Zina Rapel (1884-1943)

August 28, 2025 by Zachary Baker

Excerpts from Fir doyres idish teater: di lebns-geshikhte fun Zina Rapel (Cuatro generaciones de teatro israelita), by Nechemias Zucker (Buenos Aires: Eygener farlag, 1944)

Translated and with an introduction and commentaries by Zachary M. Baker.

Zalmen Zylbercweig’s Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre; 6 vols., 1931-1969) has significant gaps in its coverage of Yiddish actors who performed in Latin America—many of whom were veterans of the European Yiddish stage. One of these neglected figures is Zina Rapel (or Rappel; 1884-1943), who dictated her memoirs to Nechemias Zucker (Nekhemye Tsuker)¹ between 1941 and 1943. Zucker’s original intention was to publish Rapel’s biography on the occasion of her sixtieth birthday in March 1944. Her unanticipated death led Zucker to recast the narrative in the first person. The two volumes were published posthumously in Buenos Aires in 1944 and are accessible online via the Yiddish Book Center and the Internet Archive.²

At the time of her death Zina Rapel was one of the senior members of the community of Yiddish actors in Argentina. When she arrived in that country in the late 1920s, however, the glory years of her acting career were already behind her.

The photograph of Zina Rapel that adorns the frontispiece of volume 1 of Fir doyres idish teater bears the caption, “Zina Rapel, di mame fun idishn teater in Argentine” (Zina Rapel, the mother of the Yiddish theatre in Argentina). The caption can be interpreted variously: (1) It alludes to the maternal roles that became her hallmark as she reached middle age, following her heyday as a prima donna in Eastern Europe. (2) It also evokes the memory of Ester-Rokhl Kaminska (1870-1925), the illustrious leading lady of the Polish Yiddish stage, alongside whom Zina Rapel had once performed in Warsaw. (Kaminska’s monument in Warsaw’s Jewish cemetery includes the simple inscription “Mame.”) (3) And it testifies to Zina’s deep devotion to her three daughters, themselves Yiddish actresses.³

Born into a theatrical family in Berdychiv, from earliest childhood Zina Cipkus (Tsipkus) was intimately familiar with the itinerant life of the blondzhende shtern—the wandering stars of the Yiddish theatre. As she matured as a professional actor (after a brief and unhappy first marriage to the creepy chiromancer [palm reader] Markus Teks) Zina married the actor and theatre manager Leyzer Rapel (1868-1921). She and Leyzer spent five years with the Elizeum Theatre company in Warsaw, following which they moved to Kyiv and then Odesa, by which time Zina Rapel had become a star. Had it not been for the Great War and the Bolshevik Revolution, the couple might well have remained in Odesa.

Instead, the Rapels returned to Warsaw. Malvina, Leyzer’s daughter from a previous marriage, had already become a well-known actress. Zina’s three daughters Tsili (from her marriage to Teks), Esther, and Anna (from her marriage to Rapel) would subsequently join the “family business” as well. After Leyzer’s death, Zina joined troupes that traveled across Poland and Romania; from there she proceeded to London, South Africa, Brazil (where her parents, Jakub and Ita Cipkus, had settled), and ultimately Argentina. By then in her forties, Zina Rapel had reluctantly “graduated” to “mother” roles—and she was often joined on stage by her own daughters.

As its title implies, Fir doyres idish teater portrays a multigenerational clan of Yiddish actors through the eyes of one of its central figures, Zina Rapel. The bulk of her memoir covers her upbringing and participation in Yiddish theatre troupes in tsarist Russia and newly independent Poland. About half of volume 2 is devoted to her and her daughters’ lives in South America. The chapters selected here reflect the upheavals that ultimately propelled Rapel and her family to pursue their chosen vocation oceans and continents away from where they started out. Here and elsewhere in the memoir, Rapel addresses the material privations and social isolation that she experienced in South America. She also touches upon the ferocious competition between the impresarios who ran the theatre troupes in Argentina and Brazil. In addition, these excerpts reveal Rapel’s intense pride and emotional investment in her daughters’ artistic aspirations.

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[In the following two chapters, Zina Rapel recounts her experiences in Odesa during the months following the Bolshevik Revolution (November 7, 1917). Disorder and chaos reigned on the streets of that city, and its heavily Jewish Moldavanka district suffered constant depredations by armed robbers, looters, and lynch mobs. Zina had met with great success at one of the theatres that Leyzer was managing, but the street violence now made it impossible for their performances to continue. Under these conditions, two types of Jewish self-defense forces took form to combat the armed gangs that roamed the Moldavanka and other predominantly Jewish districts. The first involved activists from the political left; the second comprised members of Odesa’s Jewish underworld, led by the notorious Mishka Yaponchik (Meir-Volf Vinnitsky; 1891-1919),⁴ reputedly the model for Isaac Babel’s memorable character Benya Krik. As Rapel observes here and elsewhere in her memoir, gangsters and other dubious types were avid fans of the Yiddish theatre in Eastern Europe before World War I. This was also the case in other places where the Yiddish theatre flourished.]

