Chapter X: Odd Characters 272 (4)

Some of the more striking of the realistic plays on the Ghetto stage have been partly described, but realism in the details of character and setting appears in all of them, even in comic opera and melodrama. In many the element of revolt, even if it is not the basis of the play, is expressed in occasional dialogues. Burlesque runs through them all, but burlesque, after all, is a comment on the facts of life. And all these points are emphasized and driven home by sincere and forcible acting.

Crude in form as these plays are, and unpleasant as they often are in subject and in the life portrayed, they are yet refreshing to persons who have been bored by the empty farce and inane cheerfulness of the uptown theatres.

THE HISTORY OF THE YIDDISH STAGE

The Yiddish stage, founded in Roumania in 1876 by Abraham Goldfaden, has reached its highest development in the city of New York, where there are seventy or eighty professional actors; not far from a dozen playwrights, of whom three have written collectively more than three hundred plays; dramas on almost every subject, produced on the inspiration of various schools of dramatic art; and an enormous Russian Jewish colony, which fills the theatres and creates so strong a demand that the stage responds with a distinctive, complete, and interesting popular art.

The best actor now in the Ghetto, with one exception, was in the original company. That exception, with the help of a realistic playwright, introduced an important element in the development of the stage. With the lives of these three men the history of the Yiddish stage is intimately connected. The first actor was a singer in the synagogue of Bucharest, the first playwright a composer of Yiddish songs. The foundation of the Yiddish stage might therefore be said to lie in the Bucharest synagogue and the popular music-hall performance.

Zelig Mogalesco, the best comedian in the New York Ghetto, has seen, altho not quite forty years of age, the birth of the Yiddish stage, and may survive its death. He was born in Koloraush, a town in the province of Bessarabia, near Roumania. His father was a poor shop-keeper, and Mogalesco never went to school. But he was endowed by nature with a remarkable voice and ear, and composed music with easy felicity. The population of the town was orthodox Jewish, and consequently no theatre was allowed. It was therefore in the synagogue that the musical appetite of the Jews found satisfaction. It was the habit of the poor people to hire as inexpensive a cantor as possible, and this cantor might very well be ignorant of everything except singing. Yet these cantors were so popular that the famous ones travelled from town to town, in much the same way that the visiting German actor--_Gast_--does to-day, and sometimes charged admission fees.

When Mogalesco was nine years old, Nissy of the town of Bells, the most famous cantor in the south of Russia, visited Mogalesco's town. The boy's friends urged him to visit the great man and display his voice. Little Mogalesco, with his mezzo-soprano, went to the inn, and Nissy was astounded. "My dear boy," he said, "go home and fetch your parents." With them the cantor signed a contract by which Zelig was bound to him as a kind of musical apprentice for three years. The boy was to receive his board and clothing, five rubles, the first year, ten the second, and fifteen the third--fifteen dollars for the three years.

Soon Mogalesco became widely known among the cantors of South Russia. In six months he could read music so well that they called him "Little Zelig, the music-eater." At the end of the first year the leading cantor of Bucharest, Israel Kupfer, who, by the way, has been cantor in a New York synagogue of the east side, went to Russia to secure the services of Mogalesco. To avoid the penalties of a broken contract, Kupfer hurried with little Zelig to Roumania, and the boy remained in Bucharest for several years. At the age of fourteen he conducted a choir of twenty men under Kupfer. He also became director of the chorus in the Gentile opera. While there he began "to burn," as he expressed it, with a desire to go on the stage, but the Gentiles would not admit the talented Jew.

It was when Mogalesco was about twenty years old that the Yiddish stage was born. In 1876 or 1877, Abraham Goldfaden went to Bucharest. This man had formerly been a successful merchant in Russia, but had failed. He was a poet, and to make a living he called that art into play. In Russia he had written many Yiddish songs, set them to music, and sung them in private. In the society in which he lived he deemed that beneath his dignity, but when he lost his money he went to Bucharest and there on the stage sang his own poems, the music for which he took from many sources. He became a kind of music-hall performer, but did not long remain satisfied with this modest art. His dissatisfaction led him to create what later developed into the present Yiddish theatre. The Talmud prohibited the stage, but at the time when Goldfaden was casting about for something to do worthy of his genius, the gymnasia were thrown open to the Jews, and the result was a more tolerant spirit. Therefore, Goldfaden decided to found a Yiddish theatre. He went to Kupfer, the cantor, and Kupfer recommended Mogalesco as an actor for the new company. Goldfaden saw the young man act, and the comedy genius of Mogalesco helped in the initial idea of a Yiddish play. Mogalesco at first refused to enter into the scheme. A Yiddish drama seemed too narrow to him, for he aspired to the Christian stage. But when Goldfaden offered to adopt him and teach him the Gentile languages Mogalesco agreed and became the first Yiddish actor. Other singers in Kupfer's choir also joined Goldfaden's company.

