The Habimah theater troupe mounted their version ofThe Dybbuk in their resident city of Moscow in1922, two years after its Yiddish-language premiere. The Hebrew poet Hayim Nachman Bialik translated it.When first approached to do the translation,…

The collections of the Esther-Rachel Kaminska Theater Museum grew considerably in a very short time. In 1927, Ida and Zygmunt donated the museum to YIVO (then known as the Yiddish Scientific Institute and located in Vilna). This led to Yiddish…

First performed in its original German in the Berlin Lessing Theatre by a group of young actors, Cyankali became one of the most controversial plays of the 1920’s. Its author, Friedrich Wolf, an Expressionist playwright and medical doctor,wrote the…

Michał Weichert (Mikhl Vaykhert, pictured in the above article on the right) was a theater director, historian, critic, and communal activist. Born in Podhajce in eastern Galicia and raised in Stanisławów, Weichert received his education at heder and…

Rotbaum, Jewish theatrical director and painter, was born in Wroclaw. He was the older brother to Lia (Lisa) Rotbaum, a choreographer and director whose name also recurs in the programs of the Esther-Rokhl Kaminska Collection. After high school, he…

Fundraising stamps for the Kultur-lige organization

Commissioned by the avant-garde director Michal Weichert, Leib Malach'sMississippirecounts the story of the "Scottsboro Boys" of Alabama, falsely accused of rape in 1931.First staged in Warsaw in 1935, Weichert staged the action among theater-goers…

A program for an evening that featured a production of Fishke the Lame, an adaptation of the nineteenth-century novel by Mendele Moykher-Seforim, and He, She, and Iby a playwright, operetta-composer, and dramaturg known only as S. Korntayer. Active…