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The Moldavanka (Odesa) and Mishka Yaponchik

There were days when we experienced extraordinary levels of fear. Patrols of bandits came by, demanding that [Leyzer] Rapel be handed over to them. Rapel was kept hidden and we were barely able to buy off the bandits by surrendering whatever of our property they might lay their hands on.

Violent robberies of Jewish houses increased from day to day, and the organized Jewish self-defense [units] had few weapons to protect the Jewish homes. Jews were starting to feel like sheep being led to slaughter, until suddenly we learned that when a gang of thugs had attempted to attack the Jewish Moldavanka district, the bandits had met with such strong resistance that they no longer dared to enter it.

A group of Jewish youths dashed over to the Moldavanka, where they learned that the heroic Jewish gangsters [untervelt-heldn], led by Mishka Yaponchik, had assaulted an ammunition depot when the [Bolshevik] revolution broke out and instantly emptied it of its contents. So, the gangsters now possessed an arsenal of weapons and bombs so large that they could obliterate Odesa.

Mishka Yaponchik promptly issued an order that the organized Jewish self-defense be given weapons—rifles, revolvers, hand-grenades, and bombs. Mishka also sent patrols over the Jewish streets outside of the Moldavanka—and woe be unto the bandits who came across Mishka’s patrols. They cut the thuggish Black Hundred gangs to shreds.

Aware of his power, Mishka Yaponchik was no longer content to remain within his own domain in the Moldavanka. He organized patrols that not only protected Jewish homes but also plundered the rich Jewish households, under the pretext that money and other things were needed for the poor households whose inhabitants were dying of starvation. In addition, his gangs even levied “taxes” on wealthy Jews in order to sustain their army against the pogromists.

Mishka Yaponchik, who at that point was the chief of the Jewish—and even the non-Jewish—gangsters of Odesa, was also the first to remember the Yiddish actors. It was he who requisitioned a large wagon containing bread, ordering that actors be permitted to come and take as much as they wanted.

The Yiddish Theatre and the Gangsters

It was no secret that the Jewish gangsters frequented the Yiddish theatre very often. That was the case in Warsaw and in other cities, and in Odesa as well.

Thanks to the gangsters, brawls erupted quite often in Yiddish theatres everywhere, so attempts were made to banish the ruffians. However, they were so enamored of the Yiddish theatre that they would not retreat. Indeed, in order to be granted admittance many of them took it upon themselves to keep the peace and prevent thefts inside the theatres.

Elsewhere [in the memoir] I’ve mentioned an incident that occurred in Warsaw. That was when a thief returned a wallet that he had stolen, in order to prevent any harm to the theatre’s interests. There were many such incidents, not only in Warsaw but everywhere else, including Odesa.

To be sure, whenever more respectable family types attended the theatre, the “heroes” were held in lower esteem—and had to maintain a lower profile. The attendance of large numbers of families varied according to the nature of the repertory that was being performed. However, since it was not possible to perform only the better types of plays (because they didn’t generate enough income to meet expenses), the gangsters continued to be a regular (and abundant) presence at the Yiddish theatres.

And then, in that difficult time—when we didn’t dare to show ourselves on the street—Mishka Yaponchik ordered us to hold a benefit performance on behalf of one of the gangsters who had lost both legs during a fight with the pogromists.

There was absolutely no point in refusing the order; moreover, his gang demanded that both Pepi Littman⁵ and I—along with a large troupe—perform in a play that would “bring down the house.”

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Rapel attempted to extricate us, saying that no theatres were available and that nobody would come. However, the gangsters’ riposte was that they’d clear out a hall and a theatre would indeed become available in the Moldavanka. And as for the audience? There’d be enough of them to fill up the theatre.

And so, one fine evening, as bullets whistled through the air, two large trucks came by our house. Several “soldiers” in tattered uniforms—armed to the teeth and with fixed bayonets pointed at our chests – jumped down from the trucks and, as Mishka Yaponchik had ordered, “invited” us to accompany them to the theatre.

Pepi Littman and some actors were already on one of the trucks. As for me and all of the actors and actresses who either lived with us or just happened to be there, we were hoisted up onto the other truck, and – tally-ho! We were off to perform a cheerful operetta at the Yiddish theatre.

I believe that a hundred books wouldn’t suffice to describe what we went through during that one evening.

The hall was already packed to the gills and all of the exits were crowded with men (and only men) wearing ragged military uniforms and armed to the teeth. When Pepi Littman stepped out onto the stage and caught sight of the scraggily stubbled faces of the spectators in the front row, with garlands of grenades draped around their necks, and revolvers and daggers in their belts, she choked up out of fear and was unable even to open her mouth.

So, one member of the “audience” jumped up and shouted, “Hey, what’s going on here – you think you’re too important to sing for us? You there up on stage, give ‘er a shot!”

Hearing such language, Pepi put her initial terror behind her and in a second moment of panic she commenced to sing so loudly, leaping frenetically from one song to the next, that it seemed as though she intended to go through her entire repertory.