Thus the foundation of the Yiddish stage lay in the Bucharest synagogue. The beginnings, of course, were small. Several other actors were secured, among them Moses Silbermann, who is still acting on the New York Ghetto stage. No girls could at that time be obtained for the stage, for it is against the Talmudic law for a man even to hear a girl sing, and men consequently played female rôles, as in Elizabethan times in England. The first play that Goldfaden wrote was _The Grandmother and her Grandchild_; the second was _The Shwendrick_ and Mogalesco played the grandmother in one and a little spoiled boy in the other. His success in both was enormous, and he still enacts on the Bowery the part of the little boy. The first performances of Goldfaden's play were given in Bucharest, at the time of the Russian-Turkish war, and the city was filled with Russian contractors and workmen. They overcrowded the theatre, and applauded Mogalesco to the echo. From that time the success of the Yiddish stage was assured. Goldfaden tried to get a permit to act in Russia, without success at first; but he played in Odessa without a license, in a secret way, and in the end a permit was secured. Other Yiddish companies sprang up. Girls were admitted to the chorus, and women began to play female rôles. The first woman on the Yiddish stage was a girl who is now Mrs. Karb, and who may be seen in the Yiddish company at present in the People's Theatre on the Bowery. She is the best liked of all the Ghetto's actresses, has been a sweet singer, and is now an actress of considerable distinction. In Bucharest, before she went on the stage, she was a tailor-girl, and used to sing in the shop. She appeared in 1878 in _The Evil Eye_, and made an immediate hit. That was the third Yiddish play, and, in the absence of Goldfaden, it was written by the prompter, Joseph Latteiner, who, with the possible exception of Professor Horowitz, who began to write about the same time, was for many years the most popular playwright in the New York Ghetto.

In 1884 the Yiddish theatre was forbidden in Russia. It was supposed by the Government to be a hotbed of political plots, but some of the Yiddish actors think that the jealousy of Gentile actors was responsible for this idea. Two years before there had been a transmigration of Russian and Roumanian Jews to America on a large scale. Therefore the players banished from Russia had a refuge and an audience in New York. In 1884 the first Yiddish company came to this country. It was not Goldfaden's or Mogalesco's company, but one formed after them. In it were actors who still act in New York--Moses Heine, Moses Silbermann, Mrs. Karb, and Latteiner the playwright.

The first Yiddish theatre was called the Oriental. It was a music-hall on the Bowery, transformed for the purpose. A year later Mogalesco, Kessler, Professor Horowitz, and their company came to New York and opened the Roumania Theatre. From that time they changed theatres frequently. It is worthy of note that with one exception the actors identified with the beginnings of the Yiddish stage are still the best.

That exception is Jacob Adler, who, not counting Mogalesco, is the best actor in the Ghetto. They are both character actors, but Mogalesco is essentially a comedian, while Adler plays rôles ranging from burlesque to tragedy. Mogalesco is a natural genius, with a spontaneity superior to that of Adler, but he has no general education nor intellectual life. But the forcible Adler, a man of great energy, a fighter, is filled with one great idea, which is almost a passion with him, and which has marked a development in the Yiddish theatre. To be natural, to be real, to express the actual life of the people, with serious intent, is what Jacob Adler stands for. Up to the time when he appeared on the scene in New York there had been no serious plays acted on the Yiddish stage. Comic opera, lurid melodrama, adaptations and translations, historical plays representing the traditions of the Jews, were exclusively the thing. Through the acting, indeed, which on the Yiddish stage is constantly animated by the desire for sincerity and naturalness, the real life of the people was constantly suggested in some part of the play. When Mogalesco took a comic part, he would interpolate phrases and actions, suggesting that life, which he instinctively and spontaneously knew, and it was so with the other actors also. But this element was accidental and fragmentary previous to the coming of Jacob Adler.

Until then Latteiner and Professor Horowitz, the authors of the first historical plays of the Yiddish stage, and still the most popular playwrights in the Ghetto, held almost undisputed sway.

Joseph Latteiner, of whom brief mention has already been made, represents thoroughly the strong commercial spirit of the Yiddish stage. He writes with but one thought, to please the mass of the people, writes "easy plays," to quote his own words. His plays, therefore, are the very spirit of formlessness--burlesque, popularly vulgar jokes, flat heroism combined about the flimsiest dramatic structure. He is the type of the business man of the Ghetto. Altho successful, he lives in an unpleasant tenement, and seems much poorer than he really is. He has an unemphatic, conciliatory manner of talking, and everything he says is discouragingly practical. He is a Roumanian Jew, forty-six years of age. His parents intended him for a rabbi, but he was too poor to reach the goal, altho he learned several languages. These afterwards stood him in good stead, for he often translates and adapts plays for the Bowery stage. Unable to be a rabbi, Latteiner cast about for a means of making his living. As a boy he was not interested in the stage, but one day he saw a German play in one act and thought he could adapt it with music to the Yiddish stage. It was successful, and Latteiner, as he put it, "discovered himself." He has since written over a hundred plays, and is engaged by the company at the Thalia Theatre as the regular playwright. He calls himself _Volksdichter_, and maintains that his plays improve with the taste of the people, but this statement is open to considerable doubt.

In speaking of the popular playwright, and the purely commercial character and consequent formlessness of the plays before the appearance of Adler, important mention should be made of Boris Thomashevsky, already briefly referred to as the idol of the Jewish matinée girls. He is the most popular actor on the Yiddish stage, and for him Latteiner particularly writes. Thomashevsky is a large fat man, with expressionless features and curly black hair, which he arranges in leonine forms. He generally appears as the hero, and is a successful tho a rather listless barnstormer. The more intelligent of his audience are inclined to smile at Mr. Thomashevsky's talent in romantic parts, of the reality of which, however, he, with a large section of the community, is very firmly convinced. In fairness, however, it should be said that when Mr. Thomashevsky occasionally leaves the rôle of hero for an unsentimental character, particularly one which expresses supercilious superiority, he is excellent. As time goes on he will probably take less and less the romantic lead and grow more and more satisfactory. He is the youngest of the prominent actors of the Bowery. Before the coming of Heine's company in 1884, he was a pretty little boy in the Ghetto, who used to play female rôles in amateur theatricals. But when the professionals came he was eclipsed, and went out of sight for some time. He grew to be a handsome man, however; his voice changed, and, with the help of a very different man, Jacob Adler, Thomashevsky found an important place on the Yiddish stage. He and Adler are now the leading actors of the People's Theatre, but they never appear together, Thomashevsky being the main interpreter of the plays which appeal distinctively to the rabble, and Adler of those which form the really original Yiddish drama of a serious nature.

