{"id":1638,"date":"2019-06-29T10:13:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-29T15:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/?p=1638"},"modified":"2023-05-22T11:11:02","modified_gmt":"2023-05-22T16:11:02","slug":"a-piquant-curiosity-the-gender-bending-drama-yo-a-man-nit-a-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/a-piquant-curiosity-the-gender-bending-drama-yo-a-man-nit-a-man\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cA Piquant Curiosity\u201d: The Gender-Bending Drama Yo a man, nit a man"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>DURING THE 1920S,\u00a0New York City supported as many as a dozen Yiddish theatres, but\u2014with the exception of Maurice Schwartz\u2019s Yiddish Art Theatre\u2014they were all entertainment venues; art was at best icing on the cake. Most of their productions were what the critics scorned as interchangeable\u00a0<em>makheraykes<\/em>\u2013 contrivances penned by such productive (and now forgotten) authors as Harry Kalmanowitz and William Siegel. The Yiddish actor Samuel Goldenberg put it this way: \u201cAs for the plays that you can see during a single evening in six theatres in New York\u2014you don\u2019t have to sit through the entire piece. Wherever you go, all you need to do is just to stick around for half an act and you have the whole thing.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#fn\">1<\/a><\/sup> In a word:\u00a0<em>shund<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Goldenberg claimed that the shortage of original Yiddish literary plays compelled him to rely predominantly on melodramas for his bread-and-butter. He took a considerable amount of flak for this.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">2<\/a><\/sup> At commercial venues such as New York\u2019s National Theatre, where he sometimes served as the star and director during the 1920s, the \u201cbetter\u201d plays (usually translations of modern European dramas) were loss-leaders offered at midweek performances, when box-office receipts were in any case much lower than on the weekends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Goldenberg\u2019s European repertory included such signature roles as Fedor Protasov in Leo Tolstoy\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Living Corpse<\/em>, Sanin in the eponymous play by Mikhail Artsybashev, and Captain Adolf in\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/yiddishstage.org\/but-enough-about-strindberg-lets-talk-about-goldenberg\" target=\"_blank\">August Strindberg\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Father<\/em><\/a>. He also loved to play the rather creepy roles of Svengali, in\u00a0<em>Trilby\u00a0<\/em>(based on the novel by George Du Maurier), and Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde (adapted from the novella by Robert Louis Stevenson). But one of his most astonishing characters was Morris Green, in the gender-bending play\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>(Yes a Man, Not a Man), attributed to an unidentified European author and freely adapted into Yiddish by the actor, director, and translator Rubin Fridman. The play was first produced at New York\u2019s National Theatre in the fall of 1927, with Goldenberg in the role of Morris.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Explorations of LGBTQ themes in Yiddish drama and cinema tend to be quests for the \u201clesbian and gay&nbsp;<em>subtext<\/em>,\u201d as the web announcement for the musician and film scholar Eve Sicular\u2019s lecture program&nbsp;<em><a href=\"https:\/\/jewishfed.org\/news\/events\/celluloid-closet-yiddish-film-eve-sicular\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Celluloid Closet of Yiddish Film<\/a>&nbsp;<\/em>puts it: \u201cFrom musical comedies&nbsp;<em>Yidl mitn fidl<\/em>&nbsp;(Yiddle with His Fiddle) and&nbsp;<em>Amerikaner shadkhn<\/em>&nbsp;(American Matchmaker) to classic dramas&nbsp;<em>Der dibuk<\/em>&nbsp;(<em>The Dybbuk<\/em>) and&nbsp;<em>Der vilner shtot-khazn<\/em>&nbsp;(The Vilnius City Cantor), queerness reached the screen in various guises, emerging as an alternate take on themes of conflicted identity, passing, and same-sex attachments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"456\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Yo_a_man_ad_Tageblat_1927_11_24-456x1024.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1648\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Yo_a_man_ad_Tageblat_1927_11_24-456x1024.webp 456w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Yo_a_man_ad_Tageblat_1927_11_24-134x300.webp 134w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Yo_a_man_ad_Tageblat_1927_11_24.webp 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 456px) 100vw, 456px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A portion of a page from\u00a0<em>Yidishes tageblat<\/em>\u00a0containing an ad for the original run of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>(New York, October-November 1927), November 24, 1927.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>In\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>, Morris Green\u2019s predicament concerning his sexuality is what the play is all about. In it, this man who is \u201cnot a man\u201d is referred to as a \u201ceunuch\u201d or a\u00a0<em>tumtum<\/em>, a term that harks back to the Talmud. According to Rabbi Alfred Cohen, \u201cA\u00a0<em>tumtum<\/em>\u00a0has been defined as a person with no specific male or female genitalia, a condition which is exceedingly rare.