Movies - Abraham Goldfaden

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	Movies - Abraham Goldfaden

Abraham Goldfaden (July 24, 1840 – January 9, 1908), born Abraham Goldenfoden (first name alternately Avram, Avron, Avrohom, Avrom, or Avrum, last name alternately Goldfadn; the Romanian spelling Avram Goldfaden is common) was a Russian-born Jewish poet and playwright, author of some 40 plays. In 1876 he founded in Romania what is generally credited as the world's first professional Yiddish-language theater troupe. He was also responsible for the first Hebrew-language play performed in the United States.

Jacob Sternberg called him "the Prince Charming who woke up the lethargic Romanian Jewish culture". Israil Bercovici wrote that in his works "...we find points in common with what we now call 'total theater'. In many of his plays he alternates prose and verse, pantomime and dance, moments of acrobatics and some of jonglerie, and even of spiritualism..."

Youth and early manhood

Goldfaden was born in Starokonstantinov. His birthdate is sometimes given as July 12, following the "Old Style" calendar in use at that time in Russia. He attended a Jewish religious school (a cheder), but his middle class family was strongly associated with the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, and his father, a watchmaker , arranged that he receive private lessons in German and Russian. As a child, he is said to have appreciated and imitated the performances of wedding jesters and Brody singers to the degree that he acquired the nickname Avromele Badkhen, "Abie the Jester". In 1857 he began studies at the government-run rabbinical school at Zhytomyr, from which he emerged in 1866 as a teacher and a poet (with some experience in amateur theater), but he never led a congregation.

Goldfaden's first published poem was called "Progress"; his New York Times obituary described it as "a plea for Zionism years before that movement developed". In 1865 he published his first book of poetry, Zizim u-Ferahim (in Hebrew); The Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1906) says that "Goldfaden's Hebrew poetry... possesses considerable merit, but it has been eclipsed by his Yiddish poetry, which, for strength of expression and for depth of true Jewish feeling, remains unrivaled." The first book of verse in Yiddish was published in 1866, and in 1867 he took a job teaching in Simferopol. A year later, he moved on to Odessa (in Ukraine), where he lived initially in his uncle's house, where a cousin who was a good pianist helped him set some of his poems to music.

In Odessa, Goldfaden renewed his acquaintance with fellow Yiddish-language writer Yitzhak Yoel Linetsky, whom he knew from Zhytomyr and met Hebrew-language poet Eliahu Mordechai Werbel (whose daughter Paulina would become Goldfaden's wife) and published poems in the newspaper Kol-Mevaser. He also wrote his first two plays, Die Tzwei Sheines (The Two Neighbors) and Die Murneh Sosfeh (Aunt Susie), included with some verses in a modestly successful 1869 book Die Yidene (The Jewish Woman), which went through three editions in three years. At this time, he and Paulina were living mainly on his meagre teacher's salary of 18 rubles a year, supplemented by giving private lessons and taking a job as a cashier in a hat shop.

In 1875, Golfaden headed for Munich, intending to study medicine. This did not work out, and he headed for Lvov/Lemberg in Galicia, where he again met up with Linetsky, now editor of a weekly paper, Isrulik or Der Alter Yisrulik (which was well reputed, but was soon shut by the government). A year later, he moved on to Chernivtsi in Bukovina, where he edited the Yiddish-language daily Dos Bukoviner Israelitishe Folksblatt. The limits of the economic sense of this enterprise can be gauged from his inability to pay a registration fee of 3000 ducats. He tried unsuccessfully to operate the paper under a different name, but soon moved on to Iaşi.

Iaşi

Arriving in Iaşi in 1876, Goldfaden was fortunate to be better known as a good poet — many of whose poems had been set to music and had become popular songs — than as a less-than-successful businessman. When he sought funds from Yitzhak Librescu for another newspaper, Librescu was uninterested in that proposition. Librescu's wife remarked that Yiddish-language journalism was just a way to starve; she suggested that there would be a lot more of a market for Yiddish-language theater. Librescu offered Goldfaden 100 francs for a public recital of his songs in the garden of Shimen Mark, Gradina Pomul Verde ("the Green Fruit-Tree Garden").

Instead of a simple recital, Goldfaden expanded this into something of a vaudeville; either this or their first indoor performance later that year in Botoşani is generally counted as the first professional Yiddish theater performance. However, the nature of his cast indicates exactly how nominal it is to choose one performance as "the first": Goldfaden's first actor, Israel Grodner, was already singing Goldfaden's songs (and others) in the salons of Iaşi.

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