Jacob Adler was born in Odessa, Russia, in 1855, of middle-class parents. He went to the public school, but was very slow to learn, and was treated roughly by his teachers, whose favorite weapon was a ruler of thorns. School, therefore, as he says, "made a bad impression" on him, and he left it for business, but got along equally badly there, not being able to brook the brutally expressed authority of his masters. But while he passed rapidly from one firm to another, through the kindness of a wealthy uncle he was able to cut a swell figure in Odessa, and became a dandy and something of a lady-killer. He was then only eighteen, but the serious ideas which at a later time he strenuously sought to bring into prominence in New York already began to assert themselves. Then there was no Yiddish theatre, but of the Gentile Russian theatre in Odessa he was very fond. The serious realistic Russian play was what particularly took his fancy. The Russian tragedians Kozelski and Miloslowski especially helped to form his taste, and he soon became a critic well known in the galleries. It was the habit of Russian audiences to express their ideas and impressions on the spot. The galleries were divided into parties, with opposing artistic principles. One party hissed while the other applauded, and then and there they held debates, between the acts and even during the performance. Adler soon became one of the fiercest leaders of such a party that Odessa had ever known. He stood for realism, for the direct expression of the life of the people. All else he hissed down, and did it so effectively that the actors tried to conciliate him. One season two actresses of talent, but of different schools, were playing in Odessa--Glebowa, whom Adler supported because of her naturalness, and Kozlowski, whose style was affected and artificial from Adler's point of view. After the strife between the rival parties had waged for some time very fiercely, one night Kozlowski sent for Adler, and asked him what she could do to get the great critic to join her party. Adler replied that so long as Glebowa played with such wonderful naturalness he should remain faithful to her colors, and advised Kozlowski, who was a kind of Russian Bernhardt, to change her style.

Adler's lack of education always weighed on his spirit, and his high ideals of the stage seemed to shut that art away from him. Yet his friends who heard him recite the speeches of his favorites, which he easily remembered, told him he had talent. "I wanted to believe them," Adler said, "but I always thought that the actor ought to know everything in order to interpret humanity."

But just about that time, when Adler was twenty-three years old, he heard that a theatre had been started in Roumania by a Russian Jew named Goldfaden, and that the actors spoke Yiddish.

"I was astonished," he said. "How could they act a play in a language without literature, in the jargon of our race, and who could be the actors?"

Soon Adler heard that the Jewish singers of hymns who sometimes visited Odessa, and who moved him so, because "they sang so pitifully," were the actors of the first Yiddish company, and his astonishment grew. In 1879 Goldfaden went to Odessa with his company, and his theatre was crowded with Gentiles as well as Jews; and Adler saw with his eyes what he had hardly believed possible--a Jewish company in a Yiddish play. The plays, however, seemed to Adler very poor--mainly light opera with vaudeville accompaniment--and the acting was also poor; but Israel Rosenberg, whom Adler describes as a long-faced Jew with protruding teeth, enormous eyes, and a mouth as wide as a saucer, amused Adler with the wit which he interpolated as he acted. Rosenberg, "more ignorant than I," says Adler, "was yet very successful." The two became intimate, and Rosenberg and Fräulein Oberländer urged Adler to go on the stage; Rosenberg because Adler at that time was comparatively rich, and the Fräulein because she loved (and afterwards married) the vigorous young man from Odessa. And Adler felt his education to be superior to that of these successful actors, and decided to make the experiment. To choose the stage, however, was to choose poverty, as he had begun to succeed in business, but he did not hesitate and, leaving his friends and family, he went on a tour with the company.

In the first performance he was so frightened that he did not hear his own words. He lost all his critical faculty, and played merely instinctively. It was a long time before he acted better than the average, which was at that time very low; but, finally, in a small town named Elizabetgrad, Adler learned his lesson. A critic visited the theatre every night, and wrote long articles upon it, but Adler never found his name mentioned therein. He used to get up in the morning very early, before any one else, to buy the newspaper, but was always chagrined to find that the great man had overlooked him. At first he thought that the critic must have a personal spite against him, then that he was not noticed because he had only small rôles. At last he was cast for a very long and emotional rôle. He thought that this part would surely fetch the critic, and the next morning eagerly bought a paper, but there was no criticism of the play at all. Rosenberg went to the critic and asked the reason.

"Adler spoiled the whole thing," was the reply. "His acting was unnatural and loud. I advise him to leave the stage."

"Then," said Adler, "I began to think. I cut my hair, which I had allowed to grow long after the fashion of actors, and was at first much discouraged. But thereafter I studied every rôle with great care, and read the classic plays, and never played a part until I understood it. Before that it was play with me; but after that it was serious work."