\u201d In addition, he observes that together with a rabbinic borrowing from Greek,\u00a0<em>androgunos\u00a0<\/em>(\u201chermaphrodite\u2014meaning one who has male as well as female characteristics\u201d),\u00a0<em>tumtum\u00a0<\/em>is \u201coften employed to describe a far more common occurrence, a person born with ambiguous genital signs.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#fn\">4<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If there is a need to read between the lines of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>, it is to ponder whether the playwright (or its Yiddish translator) truly intended Morris to be a\u00a0<em>tumtum\u00a0<\/em>in the \u201cclinical\u201d sense for, after all, Morris\u2019s genitalia are never on public display to the theatre audience.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">5<\/a><\/sup> Rather, the playwright may have had something more equivocal in mind: a character whose sexual identity could be subject to a range of interpretations on the part of Yiddish-speaking theatergoers: asexual, androgynous, impotent, castrato, \u201cinvert\u201d (following contemporaneous understandings of homosexuality), and\/or closeted gay (a later coinage). What is unambiguous about Morris, though, is that, while craving bourgeois conventionality, he is simply incapable of sexual attraction to women, something that he has been aware of since earliest childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>is in four acts<sup><a href=\"#fn\">6<\/a><\/sup>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Act 1 proceeds within the family circle, while Morris is still young. His brother Jack and sister Jennie sense that there is something \u201cdifferent\u201d about Morris. He confides his secret\u2014that he is undeveloped, sexually\u2014to his father, Adolf, and his uncle, Wolf, but they are clueless and unsympathetic. Morris\u2019s mother, Lisa, is upset by the overt manifestations of Morris\u2019s anguish. He confesses to her that he wishes to commit suicide, but he doesn\u2019t carry out his intentions. The act\u2019s final scene finds the two brothers in their shared bedroom; in feverish tones Morris tells Jack about his desire for romance and his (purported) attraction to women. The act closes with Jack in deep slumber while the restless Morris weeps quietly.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In Act 2, Morris channels his frustrations through the pursuit of money, hoping that success in this sphere might gain him the respect that he craves. He expels his uncle from the family business and indeed turns out to be a very capable businessman. Act 2 includes a squirm-worthy scene that is intended as comic relief, when Morris is introduced to the flirtatious Minna. He wards her off by claiming that he already has a girlfriend. Uncle Wolf eavesdrops on their encounter and then informs everyone that his nephew is\u2014and is&nbsp;<em>not\u2014<\/em>a man. Minna reacts by exclaiming, \u201cEunuch!&nbsp;<em>Tumtum<\/em>!\u201d In despair, Morris again contemplates suicide, but instead decides to take another stab at bourgeois respectability. He proposes marriage to his attractive young stenographer, Beatrice, who greatly admires him for his business acumen. He has already told her about his \u201cdefect,\u201d but she nevertheless consents to marry him.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Act 3 portrays the couple\u2019s married life. Morris and Beatrice attend soir\u00e9es where she is besieged by men who are aware of Morris\u2019s inability (or unwillingness) to consummate the marriage. This reinforces his feelings of shame, embarrassment, and jealousy. Morris\u2019s vivid imagination amplifies the gossip that surrounds him. Beatrice attempts to comfort him with her caresses, but he is inconsolable. She remains faithful but is unhappy at Morris\u2019s distress.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The d\u00e9nouement comes in the fourth and final act. Morris longs for a child of his own; maybe&nbsp;<em>this&nbsp;<\/em>will be his salvation, enabling him to begin life anew. Morris informs Beatrice that he will go away for a while and encourages her, meanwhile, to choose a sexual partner and give him a child, so as to quell the cynical mockery that surrounds him. Beatrice reluctantly acts upon Morris\u2019s wishes, while remaining inwardly faithful to him. When he returns from his extended absence, he is nevertheless incapable of mastering his true feelings; instead, he considers the child to be tangible evidence of his personal tragedy. Finally, when Morris learns that his brother Jack (who all along was attracted to Beatrice) is the child\u2019s biological father, he breaks down completely and finally does find his \u201csalvation\u201d by shooting himself.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>In key respects the synopsis of this play, which oscillates between drama and melodrama, is consistent with the plots of Jazz Age novels involving male protagonists who are openly identified as homosexuals. As an advertisement for one such work,\u00a0<em>Strange Brother<\/em>, reads: \u201cSociety had made him ashamed of what he was. The law had made him afraid of what he was. To the woman who opened her arms to him he could not return man\u2019s real love\u2026 A brave and daring story about the dilemma of an intermediate man in modern society.