However, as she continued singing, she started to calm down; she gradually recovered and eased into her role. At that point it was time for me to come out on stage, and if a grave had suddenly opened up in front of me, I wouldn’t have been more scared than in the moment when I caught sight of the “esteemed public” before whom I was to display my art.

But the show must go on, so we continued the performance. By the time the second act came around, each of us had grown accustomed to the situation. But just as we were about to begin the third act, a whistle was heard and within the blink of an eye not a single one of Yaponchik’s gang remained in the auditorium. Outside, we heard shooting and bomb explosions, and it turned out that thugs had attempted yet again to invade the Moldavanka—and once again they were given such a thrashing that they left behind entire mounds of corpses and a considerable amount of weaponry.

In mortal terror, we removed our makeup, and as the shooting proceeded in full force outside, three armed individuals led us out a rear entrance, hoisted us up onto the trucks, and returned us back home.

[Zina Rapel immigrated to Argentina in the second half of the 1920s and was joined there by her daughter Tsili Teks and Tsili’s husband Nathan Klinger. Over the years, they performed on the Yiddish stages of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil. However, Rapel’s two younger daughters, Esther and Anna (Andzhe, or Andzhele in the affectionate diminutive)—both still in their teens and both also destined for careers as Yiddish actors—remained with relatives in Warsaw until the means were found to bring them over to Argentina as well. The following chapters cover Esther and Anna’s arrival and their theatre debuts in Buenos Aires during the late 1920s. In this section, Zina Rapel also introduces us to two young actors who often joined her on the Yiddish stages of Buenos Aires, Ben Zion and Shoshana (Susana) Berdichevsky.⁶]

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My Children Esther and Andzhe

My life story would be incomplete were I to neglect what I went through while waiting until my children came to Argentina.

If I were to limit the account of my longings, sufferings, and struggles just to the period between my decision to remain here and bring over my children, and their eventual arrival, these alone could occupy an entire book. For that reason, in these memoirs I must concentrate on emphasizing the most important and sensitive moments of that brief period.

My “fortunes” in Argentina did not offer me any possibility to save up a little money for my children’s travel expenses. Not only was I unable to save any money, but any funds I previously possessed had been exhausted, and I considered myself lucky to have a slice of bread and, from time to time, a few pesos to send to support my parents in Brazil.

And how great was my joy whenever I received reports about my children—how gifted they were and how much artistic recognition they were receiving in Jewish Warsaw’s finest circles.

These greetings from afar were conveyed to me by various guest artists here who had performed in Warsaw, and their reports also led the local Yiddish theatre impresarios to become interested in these two young rising stars. But somehow, they didn’t dare risk the large expenses that would be needed to bring them to Argentina, fearing that they were still too young, plus who knows whether they would be capable of playing leading roles.

As the favorable reports about them continued to pour in, I missed them all the more, and my longings dragged out until the impresario of the Teatro Argentino [Adolf Mide⁷] decided to bring them over. Needless to say, there was no lack of difficulties because my children were still underage; it was necessary to supply documents by telegram and request supervision for the children while they were aboard the ship.⁸

Finally, the day came when news arrived by telegram that the children had departed from Warsaw en route to Argentina. Day and night, I begged God to get my children through the sea voyage without incident so that I might live to see them again.

 Over the course of an entire month, I couldn’t think or speak about anything other than my children. I imagined them the way I had last seen them in Warsaw before my departure to [South] Africa, and each night, in my dreams, I clasped them to my heart. Finally, the day and the hour finally arrived when I went down to the port to await the ship that would fulfill my longings and bring to this yearning mother her two lovely and gifted children.

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Ben-Zion Berdichevsky and His “Two” Children

Quite a number of actors came to the port to meet the ship that day.

Guest actors for three Yiddish theatres in Buenos Aires were expected aboard this ship. So, the impresarios, together with several artists from each troupe, came to greet their artists as soon as they set foot on Argentine soil.

The members of each troupe clustered in separate groups and there was no lack of gossip, barbs, and jokes from one group at the expense of another.

When we arrived at the port, there was still not even the slightest sign of a ship. However, it soon became visible in the distance and my heart began to jump with joyous anticipation and impatience.

When the ship approached the port, I suddenly caught wind of a powerful male voice shouting, “Rapel! RAPEL!”—followed immediately by, “ZINA RAPEL!”

Hearing my name being called out, it suddenly seemed to me that I wasn’t awaiting someone who was supposed to arrive on the ship. Rather, it was me traveling aboard the ship and someone on shore whom I didn’t know was calling my name, just as had been the case when I arrived in [South] Africa and later on in Argentina.

And in fact, my thoughts were confused. I felt as if I were swaying and everything around me was spinning, just as if I were actually standing aboard the deck of a wobbly ship. I don’t know whether I was experiencing a kind of lightheadedness or was just overcome with joy; what I do know is that I didn’t hear or see anything else. I didn’t even realize that someone had led me closer to the edge of the pier. I snapped out of it only when I saw my golden children coming down the ship’s gangway.