For a number of years Adler continued to act in the cities of Russia, and became the head of a company. In 1883, when Russia was closed to the Jewish stage, Adler took his company to London, where he nearly starved. There was no Ghetto there, and the company gave occasional performances at various Yiddish clubs scattered through the city. Adler lost all his money, and got into debt. His wife and child died, and at one time in despair he thought of leaving the stage. But it was too late to go back to Odessa, for he had once for all cut himself off from his family and friends. He was falsely informed by a Jew who had been to America that to succeed there he would have to sing, dance, and speak German. So he stayed some time longer in London. The Rothschilds, Dr. Felix Adler, and others, took an interest in him, and told him that as the Jewish theatre could have no future, since Yiddish must ultimately be forgotten, he had better give it up.

It was in 1887 that Adler came to New York, where he found two Yiddish companies already well started. To avoid conflict with them, he went to Chicago, where, however, a Yiddish theatre could get no foothold. Some rich Chicago people tried to induce Adler to learn English and go on the American stage; but Adler, always distrustful of his education and ability to learn, declined their offers, now much to his regret. He returned to New York, where Mogalesco and Kessler urged him to stay, but the Ghetto actors in general were hostile to him, and he went back to London. The next year, however, he was visited by four of the managers of the New York Ghetto companies (among them Mogalesco), vying with one another to secure Adler, whose reputation in the Jewish community was rapidly growing. He went back to New York in 1889, where he appeared first at the Germania Theatre. He was advertised in advance as a Salvini, a Barrett, a Booth, as all stars combined. When he found how extravagantly he had been announced he was angry, and wanted to go back to London, feeling that it was impossible to live up to what his foolish managers had led the people to expect. He consented to stay, but refused to appear in _Uriel Acosta_ for which he was billed, preferring to begin in comedy, in order not to appear to compete with the reputation of Salvini. The play, which was called _The Ragpicker_, can still be seen in the Ghetto. In it Adler tried to score as a character actor. But the people, expecting a tragedy, took _The Ragpicker_ seriously, and did not laugh at all. The play fell flat, and the managers rushed before the curtain and told the audience that Adler was a poor actor, and that they had been deceived in him. Through the influence of the management, the whole company treated him with coldness and contempt, except the wife of one of the directors. She is now Mrs. Adler, and is one of the capable serious actresses at present at the People's Theatre. Finally, the lease of the theatre passed into Adler's hands, and he dismissed the whole company and formed a new one. Soon after began the struggle which brought about the latest development of the Yiddish stage.

For some time Adler was successful, but he grew more and more dissatisfied with his repertory. He could find no plays which seriously portrayed the life of the people or contained any serious ideas. Only the translated plays were good from his point of view; he wished something original, and looked about for a playwright. One night in a restaurant he was introduced to Jacob Gordin, who afterwards wrote the greater part of the only serious original Yiddish plays which exist.

Gordin at that time had written no plays, but he was a man of varied literary activity, of a rarely good education, a thorough Russian schooling, and of uncommon intelligence and strength of character. He is Russian in appearance, a large broad-headed man with thick black hair and beard. As he told me in his little home in Brooklyn, the history of his life, he omitted all picturesque details, and emphasized only his intellectual development. He was born in the same town as Gogol, Ubigovrod in southern Russia, of rich parents. As a boy he frequented the theatre, and like Adler, became a local critic and hissed down what he did not approve. Like Adler, too, he was often carried off to the police station and fined. He married early, became a school-teacher and then a journalist (in Russian), writing every sort of article, except political, and often sketches and short stories for newspapers and periodicals in Odessa, where he finally controlled a newspaper--the _Odessakianovosti_. He was a great admirer of Tolstoi, and desiring to live on a farm to put into practice the Count's ideas, he came to America in 1891, and nearly starved. He became an editor of a Russian newspaper in New York and contributed to other journals. In his own paper he wrote violent articles against the Russian Government, as well as literary sketches. In Russia, Gordin had never been in a Yiddish theatre, and when he met Adler in the New York restaurant he knew little of the conventional Yiddish play. So he wrote his first play in a fresh spirit, with only the character of the people and his own ideals to work from. _Siberia_, produced in 1892, was a success with the critics and actors, and may fairly be called the first original Yiddish play of the better type.

The play struck a new note. It fell into line with the Russian spirit of realism now so marked in intellectual circles in the Ghetto. Life and types are what Gordin tried for, and Jacob Adler had found his playwright. Since then Gordin has written about fifty plays, some of which have been successful, and many have been marked by literary and dramatic power. Some of the better ones are _Siberia_, the _Jewish King Lear_, _The Wild Man_, _The Jewish Priest_, _Solomon Kaus_, _The Slaughter_, and the _Jewish Queen Lear_. Jacob Adler has been until recently his chief interpreter, altho Mogalesco, Kessler, and Thomashevsky take his plays.

For several years an actress, Mrs. Liptzen, was the main interpreter of Gordin's plays. She is one of the most individual, if not one of the most skillful, actresses on the stage of New York's Ghetto, and is sometimes spoken of in the quarter as the Yiddish Duse. She is the only actress of the east side who is thus compared, by a sub-title, with a famous Gentile artist, altho in many directions there is a great tendency in the Ghetto to adopt foreign names and ideas. As a matter of fact, her art is exceedingly limited, but she has the unusual distinction of appearing only in the best plays, steadfastly refusing to take part in performances which she deems to be dramatically unworthy. She consequently appears very seldom, usually only in connection with the production of a new play by Jacob Gordin, who at present writes many of his plays with the "Yiddish Duse" in mind.

