Periods

On February 18 1912, a Prague businessman and little-known German-language writer named Franz Kafka introduced an evening of Yiddish literary recitations in the city’s Jewish Town Hall.

Camp Boiberik opened in the 1920s and closed in 1979, and if you will indulge a momentary digression from the topic, allow me to illustrate the importance of this camp for our subject.

Bertha Kalich (1874-1939) was a great actress on the Yiddish and English-language stage.

History belonged to the opera writers. First Goldfaden, and later Hurwitz and Lateiner and their followers, owned the franchise on Jewish history.

My first real-life encounter with Fyvush Finkel coincided roughly with my entry into the world of New York Yiddish theatre.

Reviews of Avrom Goldfaden’s productions are notorious for critics’ snarky pot-shots, huffy asides, and sniffy evaluations.