\u201d The gay protagonists of such novels, the historian George Chauncey points out, often found their escape through suicide.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">7<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As to the authorship of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>, it was \u201csupposedly an \u2018adaptation\u2019 of a French author, a doctor of psychiatry and pathology,\u201d wrote Leo Kesner in the\u00a0<em>Yidishes tageblat<\/em>. Other reviews of the 1927 production indicate that Rubin Fridman was the only author who was actually named in the printed program.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">8<\/a><\/sup> However, by the time that Goldenberg brought the play to Buenos Aires, in 1930, authorship of the French original was attributed to a mysterious Doctor Charandai\u2014who may or may not have actually existed\u2014and the claim was made that the French version of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>had run for three seasons at the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Antoine, in Paris\u2014an assertion that has not yet been borne out.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">9<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although the true identity (or existence) of \u201cDoctor Charandai\u201d remains elusive, Zalmen Zylbercweig\u2019s\u00a0<em>Leksikon fun yidishn teater\u00a0<\/em>does include a biographical entry for the play\u2019s Yiddish adapter, Rubin Fridman (1885-1943). Zylbercweig writes that Fridman led a peripatetic life, beginning his theatrical career as an actor in his native city, \u0141\u00f3d\u017a. Prior to World War I, Fridman lived in London for six years, where he performed alongside the great actor Morris Moscovitch. In 1915, he was in Argentina\u2014also with Moscovitch\u2014where he undoubtedly crossed paths with Goldenberg, who led a rival troupe in Buenos Aires from 1914 to 1916. Fridman returned to Russia in 1917 and from there he moved back to \u0141\u00f3d\u017a and then England again (1920). At some point during the 1920s, he relocated to Belgium, where in 1929 he directed a production of An-sky\u2019s\u00a0<em>Der dibuk<\/em>. When World War II broke out, he was living in Paris; in 1943, he was murdered by the Nazis.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">10<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fridman translated a number of frequently performed European plays into Yiddish (though he was not always credited as the translator), including\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u2014<\/em>which, Zylbercweig states, was a vehicle for Goldenberg. It seems plausible that Fridman proposed the play to Goldenberg, who then commissioned its Yiddish adaptation. Following its New York premiere in October 1927, Goldenberg took it on the road, performing it in many of the cities where he toured.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">11<\/a><\/sup> Because Fridman evidently was residing in Belgium during the second half of the 1920s, the Argentine Yiddish critic Yankev Botoshanski conjectured that the original play might actually have been written in Flemish, rather than French (as claimed). In addition, Botoshanski asserted that many of the original play\u2019s details concerning social milieu, secondary characters, and lifestyle had been stripped away by the Yiddish translator \u201cand the play floats in the air.\u201d In effect, it had been transformed into a star vehicle for whoever was performing the role of Morris (almost always Goldenberg), with all of the other characters\u2014with the partial exception of Beatrice\u2014being consigned to the shadows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How was\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>received by its audiences and by the critics? The consensus of critiques that I have seen can be summed up as follows<sup><a href=\"#fn\">12<\/a><\/sup>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><em>Yo a man, nit a man&nbsp;<\/em>straddles the boundary between drama and melodrama, without entirely falling victim to the latter tendency. It is a \u201cpiquant curiosity,\u201d as Botoshanski put it.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Samuel Goldenberg performed the role of Morris Green with considerable sensitivity, turning the potential mockery of the audience into sympathy for the protagonist\u2019s personal tragedy. In Rozhanski\u2019s words, Goldenberg was a \u201csuperb painter of the human psyche.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Hillel Rogoff, writing in the\u00a0<em>Forward<\/em>, reviewed the play about a month after its New York premiere in the autumn of 1927.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">13<\/a><\/sup> He considered it a difficult work to pull off, given the \u201caverage\u201d theatergoer\u2019s \u201ccynicism\u201d toward people possessing Morris Green\u2019s sexual characteristics. The actor\u2019s challenge was to conquer the audience\u2019s instincts toward mockery, elicit their empathy with the protagonist, and pardon his attempts to conceal his \u201cdefect.\u201d Goldenberg succeeded in that, and \u201cwe think that this is one of the best roles that he has created,\u201d Rogoff concluded. His fellow New York Yiddish critics concurred with this assessment, although Nathaniel Buchwald, writing in the (communist)\u00a0<em>Freiheit<\/em>, scathingly dismissed the play itself, comparing it to a Coney Island \u201cfreak show.