Movies - Israel Rosenberg

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	Movies - Israel Rosenberg

Israel (Yisrol) Rosenberg (ca. 1850 – 1903 or 1904; Yiddish/Hebrew: ישראל ראָזענבערג) founded the first Yiddish theater troupe in Imperial Russia.

A personable "hole-and-corner lawyer" (that is, one without a diploma) and swindler in Odessa (Adler, 1999, 38-41), Rosenberg was part of the migration of merchants and middlemen to Bucharest, Romania at the start of the Russo-Turkish War in 1887. These merchants and middlemen would prove a crucial component of the audience for the nascent professional Yiddish-language theater, consisting at that time only of a single troupe, that of Abraham Goldfaden. Unlike the rest of the migrants, Rosenberg actually joined the troupe and became an actor.

Like many who worked with Goldfaden, he soon chafed under the latter's imperious style and with his countryman Jacob Spivakovsky, put together his own travelling troupe and set out for the eastern part of Romania. At first they did well, but with the end of the war much of their audience returned to Russia; after running through their money playing in the provinces, they turned up nearly broke in Odessa, where there was a pre-made audience of those who had already seen Yiddish theater in Romania during the recent war.

There, in spring 1878, Rosenberg obtained some small backing and formed a troupe including Spivakovsky; Broder singers "Schmul with the Hoarse Throat", "Boris Budgoy" (Boris Holtzerman), Laizer Duke, Aaron Schrage; Jacob Adler, at that time new to performing; Sophia (Sonya) Oberlander, who later married Adler; and Masha Moskovich, whom Adler in his memoir describes as "a red-gold-haired beauty"; and various others, including singers from a local synagogue choir. Their first performance was at Akiva's restaurant, and consisted of two light vaudevilles and Goldfaden's very early play "The Recruits". The cast was all male, because the two women considered this an insufficiently respectable venue; that was soon remedied by renting the Remesleni Club, an 800-seat theater that had hosted many German-language performances. There they played Goldfaden's "Grandmother and Granddaughter" with yet another Broder singer, named Weinstein, clean-shaven for the first time in his adult life, as the grandmother and Masha Moskovich as the granddaughter.

After several more successes in Odessa, most notably a production of Breindele Cossack
starring Jacob Adler and Sonya Oberlander (then performing under the name Sonya Michelson), their run was cut short by the news that Goldfaden, whose plays they were using without permission, was coming with his troupe to Odessa, and that he had booked the Remesleni Club out from under them. Goldfaden's own account is that he was coming their at the urging of his father; Adler attributes it to Rosenberg and Spivakovsky's "enemies". Rosenberg, never the most ethical of men, hired Goldfaden's watchmaker brother Naphtal, renamed his troupe "the Goldfaden Company", and withdrew from Odessa to tour the hinterland, with Sonya's brother Alexander as an advance man.

In Kherson, a granary was adapted into a theater by a wealthy retired soldier, Lipitz Beygun, who even imported first-rate scenery from Spain. Here they acquired a new prompter, Avrom Zetzer—whom Adler describes as a "learned" man who had previously fulfilled the same function for Goldfaden in Romania— and virtuoso Zorach Vinyavich became leader of their orchestra; Vinyavich's 16-year-old daughter Bettye also joined the troupe to play juvenile roles.

Returning to Odessa, they found Goldfaden "as difficult to approach as an emperor". When they finally managed to get an audience, Goldfaden agreed to allow Rosenberg's company to function as a provincial touring company, but with a different brother of Goldfaden's, Tulya, not merely on board but officially head of the troupe. Goldfaden also snagged Spivakovsky for his own Odessa company.

With Tulya in charge there were, as Adler wrote, "no more communistic shares, no more idealistic comradeship". They played a month in Chişinău, where people slept in the courtyard to be the first to get tickets, and a 16-year-old David Kessler was almost accepted to join the company as an extra, but was prevented from doing so by his father. Later they toured to Yelizavetgrad (now Kirovohrad), where they were joined by Israel and Annetta Grodner, who had re-joined Goldfaden in Odessa, but then had a falling out.

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