With longing and love, my glances devoured these two blooming flowers who moved with such ease and happiness as they descended the gangway—and it took a little while before I noticed that walking together with my children were a solidly built young man and two children. Once again, I heard someone shouting, “Rapel!” and I saw that it was this young man who had been calling out my name.

Who was this young man with his two children—the pretty mademoiselle and the little boy? The question flashed through my mind only for a second, because right away my own children were in my arms; our three bodies embraced so strongly as if we were one, and I was oblivious to the rest of the world.

I don’t know how long I was standing there hugging my children without moving. What I do know is that when one member of my group gently tore me away from them, their golden blond heads had become moistened by my tears, and it took a while before I recovered my poise.

I introduced my daughters to the impresarios of the Teatro Argentino, who had enabled them to come, and they introduced me to the man who had called me from the ship: Ben Zion Berdichevsky, plus his wife Shoshana and their little boy Moyshele. My children mentioned that Berdichevsky and his wife had kept an eye on them during the entire voyage and displayed the warmest friendship to them.

I took a closer look at Shoshana and couldn’t help but laugh out loud. “This is your wife?! I couldn’t help but think that you were accompanied here by two children! Just take a look at this woman…” Shoshana really did look like a young girl who was just approaching maturity, so we laughed hard—and while laughing, I thanked them for the friendship that they had shown my children throughout the voyage.

My Children’s Debuts

The Teatro Argentino was one of the most beautiful theatres in the center of the city, and when my children arrived only five days remained before the date when the season was to begin.

So, understandably, there was not even a moment for me to fully enjoy my children’s presence, because they had to plunge right into their rehearsals.

For Esther’s debut the difficult operetta Rosita⁹ had been selected, with Esther in the title role. And even though rehearsals proceeded at a feverish pace over those five days I feared that there would not be enough rehearsals for such an operetta. However, Esther shone at her debut and, in addition to the public’s applause and ovations, she was admired by the actors themselves for her rapid adjustment to the role of a Spanish girl—and for learning so much music so quickly.

Esther’s debut was a resounding success and immediately thereafter preparations began for Andzhele’s debut, where she was to appear as Yankele.¹⁰

It would be silly for one’s mother to resort to such praise for her own children, but these are my memoirs after all—and indeed, the newspapers wrote about my children’s premieres back then, as is doubtless attested in the archives of Di idishe tsaytung and Di prese. So, why shouldn’t I boast about the maternal joy that I felt and experienced then?

For after all, they were merely children at the time! Esther hadn’t yet turned eighteen and Andzhele was still truly a child. So, if Esther was already able to show that she could truly sink her teeth into such a prima donna role (one requiring a lot of talent and a considerable amount of skill), and if Andzhele (who was still at an age where girls like her go to school) demonstrated that she could play Yankele so well that the audience wouldn’t allow her to leave the stage, then why shouldn’t a mother be thrilled with her memories of such joys? What, after all, is the life of an actress, if not the memories of yesterday’s success and glory—and naturally I feel double the pride in the fact that if I have enough bright memories of my own successes, I have also lived to take pride in the successes of my children who, like me, have consecrated themselves to the Yiddish theatre!

Today I am speaking calmly about those days of maternal joy and pride; only now and again do I wipe away a tear—and my heart is uplifted by the feelings that these memories arouse in me. But, as calm as I now feel, I am unable to continue without portraying how at the time I wavered between hope and fear, just as I had once trembled at my own first performances. And my children’s success lifted me to the same heights where I once floated during my own successes.

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[Yiddish actors in Argentina during the late 1920s and early 1930s faced numerous challenges. Two impresarios, Adolf Mide and Isaac Nuguer,¹¹ vied for audiences’ patronage in a shifting array of theatre venues. The composition of the commercial troupes was in a constant state of flux. Guest stars from abroad rotated in and out, laying claim to the lion’s share of the box-office proceeds and leaving the resident actors with very slim pickings—whenever they were paid at all. High levels of unemployment often prevailed, and before 1932, the Yiddish actors lacked a strong union that might safeguard their interests. For all that, Buenos Aires had become one of the world’s great centers of Yiddish theatre – and a coveted destination for actors visiting from overseas. In these chapters, Zina Rapel shares some of her observations of the Yiddish theatre scene in Buenos Aires at the beginning of the 1930s. She identifies some of the challenges posed by the “star system” and introduces two guest stars, Solomon and Clara Stramer, who toured Argentina in 1931 and later settled there, becoming fixtures of the Yiddish theatre in that country.]

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Isaac Nuguer Hires Me for the Teatro Excelsior

Even before I set out on my tour of the provinces [in late 1929], I had a conversation with the theatre impresario Isaac Nuguer and he promised that if he managed to get a theatre, he would remember me.

And Nuguer kept his promise. As soon as I returned from the provinces, Nuguer hired me for the Teatro Excelsior.

For me, this was a great triumph because back then, chaos reigned in the Yiddish theatrical milieu.

There was no actors’ union to watch over business; it had been liquidated due to bad management.¹² A corrupt atmosphere was prevailing in the theatre business, and Isaac Nuguer was then the only one with an excellent reputation as a responsible theatre impresario.