Mrs. Liptzen was born in Zitomir, South Russia, and was interested exclusively in the stage from her childhood. The founder of the Yiddish stage, Abraham Goldfaden, and Jacob Adler, played in her town for a few nights when she was about eighteen years old. Her parents were orthodox Jews, and to go to the theatre she was forced to resort to subterfuge. She became acquainted with Goldfaden and Adler, and ran away from home in order to accompany them as an actress. At first she sang and acted in such popular operatic plays as _Der Schmendrik_, and continued for three years in Russia, until the Yiddish theatre was forbidden there. Then she went with a new company to Berlin, where the whole aggregation nearly starved. They were reduced to selling all their stage properties, the proceeds of which were made away with by a dishonest agent. During the time their performances in Berlin continued Mrs. Liptzen received, it is said, the sum of ten pfennige (two and one-half cents) a day, on which she lived. She paid five pfennige for lodging and five pfennige for bread and coffee; and there is left in her now a correspondingly amazing impression of the cheapness with which she could live in Germany in those days.

Jacob Adler was at that time in London with a company, eking out a miserable existence. He wrote to Mrs. Liptzen's husband, an invalid in Odessa, to send his wife to London to play in his company. About 1886 Mrs. Liptzen went to London and played in _Esther von Engedi_ (the Yiddish _Othello_), _Leah the Forsaken_, _Rachel_, _The Jews_, etc. In London she stayed three years, when, the theatre burning down, she went with Adler to Chicago. They tried to find a place in New York, but the Yiddish company, with Kessler and Mogalesco at its head, already in New York, froze them out, and they tried to get a foothold in Chicago. A little later Mrs. Liptzen left Chicago for New York, called by the Yiddish company there to play leading parts. She began in New York with _Leah the Forsaken_, and received only $10 for the first three performances. It is said that she now receives from $100 to $200 for every performance, a fact indicating not only her growth in popularity but also the great financial success of the Yiddish theatres in New York.

Twelve years ago Mrs. Liptzen retired for a time from the stage, the reason being that there were no new plays in which she desired to appear, since the demand was entirely supplied by the romantic and historical operatic playwrights, Prof. Horowitz and Mr. Latteiner.

It was not until Jacob Gordin came into prominence as a realistic playwright, that Mrs. Liptzen came out of her dignified retirement. Jacob Adler was the first to play Gordin's pieces; but he played many others, too, trying in a practical way gradually to make the cause of realism triumphant. Mrs. Liptzen, however, made no compromise, and kept quiet until she was able to get the plays she wanted, which soon were written by Gordin.

Mrs. Liptzen's first success with a Gordin play was in _Medea_, for which Gordin received, it is said, the enormous sum of $85--having sold plays previous to that time for the well-fixed price of $35. _Medea's Youth_, written by Gordin for Mrs. Liptzen, was a failure, altho the author thought so well of it as a literary production that he had it translated into English. The next of Mrs. Liptzen's successes was the _Jewish Queen Lear_, for which Gordin received $200--an enormous sum for a Yiddish playwright in those days. _The Slaughter_ was produced two years ago, and last year Mrs. Liptzen appeared in Gordin's _The Oath_, a Yiddish production of _Fuhrmann Henschel_. Of late Mr. Gordin's plays have been produced by a younger actress of more varied talent than Mrs. Liptzen--Mrs. Bertha Kalisch, on the whole a much worthier interpreter than the older woman.

It is Adler, however, who has been the belligerent promoter of the original and serious Yiddish drama. In 1893 he tried to introduce Gordin's plays and the new spirit of realism and literature into his company at the Windsor Theatre. But the old style is still strong in popular affection, and Adler's company rebelled. Whereupon Adler went to Russia to form a new company which would be more amenable to his ideas. He came back with the new troupe, and ordered a new play from Gordin, who produced _The Jewish King Lear_. At the first reading of the play the company protested, but Adler begged for a trial, telling them that they did not know what a good play was. The play proved a great and deserved success, and is now frequently repeated. It contains several scenes of great power, and portrays with faithful art the life of the Russian Jew. In 1894 Adler tried the experiment of leasing a small theatre, the Roumania, in which nothing but plays which expressed his ideas should be presented. A number of Gordin's plays were given, but the theatre had much the same fate that would befall a theatre up town which should play only the ideally best. It failed completely. After that both Adler and Gordin were compelled to compromise. Adler is now associated with a company which presents every kind of play known to the Ghetto, and Gordin has had to introduce horseplay and occasional vaudeville and comic opera into his plays. Even the best of the Yiddish plays contain these excrescences.

But both Adler and Gordin, while remaining practical men, with an eye to the box-office receipts, are working to eliminate more and more what is distasteful to them and impertinent to art. A year ago last autumn Gordin succeeded in having his latest play, _The Slaughter_, performed without any vaudeville accompaniment. He deemed it a triumph, particularly as it was successful, and felt a debt of gratitude to Mrs. Liptzen, who produced the play without insisting on unworthy interpolations.

Gordin now hopes that the days of compromise for him are past, and Adler expects to secure, some day, a theatre in which he can successfully produce only the serious plays of Jewish life. But both these men are pessimistic about the future of dramatic art in the Ghetto. They feel not only the weight of the commercial spirit, but also the imminent death of their stage. For the Jews of the Ghetto as they become Americanized are liable to lose their instinctive Yiddish, and then there will be no more drama in that tongue. The only Yiddish stage, worthy of the name, in the world will probably soon be no more. Jacob Adler consequently regrets that his "jargon" confines him to the Bowery stage, and Jacob Gordin longs to have his plays translated and produced on the English stage.