\u201d (Other New York critics were far more generous.)<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/GoldenbergBest.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1627\" width=\"454\" height=\"739\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/GoldenbergBest.webp 600w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/GoldenbergBest-184x300.webp 184w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 454px) 100vw, 454px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Samuel Goldenberg as Morris Green, in the Buenos Aires production of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>. This drawing of Goldenberg reminds me a bit of Warner Oland as the Eurasian villain Henry Chang, in \u201cShanghai Express.\u201d (Oland later played Charlie Chan.) Artist: Misha Schwartz. Source:\u00a0<em>Der shpigl\u00a0<\/em>(Buenos Aires), July 24, 1930.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The playwright Leib Malach, in a dispatch that he sent from New York to the Argentine Yiddish daily\u00a0<em>Di prese\u00a0<\/em>in June 1930, dismissed\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>for being a \u201cproblem play\u201d that seemed calculated to \u201ctitillate\u2026the broad tastes of the \u2018Moishes\u2019\u201d in Goldenberg\u2019s audiences.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">14<\/a><\/sup> But, thanks to Goldenberg\u2019s consummate dramatic skills, \u201cstrangely enough, just as with Balaam, instead of cursing, he blessed.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">15<\/a><\/sup> Instead of the theatre\u2014or Goldenberg himself\u2014ruining the play, Goldenberg the actor fused it together, filled in all of the gaps, evened out and smoothed over all of the wrinkles\u2026And Goldenberg performs the role of the\u00a0<em>tumtum\u00a0<\/em>with so much restraint and tact, that from the very first scene he compels the spectator to cease laughing at him as a handicapped person. Rather, one goes along with him, one empathizes, and one experiences the profound insult with which nature has humiliated him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Malach\u2019s view, very few artists could have been so effective in the role of Morris Green: \u201cThere is absolutely no doubt that were an actor other than Goldenberg to perform this play and this role, it would result in a banal, vulgar, and obscene piece.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Goldenberg\u2019s physical incarnation of Morris Green attracted the attentions of some observers. B. Y. Goldstein, in the (anarchist)\u00a0<em>Fraye arbeter shtime<\/em>, commented on the character\u2019s yellowish skin hue. \u201cGoldenberg\u2019s makeup is precisely that of a\u00a0<em>tumtum<\/em>,\u201d Yankev Botoshanski would write. \u201cWe occasionally encounter such [individuals] in the street and they distress us.\u201d This formulation is suggestive of a point that the literary scholar Warren Hoffman has made, concerning \u201cthe epistemology of sexuality\u201d among Yiddish-speaking Jews in the early decades of the twentieth century. \u201cWhat do we know or can we know about sexuality at any given moment in history?\u201d he asks. \u201cWhile the Yiddish speaker could turn to Leviticus 18:22 for a prohibition condemning same-sex acts between men, this was not a model that spoke to the\u00a0<em>modern\u00a0<\/em>case of homosexual identity. How does one talk about gender and sexual identities referenced within a text for which terms do not exist?\u201d Hoffman argues against superimposing present-day understandings about sexuality, on a \u201cconceptual system that was not available in Yiddish\u201d nearly a century ago.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">16<\/a><\/sup> What was Botoshanski trying to get at?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Morris\u2019s appearance and characterization elicited some clinically based objections on the part of a medical doctor, Paulina Rabinovitz, in an article that ran in the Buenos Aires Yiddish daily\u00a0<em>Di idishe tsaytung.<\/em><sup><a href=\"#fn\">17<\/a><\/sup> Dr. Rabinovitz, who had attended a performance of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>at the Teatro Excelsior, wrote that from the play\u2019s dialogue she inferred that Morris Green was a \u201ceunuch\u201d from birth\u2014she also employed the Hebrew term\u00a0<em>saris\u00a0<\/em>(in this context, a castrato).<sup><a href=\"#fn\">18<\/a><\/sup> She then launched into a discursus about hormones, glands, and sexual differentiation\u2014as these were understood according to the medical science of 1930.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">19<\/a><\/sup> Dr. Rabinovitz contended that the human male suffering from a congenital absence of testes (anorchia) exhibits physical and psychological characteristics entirely at variance with those of Morris Green, as portrayed by Goldenberg: His voice remains high, his eyes are sad, his body is bloated with fat, and his psychological development is stunted. There is no way that such an individual could possess the drive and determination that Morris Green manifested in his business career, she claimed; the physical \u201cdegeneration\u201d of such a type is inextricably bound up with a \u201cprofound mental backwardness and absence of intellectual development.