The unscrupulous machinations of impresarios and actors themselves led to a situation where contracts were ignored, and one theatre might lure away actors from another theatre. Moreover, an impresario had to keep a close eye even on the “stars” from [North] America who had contracts with his theatre. He needed to travel to Montevideo to meet up with the star, in order to avert a situation where the impresario from another theatre might “unshackle” the star for a higher price.

Isaac Nuguer stood behind a solid business; he hired a first-class troupe for the Excelsior, which at the time was the [only] permanent Yiddish theatre, and he brought over the actor and playwright Joseph Markovitch as guest artist from London.¹³

The troupe, led by Markovitch, comprised Berdichevsky and his wife, [Samuel] Iris and his wife, [Leo] Halpern and his wife Esther Lustik, Samuel Silberberg, Sam Weller, Sarah Sylvia, Adolf Straitman, M. Peltz, Rabinov, Klatzkin, and me.¹⁴

While our theatre was already engaged in preparations for the season premiere, other impresarios plotted one against one another and snatched people up. And so it happened that a good, first-class troupe that included my children was forced to go to Rosario and attempted to perform there over a complete theatre season.

At the Teatro Excelsior I finally began to catch my breath after the difficult months of suffering and pain.

Isaac Nuguer treated me with considerable respect, and Markovitch admired me so much that, just for me, he produced his play A Mother’s Tears, in which I played the leading role. In so doing, Markovitch elevated me to my former artistic glory.

But I received bad news from Rosario, which intruded upon the joys of my work at the Excelsior.

The efforts in Rosario were unsuccessful and the troupe, including my children, went hungry. I pondered how to help my children, and that robbed me of my tranquility.

Once again, I began to miss my children. As happy as I was with the news that Tsili had given birth to a daughter—and that [Nathan] Klinger named the child Esther-Rokhl (making me the grandmother of a child who bore the name of the mother of the Yiddish theatre in Poland and Russia), I nevertheless could take no pleasure in this joyous event, knowing that Tsili was not with me and, like Esther and Andzhele, she was poverty-stricken.¹⁵

Aware of my anguish, everyone at the Teatro Excelsior treated me with kindness and displayed so much friendship that this alone gave me the strength to endure my longing and heartbreak.

Isaac Nuguer had no reason to regret hiring me for his theatre. Still, the gratitude that I feel toward him will always glow in my heart because, thanks to him alone my situation in Argentina stabilized. I performed throughout the entire season; after Markovitch came Samuel Goldenberg, and he too treated me with respect and appreciation. Following him, Jack Rechtzeit came¹⁶ and he likewise gave me suitable roles and—most importantly—before the season ended, Nuguer assured me that I would perform with him during the coming season.

So, I was able to perform without interruption and even had a promise for the new season. Meanwhile, all around us the Yiddish theatre milieu was a web of intrigues and unscrupulous machinations, because there was no actors’ union to safeguard the interests of actors and the profession at large. At the same time, my children were going hungry in Rosario and were forced to relocate from there to Brazil together with their entire troupe in order to find work and bread. For me, it was a major source of pain that my children had to drag themselves from place to place, like wandering stars, and seek out their meager rations along those errant paths.

Shoshana Berdichevsky As My Child

During hours of reflection concerning the fate of my children, I quite often bemoaned my misfortune that, despite everything, after God had finally helped me and I brought over my children, they still were compelled to wander from place to place—and I was once again not together with them. In such days of painful longing, it often transpired that, while seated in my dressing room between one entrance and the next, I sank into a kind of apathy—or rather, a melancholy which anesthetized my thoughts – and I’d sit like that as if in a hypnotic state. The stage manager sometimes had to call out several times to remind me that it was time for me to step onto the stage. And (amazingly enough!) as soon as I snapped out of my stupor and went out on stage, nothing else existed for me. I was inside my role, and my personal feelings had ceded their place to the interpretation of the role that I was assigned to perform.

Once, while I was sitting in my dressing room in a trancelike state, I suddenly heard someone calling me so quietly, practically in a whisper, “Mama, Mama…”—and I sat up with a start. It seemed to me that my Andzhele was calling after me so gently, but no, it wasn’t Andzhele. Rather, it was Shoshana Berdichevsky, my dear little friend—Berdichevsky’s wife whom, at the ship, I had mistaken for his child.

I was so overcome by her gentle summons, “Mama,” that I put my arms around her and pressed her to my heart, for I wanted her to calm my longing for my children. Shoshana clasped and caressed me, and seeing tears in her childlike, smiling eyes, I broke out crying. Shoshana continued whispering, “Mama, Mama…” and clinging to me she told me that she had never experienced the tenderness of a mother’s embrace or maternal affection, because her mother died while she was still an infant.

That is how a mother who missed her children and a child who longed for a mother’s affection held their extended embrace in a dressing room at the Teatro Excelsior. The child whispered, “Mama,” and the mother stroked and caressed the child and responded, “My child, you are my child. From now on I am adopting you as my daughter and I will consider you my child, just like Tsili, Esther, and Andzhele.”