Mogalesco, the actor, who has, perhaps, the greatest talent of them all, whose dramatic art was born with the Yiddish stage, and who is equally happy in a comedietta by Latteiner or a character-play by Gordin, is, like the true actor, without ideas, but always felicitous in interpretation, and enthusiastically loved by the Jewish play-goers. He and Adler, if they had been fortunate enough to have received a training consistently good, and had acted in a language of wider appeal, would easily have taken their places among those artistically honored by the world. Even as it is they have, with Gordin, with Kessler, with Mrs. Liptzen, Mrs. Kalisch and the rest, the distinction of being prominent figures in the short career of the Yiddish stage, which, founded by Goldfaden in 1876, in Roumania, has received to-day, in New York, its highest and almost exclusive development.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] See text, section on "Realism."

Chapter Six

The Newspapers

Yiddish newspapers have, as compared with their contemporaries in the English language, the strong interest of great freedom of expression. They are controlled rather by passion than by capital. It is their joy to pounce on controlling wealth, and to take the side of the laborer against the employer. A large proportion of the articles are signed, a custom in striking contrast with that of the American newspaper; the prevalence of the unsigned article in the latter is held by the Yiddish journals to illustrate the employer's tendency to arrogate everything to himself, and to make the paper a mere organ of his own policy and opinions. The remark of one of the Jewish editors, that the "Yiddish newspaper's freedom of expression is limited by the Penal Code alone," has its relative truth. It is, of course, equally true that the new freedom of the Jews, who in Russia had no journal in the common Yiddish, runs in these New York papers into an emotional extreme, a license which is apt to distort the news and to give over the editorial pages to virulent party disputes.

Nevertheless, the Yiddish press, particularly the Socialistic branch of it, is an educative element of great value in the Ghetto. It has helped essentially to extend the intellectual horizon of the Jew beyond the boundaries of the Talmud, and has largely displaced the rabbi in the position of teacher of the people. Not only do these papers constitute a forum of discussion, but they publish frequent translations of the Russian, French, and German modern classics, and for the first time lay the news of the world before the poor Jewish people. An event of moment to the Jews, such as a riot in Russia, comes to New York in private letters, and is printed in the papers here often before the version "prepared" by the Russian Government appears in the Russian newspapers. Thus a Jew on the east side received a letter from his father in Russia asking why the reserves there had been called out, and the son's reply gave him the first information about the war in China.

The make-up of the Yiddish newspaper is in a general way similar to that of its American contemporary. The former is much smaller, however, containing only about as much reading matter as would fill six or eight columns of a "down-town" newspaper. The sporting department is entirely lacking, the Jew being utterly indifferent to exercise of any kind. They are all afternoon newspapers, and draw largely for the news upon the morning editions of the American papers. The staff is very limited, consisting of a few editors and, usually, only one reporter for the local news of the quarter. They give more space proportionately than any American paper to pure literature--chiefly translations, tho there are some stories founded on the life of the east side--and to scientific articles of popular character. The interesting feature of these newspapers, however, consists in their rivalries and their differences in principle. This can be presented most simply in a short sketch of their history.

THE CONSERVATIVE JOURNALS

Yiddish journalism in New York began about thirty years ago, and continued in unimportant and unrepresentative newspapers until about twelve years ago, when the _Tageblatt_, the first daily newspaper, and the _Arbeiterzeitung_, an important Socialistic weekly, now defunct, but from which developed the present Socialist dailies, came into existence. The _Tageblatt_, which has maintained its general character from the beginning, is the most conservative, as well as the oldest, of the daily newspapers of the Ghetto. It is national and orthodox, and fights tooth and nail for whatever is distinctively Jewish in customs, literature, language, and religion. It hates the reform sects in religion and the Socialistic tendencies in politics and economics. It is called a "capitalist" paper by its opponents, and is so in the sense that it is more dependent upon its advertisements than the Socialistic papers, which are partly supported by frequent entertainments and balls, to which all their friends go. And yet how little capitalistic is even this paper is shown by the fact that while it takes a non-committal attitude towards strikes in the Ghetto it supports those which occur outside.

Sympathetic with workingmen and not antagonistic to the employers of the Ghetto, the _Tageblatt_ conventionally unites all the Jewish interests it consistently can, and has admittedly the largest circulation of any daily paper in the Ghetto. The Socialists call it "bourgeois" as well as "capitalistic" (which is the most horrid of all words in the quarter). Some call it chauvinistic because of its strong Nationalist tendency, and fanatic because it upholds the religion of the Jews; the Jew who wants first of all to be an American and up-to-date hates the _Tageblatt_ as tending to strengthen the distinction between Jew and Gentile. This paper goes so far in its conservatism that, according to its enemies, it condemns all rabbis who mention the name of Christ in their sermons, and holds to a strict interpretation of Talmudic law in regard to habits of life. "It is only the old-fashioned greenhorns," said the editor of one of the other papers, "coming from the old country, who will stand for it."

THE SOCIALIST PAPERS

The Socialist weekly, the _Arbeiterzeitung_, marked the beginning of the most vital journalism of the east side, and stood in striking contrast to the _Tageblatt_. In the circumstances attending its development into the two existing rival Socialistic papers, the _Vorwärts_ and the _Abendblatt_,[2] a picture of the progressive and passionate character of the Russian-Jewish Socialists of the Ghetto is presented, and some of the most important and picturesque personages. The most educated and intelligent among the Jews of the east side speak Russian, and are reactionary in politics and religion. Coming from Russia, as they do, they have a fierce hatred of government and capitalism, and a more or less Tolstoian love for the peasant and the workingman. The purpose of the organizers of the _Arbeiterzeitung_ Publishing Association was to educate the people, promulgate the doctrines of Socialism, and be altogether the organ of the workman against the employer. From the outset, beginning in 1890, the _Arbeiterzeitung_ was a popular and influential paper.

