The Krakow Yiddish Theatre Postcards – a Crowdsourcing Experiment

David Mazower

Chaim Yoyel Interjects with a Kiss

Think of the pulsating energy of Motown’s dawn in Detroit. Or the soaring sounds of early jazz in New Orleans. And now imagine if all that remained of those transformative moments in American music history were a few faded black and white photographs and some scratchy 78 discs.

That’s the reality Yiddish theatre historians face as we try to reconstruct the early decades of our subject. For Detroit and New Orleans, substitute Lemberg, Czernowitz, Kishinev, and Odessa. As the sparks of early Yiddish vaudeville and operetta spread like wildfire across the Jewish world, these centers gained similarly storied reputations in the Yiddish-speaking world. And, as regional powerhouses and wellsprings of new performing talent whose stars frequently moved on to bigger cities and bigger stages, they played a similar role to their American counterparts.

The province of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian empire contained some of the most intensely Jewish towns and cities in the whole of Europe. In places like Lemberg, Czernowitz, Brody, Tarnopol, Przemysl, and Krakow, the proportion of Jewish residents in the late nineteenth century ranged from 30% to 75%. (Today the region is divided between Poland and Ukraine with different versions of place names in both languages).

No surprise then that Yiddish entertainers emerged from these towns in their hundreds from the 1870s onwards, often from poor and deeply orthodox families. These actors, singers and musicians were a new breed: earthy, quick-witted and khutspedik (cheeky, self-confident). They parlayed precocious talents as mimics and synagogue choristers into careers that often began by leaving home in their early teens. Their stages included courtyards, taverns, outdoor wine gardens, cafes, improvised theatres in fire stations, and local clubs.

What evidence remains of this incubatory moment in Jewish entertainment history?

The short answer is almost nothing. Few performers or local impresarios could afford to hire a photographer to take onstage publicity shots. So all we have are actors’ memoirs, some old 78s of Yiddish music theatre songs (mostly recorded by actors from Gimpel’s Yiddish theatre in Lemberg) and the occasional tattered song-sheet.

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