And since then, I have indeed considered her my child, and whenever I recall the overflowing emotions of mother to child and child to mother that reigned that day in the dressing room, I feel just as I did then. I rejoice at each of Shoshana’s successes, both on stage and in her private life, just as I rejoice at each success of my other children. And if only I had a large fortune to leave as an inheritance, I would specify that Shoshana ought to receive an equal share with my other children.

Esther and Andzhe Are Together with Me

Events continued to move apace.

The [1930] season at the Excelsior had ended; our troupe traveled to the provinces and, apart from our meager earnings there, I received the sad tidings from Brazil that things were going even worse for my children: While their mother was wandering aimlessly among the provincial towns of Argentina, the same was true for her children, only among Brazilian towns.

Yet, how different it was here from there, in the old country!

Whenever I’d leave Warsaw to go on tour, I knew that I was leaving my children at home, in a household filled with abundance. Whereas now my children were already grown and had followed the same difficult path with the Yiddish theatre as I. But we were not proceeding along this path together but, rather, mother and children were separated by such great distances. 

And how great was my happiness when, still traveling around the provinces, I received news from Isaac Nuguer that for the coming season he had rented the large, centrally located theatre, the Teatro Nuevo, and I would be part of his troupe. However, my joy was not complete, and my longing still did not cease. I prayed to God that our theatre people in Buenos Aires would realize that my children were young and talented actresses who were needed by the Yiddish theatre, and that it was a crime for them to endure the ordeals of wandering.

I found it even harder when we returned to Buenos Aires from the provinces and saw that things were in full swing. Various plans were being hatched for the coming season, yet my children were not even mentioned.

The tour in the provinces impoverished me so much that I was compelled to rent a small room. I felt so lonely, and I cried so hard that it is a wonder that my entire (albeit modest) life force wasn’t spent.

And so, the days and weeks passed until, one day, Isaac Nuguer sent me a request for my children’s addresses in Brazil, because he wanted to hire them for the Nuevo.

“I will be together with my children!” My heart began to sing.

And just a few days later, Nuguer let me know that he had telegraphed my children Esther and Andzhele to engage them, and they would soon arrive from Brazil.

Solomon and Clara Stramer

The day approached when we would need to begin rehearsals at the Teatro Nuevo.

The Teatro Nuevo was one of the most beautiful of the centrally located theatres of Buenos Aires. (The Municipality subsequently purchased the theatre and changed the name from “Nuevo” to “Corrientes,” dedicating it as a municipally owned public theatre.¹⁷)

Only a theatre producer as capable as Isaac Nuguer could have managed to obtain the “Nuevo” for Yiddish theatre.¹⁸ But in order to get the theatre, many thousands of pesos were required, so Nuguer lined up a backer, Sr. Moishe Berestovoy, who was the company’s de facto director—although he didn’t want his name to be publicized.

The rehearsals commenced on an imposing scale.

Isaac Nuguer had hired the Stramer family, and my children arrived the same day as the Stramers. Rehearsals got underway immediately, under the direction of Solomon Stramer.

Participating in the troupe were the Stramer family (comprising Solomon and Clara Stramer, Israel and Anna Feldbaum, and Elsa Rabinovitch) and, in addition, me, Esther and Andzhe, Adolf and Clara Straitman, Sarah Sylvia, Samuel Silberberg, M. Peltz, and Joseph Schein, along with a large chorus and orchestra.

The beautiful theatre and the exhaustive technical preparations lent added enthusiasm to the rehearsals, and Stramer demonstrated a very friendly and admiring attitude toward me and my children. So, my gloomy skies gradually began to brighten.

Jacob Ben-Ami and Jacob Mestel

The sun continued to shine on me for a while.

I had already grown accustomed to the reduced income of the Yiddish theatre in Argentina. I had also become used to the practice of “baking”¹⁹ plays and to the endless rehearsals, because it was necessary to mount new productions at frequent intervals. Esther and Andzhe performed together with me in the beautiful Teatro Nuevo and the Stramers acknowledged my experience, granting me the honor that I deserved. Business was reasonably good; the director, Sr. Berestovoy, paid our wages promptly; we devoted ourselves seriously to the constant new rehearsals; and we felt happy and content.

Quite possibly, we might have performed an entire season with the Stramers, under the same normal business conditions, had it not been for the institution of the Star System, which entailed the constant switching out not only of plays, but also of the “stars” who stood at the head of the troupe.

The star system, in its Argentine manifestation, did not permit a theatre to follow a preconceived, stable plan that clearly identified which theatre company put on dramas and comedies, which one was dedicated to melodramas, and which one to operettas. The [1931] season at the Teatro Nuevo can serve as an object lesson for the conditions that then prevailed.

The Stramers opened the season with a troupe that was very well qualified to perform operettas, and from a business standpoint, the operetta productions by and large didn’t do badly. However, other stars with contracts were already waiting in the wings, and these were stars of a different genre: Jacob Ben-Ami and Jacob Mestel.