All the older journals had affected a Germanized Yiddish, which the people did not understand; but the new paper, aiming at the modern heart of the Ghetto, carried on its propaganda in the common jargon of the Jew, the pure Yiddish; and, growing enormously in circulation, forced the language down the throats of the conservative journals. In this popular tongue, the _Arbeiterzeitung_ carried on for five years a most energetic campaign for a broad Socialism, admitting all allied movements in favor of common ownership, directing and encouraging strikes, printing popular scientific articles, realistic stories, dramatic criticisms, and expressing and leading generally the best intelligence of the Yiddish community. With the constituency of which this journal was the organ, Socialism had almost the force and passion of a religious movement. An example of the paper's power was in connection with the Bakers' Union. That organization imposed a label on all bread made in the Ghetto, and insisted that all the bakers should handle only bread of that brand. The _Arbeiterzeitung_ supported the Union so effectively that no other bread could possibly be obtained in the quarter. At the first _Yahresfest_ of the journal, Cooper Union overflowed with enthusiastic workingmen, and long lines of the excluded stretched out down the Bowery to Houston Street.

The man whose name is most intimately connected with the _Arbeiterzeitung_ is its former editor, Abraham Cahan, now known outside of the Ghetto as a writer in English of novels and short stories of Jewish life. He is of the best type of the ethical agitator; a convincing and impassioned speaker; he has held hundreds of workingmen by his clear and strongly expressed ideas, whether written in his paper or spoken at nightly meetings in some poor hall on the east side, where the men gathered after the labors of the day. Twice he went abroad to speak at international labor conferences. At the same time that he supported the definite cause of the Social Democracy, he put the same energy and passion into the education of the people in scientific and literary directions. He spoke and wrote for directness, simplicity, and humanity. In art, therefore, the realistic school of Russian writers, of whom in our generation there have been so many great men, received his fighting allegiance. For five years Cahan put all his intelligence and devotion into this work, and the power of the _Arbeiterzeitung_ was partly his power. To-day, in the Ghetto, where fierce jealousies are rampant, Cahan is admitted to be the man, among many men of energy, intelligence, and devotion, who has wielded most influence in the community.

A literary and dramatic event happened in 1892 which showed the power of Cahan and his Socialist associates in influencing the taste of the Ghetto. It was the production of Gordin's drama _Siberia_. Up to that time, nothing but conventional opera, melodrama, and historical plays had been given on the Bowery, but the day after the performance of _Siberia_ the _Arbeiterzeitung_ contained a long review of the play by Cahan, welcoming it enthusiastically as an event breaking the way for realistic art in the colony. Since then this type of play has taken a prominent place in the repertory at the Yiddish theatres. For five years the _Arbeiterzeitung_ continued its influence, but then came a split among the Socialists, which resulted in two daily papers--the _Abendblatt_ and the _Vorwärts_.

Cahan, Miller and others of the men who had started the _Arbeiterzeitung_ gradually lost control through the share system which had been inaugurated. They desired to maintain a liberal policy towards all labor movements, and to allow the literary and Socialistic societies to be represented in the paper, but the other faction wanted the newspaper to be exclusively an organ of Socialism in its narrow sense. The result was that, soon after the publication of the _Arbeiterzeitung_ as the _Daily Abendblatt_, Cahan resigned the editorship and turned disgusted to English newspapers and to realistic fiction, in which he was absorbed until recently. A few months ago he resumed the editorship of the _Vorwärts_ after an absence of several years from participation in Yiddish journalism. Louis Miller, a witty and energetic Socialist and writer, who had from the first been active in the management of the weekly, was one of the most prominent of the men who continued the fight against the narrower Socialistic element--a fight which resulted in the establishment in 1897 of the other Socialist daily now existing, the _Vorwärts_.

These two papers were, until recently, when the _Abendblatt_ died, bitter rivals. The _Abendblatt_ was devoted to the interests of the Socialist Labor Party while the _Vorwärts_ supports in a general way the Social Democracy; altho it is not so distinctively a party paper as was the _Abendblatt_. The adherents of the latter paper looked upon the _Vorwärts_ as unreliable and the _Vorwärts_ people thought the _Abendblatt_ intolerant. The _Abendblatt_ prided itself on its uncompromising character, and the _Vorwärts_ is content to adapt itself to what it deems the present needs of the Jewish community. Thus the _Vorwärts_ is willing to join hands with reform movements in general, with trades unions, etc., while the _Abendblatt_ stiffly demanded that allied organizations should enter the socialist camp. The triumph of the _Vorwärts_ was therefore a triumph of the more liberal spirits.

Two other daily publications are more distinctively mere newspapers than the two Socialistic organs, and make no consistent attempt to influence public opinion, at least in the definite direction of a "movement." The _Abend-Post_ seems to have no very distinctive policy or character; it is neither Socialistic nor conservative Jewish; the distinction it aims at is to be a newspaper simply, to reflect events and not to determine opinion. In the editor's words, the _Abend-Post_ "is not chauvinistic, like the _Tageblatt_; the Jew does not resound in it. It aims to Americanize the Ghetto, and diminish or ignore the chasm between Jew and Gentile." The editor of one of the Socialist papers calls this sort of thing by another name. "The _Abend-Post_," he said, "is an imitation of American yellow journalism." A fifth daily, the _Herald_, is even less distinctive than the _Abend-Post_. It has no party and is not as sensational as the other. It might, perhaps, be called the Jewish "mugwump."