\u201d This could all have been avoided had Goldenberg, \u201ca talented actor,\u201d tweaked the script so as to make Morris Green a man whose \u201cdefect\u201d was caused by an accident or a neuro-psychological illness later in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The conflation, within these contemporaneous discussions of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>, of such terms as \u201ceunuch,\u201d\u00a0<em>tumtum<\/em>, and\u00a0<em>saris<\/em>, serves as a reminder of the fluid understandings, within Yiddish-speaking communities of that era, of non-normative sexual characteristics.\u00a0<em>Tumtum\u00a0<\/em>may have functioned in people\u2019s minds as an umbrella term that \u201chighlights gender instability in a way that\u00a0<em>eunuch\u00a0<\/em>does not and signals a different, arguably more nonspecific gender category altogether,\u201d Warren Hoffman writes.(20) Viewed in this light, one suspects, therefore, that there was an intentional ambiguity in the playwright\u2019s characterization of Morris\u2019s \u201csecret.\u201d Thus, some of Botoshanski\u2019s readers may have construed his offhand reference to the\u00a0<em>tumtum\u00a0<\/em>Morris as applying to the stereotypically effeminate gay males who (even in the 1920s) were a visible presence in certain districts of large European and American cities. Such individuals were often characterized as belonging to a \u201cthird sex\u201d\u2014men who were\u00a0<em>not quite\u00a0<\/em>men.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"928\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/moreads.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1649\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/moreads.webp 600w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/moreads-194x300.webp 194w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Advertisements for two novels and one film on gay themes, reproduced in George Chauncey\u2019s study,\u00a0<em>Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940\u00a0<\/em>(New York: Basic Books, 1994), 326. Chauncey found the original ads in the Yale Collection of American Literature, at the Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, Yale University.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>How familiar would these \u201cnot quite men\u201d have been to Yiddish actors in New York City and their audiences? In Manhattan, George Chauncey notes, East Fourteenth Street between Third Avenue and Union Square\u2014scarcely a stone\u2019s throw from the Second Avenue Yiddish theatre district\u2014\u201cwas one of the preeminent centers of working-class gay life and of homosexual street activity in the city from the 1890s into the 1920s.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#fn\">21<\/a><\/sup> He mentions a bathhouse on St. Marks Place that was frequented by heterosexual Jewish men by day and gay men at night. The Bowery, where a number of Yiddish theatres were located, was another district frequented by gay males at the beginning of the twentieth century. Thus, Morris Green may well have struck the \u201cMoishes\u201d as a variant of the \u201cstreet types\u201d with which they had a passing familiarity. For Samuel Goldenberg, a versatile actor specializing in unconventional roles, Morris posed an unusual and even enticing dramatic challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cDegeneration\u201d\u2014a term that appeared in some articles about\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u2014<\/em>was, among other things, a code word that medical practitioners (and the public at large) commonly applied to homosexual practices and homosexuality in general. Dr. Rabinovitz\u2019s analysis of Morris\u2019s physical attributes drew upon her understanding of the physiological ramifications of the congenital absence of the male sexual apparatus. (She was writing at a moment when homosexuality was increasingly being viewed through a scientific or clinical lens.) However, by labeling him as a \u201cdegenerate\u201d type she also consigned him to a much larger and more visible sexual minority, the male \u201cfairy.\u201d It is likely within the context of the social stigma of homosexuality as a form of degeneration that Dr. Rabinovitz was suggesting that Morris\u2019s \u201cdefect\u201d be recast as the product of external factors, rather than inborn.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Fridman.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1650\" width=\"386\" height=\"547\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Fridman.webp 600w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Fridman-212x300.webp 212w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 386px) 100vw, 386px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Rubin Fridman (1885-1943), the translator\/adaptor of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>. Source: Zalmen Zylbercweig,\u00a0<em>Leksikon fun yidishn teater<\/em>, vol. 3 (New York: Hebrew Actors Union, 1959).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Indeed, one week before<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>was produced at the Teatro Excelsior, just such a character had been portrayed by Maurice Schwartz at a different theatre in Buenos Aires:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ww1plays.com\/2017\/01\/ernst-tollers-hinkemann.html\">Hinkemann<\/a>, in the antiwar play by Ernst Toller that bears that same name.