Personally, Esther and I were definitely happy that so distinguished a guest artist as Jacob Ben-Ami was coming, with his good repertory in which I would not need to play such contrived mother roles, but instead, mothers with realistic, authentic lives and feelings. As for Esther, who had studied in the drama schools led by David Herman and Michał Weichert,²⁰ she too was delighted to be able to perform under the direction of such an artist. But the season’s flow was disrupted by this sudden switchover; the operetta-loving audience stopped coming and, practically overnight, our troupe had to transform itself from the operetta genre to literary productions. To the credit of all of the actors in our troupe, we managed to pull it off; we worked hard and faithfully fulfilled our artistic obligations. Ben-Ami was delighted with our ability to accommodate ourselves and feel comfortable with our roles.

The newspapers relentlessly publicized our theatre, and the premiere was a colossal artistic and also material success.²¹ It was a truly festive production, but the celebrations quickly came to an end. Right after the first play we had to start rehearsing the second one, and then we had to commence “baking” the literary plays as rapidly (or even quicker) than the plays from the ordinary repertory. Once again, I must point out that, to the credit of our troupe, which devoted itself body and soul to the sacred task of playing genuinely artistic theatre, it appeared as if long months of rehearsals had gone into the performances, and the lovers of genuine art truly derived the greatest intellectual satisfaction.

