one material by another; stable protective coatings and materials stability; resource surveying, source characterization, and cultural implications; and process reconstruction as essential to understanding of condition and conservation. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon

Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon
Author: Justin Daniel Cammy
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 744
Release: 2008
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN:

Wisse is a leading scholar of Yiddish and Jewish literary studies and a fearless public intellectual on issues relating to Jewish society and culture. In this celebratory volume, her colleagues pay tribute with a collection of critical essays whose subjects break new ground in Yiddish, Hebrew, Israeli, American, European, and Holocaust literature.

Solo Vocal Works on Jewish Themes

Solo Vocal Works on Jewish Themes
Author: Kenneth Jaffe
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2011
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0810861356

Solo Vocal Works on Jewish Themes: A Bibliography of Jewish Composers is a comprehensive and annotated compendium of stage, concert, and liturgical compositions written by Jewish composers from every known time period and country. Kenneth Jaffe has amassed nearly 3,000 large-scale musical works for solo voice(s) on Jewish themes, written by Jewish composers. The works include over 400 cantatas, 150 oratorios, almost 300 operas, more than 100 sacred services, 20 symphonies, and more than 350 stage works, including Yiddish theatre, Purim and sacred plays, multi-media pieces, and musical theatre. In addition, original song cycles and liturgical services arranged for a modest to large complement of instruments are also included. The works are organized by composer and subdivided by genre, and each entry is fully annotated, detailing the title, opus, voicing and instrumentation, text source, commission, year completed, year and location of the premiere, the year of publication and the publisher (if any), the location of scores, and the duration of the work. The works are then broken down by theme, such as Biblical themes, works for children, works of the Holocaust or Jewish suffering and persecution, interfaith works, and wedding music. They are then cross-referenced by voice type, arrangement, and by title. A list of libraries and publishing houses of Jewish music rounds out this invaluable reference.

The New Joys of Yiddish

The New Joys of Yiddish
Author: Leo Rosten
Publisher: Harmony
Total Pages: 500
Release: 2010-04-14
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 0307566048

More than a quarter of a century ago, Leo Rosten published the first comprehensive and hilariously entertaining lexicon of the colorful and deeply expressive language of Yiddish. Said “to give body and soul to the Yiddish language,” The Joys of Yiddish went on to become an indispensable tool for writers, journalists, politicians, and students, as well as a perennial bestseller for three decades. Rosten described his book as “a relaxed lexicon of Yiddish, Hebrew, and Yinglish words often encountered in English, plus dozens that ought to be, with serendipitous excursions into Jewish humor, habits, holidays, history, religion, ceremonies, folklore, and cuisine–the whole generously garnished with stories, anecdotes, epigrams, Talmudic quotations, folk sayings, and jokes.” To this day, it is considered the seminal work on Yiddish in America–a true classic and a staple in the libraries of Jews and non-Jews alike. With the recent renaissance of interest in Yiddish, and in keeping with a language that embodies the variety and vibrancy of life itself, The New Joys of Yiddish brings Leo Rosten’s masterful work up to date. Revised for the first time by Lawrence Bush in close consultation with Rosten’s daughters, it retains the spirit of the original–with its wonderful jokes, tidbits of cultural history, Talmudic and Biblical references, and tips on pronunciation–and enhances it with hundreds of new entries, thoughtful commentary on how Yiddish has evolved over the years, and an invaluable new English-to-Yiddish index. In addition, The New Joys of Yiddish includes wondrous and amusing illustrations by renowned artist R.O. Blechman.