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">22<\/a><\/sup> Botoshanski, in the Buenos Aires\u00a0<em>Di prese<\/em>, contrasted the two plays in their reviews of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>. Hinkemann was a German military veteran whose genitals had been maimed during the Great War; his personal struggles were hitched to a larger cause, making\u00a0<em>Hinkemann\u00a0<\/em>a play with \u201can idea.\u201d Whereas in contrast, wrote Botoshanski,\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u2014<\/em>however daring its subject matter might seem\u2014was at best a \u201cmilieu drama,\u201d one deformed individual\u2019s wail against his bitter fate. A month earlier, Leib Malach had made a similar point in the same newspaper: \u201cErnst Toller attempted to treat the question of a sexual handicap and its effect on the relationship between man and woman. Ernst Toller linked it to the World War, to degeneration and class, to protest against the [established] order and social injustice. The unknown author [of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>] portrayed the \u2018misfortune\u2019 within the domestic ambience of minor individuals and minor events. Consequently, the tragedy of the asexual [protagonist] is broader and more visible. Small details bring out the dramatic figure in the sharpest hues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"798\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Detroitad.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1651\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Detroitad.webp 600w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Detroitad-226x300.webp 226w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Advertisement for the Detroit production of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>, in\u00a0<em>The Detroit Jewish Chronicle<\/em>, March 22, 1929. (Were\u00a0<em>boys\u00a0<\/em>under 16 years of age admitted?) Courtesy of The William Davidson Digital Archive of Detroit Jewish History, accessed June 5, 2019,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/djnfoundation.org\/the-archive\/\">https:\/\/djnfoundation.org\/the-archive\/<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Buchwald, in the New York&nbsp;<em>Freiheit<\/em>, was blunt: \u201cHinkemann is not a freak.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the end and by his own choice, Morris Green\u2019s fate hinged on his relationship with Beatrice, his wife. While Samuel Goldenberg was a constant as Morris whenever he put on the play, the role of Beatrice would have been performed by different actresses over the years. For the Buenos Aires performances of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>in 1930, Beatrice was played by none other than Stella Adler.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">23<\/a><\/sup> Indeed, the this was her debut role before the Yiddish theatergoing public of Argentina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although Beatrice is a somewhat one-dimensional character, Adler\u2014thanks to the \u201cimprint of her pedigree\u201d as a member of a fabled dynasty of Yiddish actors\u2014attracted the particular attentions of the Argentine critics. They were especially struck with her imposing physical presence. \u201cShe is a tall (<em>keyneyenehore<\/em>, tall!), slender, and gracious blonde,\u201d wrote Botoshanski. \u201cSuch figures are not to be found on our stage.\u201d These impressions were echoed by Rozhanski, in the rival daily&nbsp;<em>Di idishe tsaytung<\/em>, and by the anonymous critic in the Spanish-language weekly&nbsp;<em>Mundo israelita\u2014<\/em>each of whom also stressed Adler\u2019s \u201celegance.\u201d As for her acting, the Argentine critics were in agreement that she was a major talent, though they also criticized the occasionally shrill tone of her delivery. Here and elsewhere, Rozhanski drew readers\u2019 attentions to the English intonations in her Yiddish. Botoshanski considered Beatrice to be a thankless role, but he singled out Adler for praise in the scene in Act 3 where she silently caresses her despairing husband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the time that Goldenberg brought\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>to Warsaw, in 1934, its moment had evidently passed.\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/www.yivoencyclopedia.org\/article.aspx\/Mayzel_Nakhmen\" target=\"_blank\">Nakhmen Mayzel<\/a>, writing in\u00a0<em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/web.nli.org.il\/sites\/jpress\/english\/pages\/literarishe.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">Literarishe bleter<\/a><\/em>, offered a scathing assessment of the repertory that Goldenberg was performing in Poland: \u201cSo, now he is producing an adaptation of a French comedy,\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>, and once again we see before us a great actor, with great dramatic possibilities, but this is not what we need and can demand from an actor with such a worldwide reputation as Goldenberg. We go to the theatre and want to see a play that will completely interest and stimulate us\u2014and here we have old, second-rate melodramatic material. All of the shining moments that Samuel Goldenberg provides in these\u2026 plays aroused a longing for the Goldenberg who performed great roles in great plays.