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1. Nekhemye Tsuker (1894-1973) was a Galician-born Yiddish journalist and playwright who immigrated to Argentina in 1923. In 1962, he published a historical overview of the Yiddish theatre in Argentina: “Yidish teater in Argentine: fragment fun mayn bukh 60 yor yidish teater in Argentine,” in Zamlbukh, aroysgegebn fun Shrayber-fareyn H. D. Nomberg in Argentine, tsu zayn yontev fun fertsik yor ekzistents, 1922-1962 (Antología de escritores judíos de la Argentina), Abraham Zak, José Mendelson, Nechemias Zucker, eds. (Buenos Aires: 1962), [56]–74. Unfortunately, his promised book on the subject did not see the light of day. ↩︎
2. Volume 1 of Fir doyres idish teater: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/yiddish-books/spb-nybc209597/zucker-nechemias-fir-doyres-idish-teater-di-lebns-geshikhte-fun-zina-rapel-vol-1. Volume 2: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/yiddish-books/spb-nybc209598/zucker-nechemias-fir-doyres-idish-teater-di-lebns-geshikhte-fun-zina-rapel-vol-2. ↩︎
3. A search in the Historical Jewish Press database under the surname Rapel (ראַפּעל) yields results for performances throughout Latin America from the 1920s to the 1970s, by Esther and Anna Rapel and their half-sisters Malvina Rapel and Tsili Teks. ↩︎
4. For background on this famous Odesa gangster, see “Mishka Yaponchik.” ↩︎
5. Pepi Littman (1874-1930), Yiddish actress, singer, and troupe leader, remembered especially for her drag performances. See, for example, Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel, “Pepi Litman, ‘Yiddish Drag King’,” in “Top Ten Queerest Moments in the Yiddish Theatre: An Illustrated List in Honor of Pride Month 2019,” Digital Yiddish Theatre Project, June 25, 2019. ↩︎
6. Ben-Zion Berdichevsky was born in 1898 in Fălești, Bessarabia (now Moldova). He performed in Western Europe and in London for several years after World War I and emigrated to Argentina, together with his wife Shoshana, in the late 1920s. ↩︎
7. The enterprising and somewhat devious impresario Adolf Mide was born in Rzeszów, Galicia, in 1894 and emigrated from Poland to Argentina in 1922. He started out as an actor (performing with the Cipkus troupe in Lublin in early 1922, Zalmen Zylbercweig notes) but by the mid-1920s devoted his theatrical attentions to managing Yiddish theatre companies. Mide arranged the first of numerous Argentine tours by Maurice Schwartz (1930) and Joseph Buloff and Luba Kadison (1932). Some of his memoiristic vignettes are collected in Mide’s book Epizodn fun yidishn teater (Episodios del teatro judío), 1-ter band, 4-te oyflage (Buenos Aires: 1957), which is accessible online via the Yiddish Book Center: https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/collections/yiddish-books/spb-nybc208740/mide-adolfo-epizodn-fun-yidishn-teater.   ↩︎
8. Unaccompanied young women and girls traveling to Argentina in the 1920s were (justifiably) considered to be at risk of being led astray by sex traffickers. ↩︎
9. Possibly the same play identified as “Los cinco novios de Rosita” [Rosita’s Five Fiancés], in an advertisement for a different production, in the weekly Mundo Israelita newspaper, November 16, 1929. ↩︎
10. Possibly the same “Yankele” that was one of Molly Picon’s staples. ↩︎
11. Isaac Nuguer was born in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, in 1886 and immigrated to Argentina in 1913, where he managed Yiddish theatre companies at the Teatro Olimpo (together with Maurice Moscovich, whom he had met in London) and, later, the Teatro Excelsior. Among the best known guest stars whom he brought to Buenos Aires were Samuel Goldenberg and Stella Adler (1930), and Jacob Ben-Ami and Jacob Mestel (1931). ↩︎
12. The Yiddish Actors’ Union of Argentina and Uruguay was successfully revived in 1932. An earlier actors’ union had been established in the mid-1920s but did not last long. ↩︎
13. Joseph Markovitch (1882 or 1884-1972) was born in Fastov, Ukraine, and settled in London around 1904, where he performed for many years at the Pavilion Theatre. He was an actor and playwright who toured widely, including visits to New York, Romania, South Africa, and Argentina. Markovitch was also known for his declamations, which he and other actors recited at public gatherings. ↩︎
14. Sarah Sylvia was born in London in 1893; her Yiddish theatrical career took her to South Africa and Argentina, where she was one of the leading members of troupes managed by Isaac Nuguer. See Veronica Belling, “Sarah Sylvia and the Yiddish Theatre in South Africa,” in Women on the Yiddish Stage, edited by Alyssa Quint and Amanda Miryem-Khaye Seigel (Cambridge, UK: Legenda, 2023), pp. 223-238. Of the other actors whom Rapel enumerates here, Zalmen Zylbercweig provides biographical details concerning the following: Leo Halpern was an actor and director who was born in 1894 in Czortków, Galicia, and graduated from Vienna’s Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst. He immigrated to Argentina, where he founded the Yung-Argentine dramatic group, a forerunner of the Idisher folks-teater (better known as Teatro IFT). Samuel Iris was a comic actor who was born in Kishinev in 1889; while still in Europe he performed in both Yiddish and Russian. A veteran of the Romanian branch of the Vilna Troupe, he settled in Argentina in 1929, together with his wife, the Odesa-born (1892) actress Sonia Feldman Iris. Samuel Silberberg was born in 1892 in Satanov, Ukraine; his acting career took him early-on to Argentina, and he also performed in New York (including in a company led by Jacob P. Adler and Sarah Adler). Morris (Mordekhai) Peltz was born in Warsaw (Zylbercweig does not provide the year of birth) and immigrated to Argentina, where he became a fixture of Argentine Yiddish troupes and a leader of the country’s Yiddish Actors’ Union. ↩︎
15. At that juncture, Tsili Teks and Nathan Klinger were living in Brazil. ↩︎
16. Samuel Goldenberg (1886-1945) was one of the leading Yiddish dramatic actors during the 1920s and 1930s. Trained as a musician, he drew heavily upon plays from the melodramatic repertory (for which he drew critical flak), and was also known for performing serious dramas by European authors such as August Strindberg and Leo Tolstoy. Goldenberg had previously visited Argentina, in 1913 and again from 1914 to 1916.  Jack Rechtzeit (1903-1988) was a Polish-born actor who graced New York’s Yiddish stages for more than six decades. (His younger brother was the Yiddish actor Seymour Rexite [1908-2002].) Jack Rechtzeit’s 1930 stint at the Teatro Excelsior actually took place between those of Markovitch and Goldenberg. ↩︎
17. The Teatro Nuevo was located at Corrientes 1528, in the heart of the Buenos Aires theatre district. During the years following its purchase by the Municipality of Buenos Aires, it bore the following names: Teatro Corrientes, Teatro del Pueblo, Teatro Municipal de Comedias, and Teatro General San Martín. The original structure was demolished and replaced in the early 1960s by a modern theatre complex, possessing three separate stages. The Teatro General San Martín’s importance for the Argentine theatre is comparable to that of London’s National Theatre for the British stage. ↩︎
18. This is not entirely accurate. During the previous season (1930), Nuguer’s competitor, Adolf Mide, rented the Teatro Nuevo for about half of Maurice Schwartz’s ten-week tour. Still, by contrast, Nuguer was able to hold onto the Nuevo for almost the entirety of his company’s seven-month season in 1931. ↩︎
19. Because there was such frequent turnover of plays—especially dramas and melodramas (as opposed to operettas, which usually enjoyed longer runs)—the Yiddish theatre companies of Buenos Aires were constantly rehearsing, preparing the next production, whenever they weren’t on stage in front of the public. In 1930, Maurice Schwartz reported that a typical working day for Yiddish actors in Argentina lasted from twelve to fourteen hours. The local actors referred to this mode of “mass production” as “baking” the plays. ↩︎
20. Michał Weichert (1890-1967) was a “theatre director, historian, critic, and communal activist” who ran acting schools in Warsaw from 1922 to 1924 (co-founded with the actor and director David Herman [1876-1937], a veteran of the famed Vilna Troupe) and 1929 to 1932. ↩︎
21. The first production of Ben-Ami’s 1931 tour was Samson and Delilah, a modern play by the Danish writer Sven Lange (1868-1930) which was inspired by the biblical story. Peter Krumback, the central male character, was one of Ben-Ami’s signature roles on both the Yiddish and English-language stages. In Buenos Aires, the operetta star Clara Stramer performed opposite Ben-Ami in the principal feminine role of Dagmar Krumback, to considerable praise. Esther Rapel played a minor role as a maid. ↩︎