Recently a sixth daily, _The Jewish World_, has been organized under favorable auspices. Its avowed policy is to bridge the chasm which exists between sons and fathers in the Ghetto; to make the sons more Hebraic and the fathers more American; the sons more conservative and the fathers more progressive. Connected with its management is H. Masliansky, one of the most impassioned orators of the Ghetto.

The question of the circulation figures of these five dailies is a difficult one. About the only thing that seems certain is that the _Tageblatt_ leads in this respect. Even the editors of the other papers admit that, altho they differ as to the absolute figures. The editor of the _Tageblatt_ places his paper's circulation at 40,000, the _Abend-Post_ at 14,000, the _Herald_ next, and the two Socialistic papers last, which ending is a felicitous consummation for the editor of the most conservative newspaper in the Ghetto. The editor of the _Abend-Post_ says the _Tageblatt_ leads with a daily issue of about 30,000, the _Abend-Post_ coming next with 23,700, the _Herald_ and the Socialist papers stringing out in the rear. The editors of the Socialist sheets naturally give a somewhat different order. Mr. Miller of the _Vorwärts_ puts the actual circulation of the _Tageblatt_ at about 17,000; his own paper, the _Vorwärts_, next, with about 14,000 daily except on Saturday, the Jewish Sunday, when the number ranges between 20,000 and 25,000, owing to the fact that the conservative newspapers (_i. e._, those that are not Socialistic) do not appear on that day. The circulation of the rival Socialistic paper, the _Abendblatt_, he puts at about 8,000. In these figures there is no attempt at entire accuracy.

THE ANARCHIST PAPERS

There are several Yiddish weekly and monthly journals published in New York. The _Tageblatt_, _Abend-Post_ and _Herald_ have weekly editions, but by far the most interesting of the papers which are not dailies are the two Anarchistic sheets, the _Freie Arbeiter-stimme_, a weekly, and the _Freie Gesellschaft_, a monthly.

Contrary to the general impression of the character of these people, in which bombs play a large part, the Anarchists of the Ghetto are a gentle and idealistic body of men. The abnormal activity of the Russian Jews in this country is expressed by the Socialists rather than the Anarchists. The latter are largely theorists and aim rather at the education of the people by a journalistic exploitation of their general principles than by a warlike attitude towards specific events of the time. Their attitude is not so partisan as that of the Socialists. They quarrel less among themselves, and are characterized by dreamy eyes and an unpractical scheme of things. They believe in non-resistance and the power of abstract right, and are trying to work out a peaceful revolution, maintaining that the violence often accompanying the movement in Europe is due to the fact that many Anarchists are passionate individuals who in their indignation do not live up to their essentially gentle principles. The Socialists aim at a more strictly centralized government, even than any one existing, since they desire the whole machinery of production and distribution to be in the hands of the community; the Anarchists desire no government whatever, believing that law works against the native dignity of the individual, and trusting to man's natural goodness to maintain order under free conditions. A man's own conscience only can punish him sufficiently, they think. The Socialists go in vividly for politics, while the Anarchists have nothing to do with them. The point on which these two parties agree is the common hatred of private property.

The weekly Anarchistic paper, the _Freie Arbeiter-stimme_, prints about 7,000 copies. Out of this circulation, with the assistance of balls, entertainments, and benefits at the theatres, the paper is able to exist. It pays a salary to only one man, the editor, S. Janowsky, who receives the sum of $13 a week. He is a little dark-haired man, with beautiful eyes, and soft, persuasive voice. He thinks that government is so corrupt that the Anarchists need do little to achieve their ends; that silent forces are at work which will bring about the great day of Anarchistic communism. In his newspaper he tries to educate the common people in the principles of anarchy. The aim is popular, and the more intelligent exploitation of the cause is left to the monthly. The _Freigesellschaft_, with the same principles as the _Freie Arbeiter-stimme_, has a higher literary and philosophical character. The editors and contributors are men of culture and education, and work without any pay. It is still gentler and more pacific in its character than the weekly, of whose comparatively contemporaneous and agitatory method it disapproves calmly; believing, as the editors of the monthly do, that a weekly paper cannot exist without giving the people something other than the ideally best. With reference to the ideally best, a number of serious, contemplative men gather in a basement opposite the Hebrew Institute, the headquarters of the monthly, and there talk about the subjects often discussed within its pages, such as Slavery and Freedom, Darwinism and Communism, Man and Government, the Purpose of Education, etc.,--any broad economic subject admitting of abstract treatment.

The talk of these Anarchists is distinguished by a high idealism, and the unpractical and devoted attitude. One of the foremost among them (they say they have no leaders, as that would be against individual liberty) is Katz, literary editor of the _Vorwärts_, a contributor to the Anarchistic monthly, a former editor of the Anarchistic weekly, and a recently successful playwright in the Ghetto. His play, the _Yiddish Don Quixote_, was produced at the Thalia Theatre on the Bowery. Not since Gordin's _Siberia_ has a play aroused such intelligent interest. The hero is a Quixotic Jew, full of kindness, devotion, and love for his race and for humankind.

SOME PICTURESQUE CONTRIBUTORS