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#fn\">24<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even the most demanding of the earlier critics had at least credited Goldenberg with boldness and courage in mounting a drama about this character who was struggling so painfully with the gossip and mockery surrounding his ambiguous sexuality. A psychological \u201cproblem play\u201d set in a bourgeois family milieu simply did not speak to the concerns of Mayzel, a leading figure of the Polish Yiddish intelligentsia of the mid-1930s.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"676\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Adler.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1652\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Adler.webp 600w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Adler-266x300.webp 266w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Stella Adler, \u201cwho is performing with great success at the Teatro Excelsior.\u201d Artist: L. B. Glantzer. Source:\u00a0<em>Penem\u2019er un penem\u2019lakh\u00a0<\/em>(Buenos Aires), July 1930.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"426\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/castimage.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1653\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/castimage.webp 900w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/castimage-300x142.webp 300w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/castimage-768x364.webp 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Other cast members of the Buenos Aires production of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>; left to right: Ben-Zion Berdichevsky as Wolf Green (Morris\u2019s uncle), Stella Adler as Beatrice (Morris\u2019s stenographer and, later, wife), Zina Rapel as Mrs. Green (Morris\u2019s mother), and Samuel Iris as Adolf Green (Morris\u2019s father). Artist: Misha Schwartz. Source:\u00a0<em>Der shpigl\u00a0<\/em>(Buenos Aires), July 24, 1930.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Yiddish theatergoers were certainly accustomed to seeing treatments of familial and social dysfunction. Marital betrayal, intergenerational conflict, prostitution, and outright criminality were fair game for playwrights both high (Sholem Asch, in\u00a0<em>God of Vengeance<\/em>) and low (Isidore Zolatarefsky, in\u00a0<em>The White Slave<\/em>).<sup><a href=\"#fn\">25<\/a><\/sup> However, a drama centering on the protagonist\u2019s psychological struggles with his complex sexual identity was \u201csomething new\u201d on the Yiddish stage, in the words of the\u00a0<em>Tageblat<\/em>\u2019s critic, Leo Kesner. \u201cYou could even say: It hadn\u2019t been done here before,\u201d he added.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">26<\/a><\/sup> That is what made\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>so daring that the theatre managers in cities as far flung as New York, Detroit, and Buenos Aires restricted admission to adults.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What motivated Samuel Goldenberg to add this unusual play to his repertory? Part of the explanation may reside in the growing visibility of gays and lesbians on the urban scene, including in clubs and speakeasies that were frequented by gay and straight customers alike. \u201cIn the Prohibition years of 1920-33, [gay males] acquired unprecedented prominence throughout [New York] city, occupying a central place in its culture,\u201d George Chauncey writes, \u201c[t]hey became the subject of newspaper headlines, Broadway dramas, films, and novels.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#fn\">27<\/a><\/sup> It is possible that Goldenberg was aware of the gay-themed plays that were being produced on some Broadway stages during the mid-1920s. In a bid to capture the Zeitgeist, he may have desired to bring something in this vein to Second Avenue audiences.\u00a0<em>Vi es kristlt zikh, azoy yidlt zikh<\/em>, as the expression goes.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"518\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Diidishetsaytad.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1654\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Diidishetsaytad.webp 600w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Diidishetsaytad-300x259.webp 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Advertisement for the Buenos Aires production of \u201cthe great psychological work,\u201d\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>, in the daily\u00a0<em>Di idishe tsaytung<\/em>, July 11, 1930. \u201cNot suitable for minors.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Why, then, did\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>nevertheless take a somewhat oblique approach to its protagonist\u2019s inner conflicts over his sexuality? Why wasn\u2019t Morris Green presented more forthrightly as a gay male, albeit one who concealed his sexual identity? On the one hand, Warren Hoffman asserts, \u201cthe Yiddish community\u201d of the 1920s and 1930s was \u201cone that did not rigorously engage with homosexual identity.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#fn\">28<\/a><\/sup> By this reading, the closeted gay male would have been an alien type to the Yiddish theatergoer, whereas a\u00a0<em>tumtum\u2014<\/em>however that term might be defined\u2014would have represented a somewhat familiar concept. As Leo Kesner put it, \u201cThis is not a\u00a0<em>treyf\u00a0<\/em>dish\u2014just a little strange and awkward.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#fn\">29<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Apart from that, by the time that\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>had its New York premiere in October 1927, there was an enhanced degree of risk in producing a play with an unambiguously gay protagonist. Eight months earlier, on the evening of February 9, 1927, there were simultaneous police raids on the Broadway theatres where three gay- and lesbian-themed plays were being performed. And then, a couple of months after the police raids took place, George Chauncey notes, the New York \u201cstate legislature amended the public obscenity code to include a ban on any play \u2018depicting or dealing with the subject of sex degeneracy, or sex perversion.\u2019\u201d<sup><a href=\"#fn\">30<\/a><\/sup> Overtly gay characters would no longer be permitted on mainstream theatre stages. Goldenberg would certainly have known about the Broadway plays\u2019 suppression, which made the front pages of both the English- and Yiddish-language dailies.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">31<\/a><\/sup> Indeed, in his review of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>, Nathaniel Buchwald made an overt comparison with the themes of one of the suppressed Broadway plays,\u00a0<em>The Captive<\/em>: \u201cThe interest is the same: there, lesbian love, a masculine woman with her \u2018problems\u2019; here, a\u00a0<em>tumtum<\/em>, a man who is no man\u2014with his \u2018drama.\u2019\u201d<sup><a href=\"#fn\">32<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Morris\u2019s physiological challenges dovetailed with another common theme of its era. In medical literature and popular culture alike, the 1920s was the decade of \u201cmonkey glands\u201d as a nostrum for treating impotence in males. They became a widespread motif, encountered in short stories, Broadway revues, household artifacts, and even a cocktail. There was even a one-act Yiddish play, dating from 1925, containing the lyrics to a song titled \u201cMonkey Glands.\u201d<sup><a href=\"#fn\">33<\/a><\/sup> All the same, discussions of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>universally focused on a much more serious condition: Morris as\u00a0<em>tumtum<\/em>, eunuch, or\u00a0<em>saris.<\/em>(34)<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"600\" height=\"767\" src=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Argad.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1655\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Argad.webp 600w, https:\/\/uwm.edu\/yiddish-stage\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/562\/2023\/05\/Argad-235x300.webp 235w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Advertisement for the Buenos Aires production of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>, in the weekly\u00a0<em>Mundo israelita<\/em>, July 12, 1930. The Spanish title translates as:\u00a0<em>Appearance of Man<\/em>. \u201cThe psychological conflict of the protagonist has a dramatic intensity that is seldom achieved.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>In sum, Fridman and Goldenberg would presumably have considered it safer to couch Morris Green\u2019s sexual dilemma as the byproduct of a congenital condition\u2014one that served, in turn, as a stand-in for what many in the audience could have understood in a different light.<sup><a href=\"#fn\">35<\/a><\/sup> In other words, in order to avoid prosecution, one speculates that Fridman and Goldenberg may have recast an effeminate French homosexual as a Jewish\u00a0<em>tumtum.<\/em><sup><a href=\"#fn\">36<\/a><\/sup> Whatever the case, the Yiddish production of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>represented an earnest attempt to address its public\u2019s anxieties about sexual representation through the lens of the popular culture of its era. Yet, in the end, this \u201cpiquant curiosity\u201d remained an outlier\u2014perhaps the only frequently performed Yiddish play to focus so explicitly on a character\u2019s struggles over his complicated sexual identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\" \/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"fn\">Notes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>\u201cSamuel Goldinburg iz nekhten gekumen keyn Buenos Ayres,\u201d\u00a0<em>Di Idishe tsaytung\u00a0<\/em>(Buenos Aires), June 11, 1930.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Goldenberg was not alone in this respect; for example, during seasons when the highly respected dramatic actress Celia Adler was not part of the cast at the Yiddish Art Theatre, she too performed in tear-jerkers at the commercial theatres.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I first learned of this play while scrolling through microfilms of the Argentine Jewish press, as part of a research project centering on Samuel Goldenberg and the 1930 Yiddish theatre season in Buenos Aires.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Rabbi Alfred Cohen,\u201d<em>Tumtum\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>Andrygynous<\/em>,\u201d\u00a0<em>Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society\u00a0<\/em>38 (Fall 1999), 62, accessed June 17, 2019,\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"http:\/\/www.daat.ac.il\/daat\/english\/journal\/cohen-1.htm\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/www.daat.ac.il\/daat\/english\/journal\/cohen-1.htm<\/a>. One Hebrew-English dictionary defines\u00a0<em>tumtum\u00a0<\/em>as a \u201cperson with hidden or undeveloped genitals, whose sex it is difficult to determine.\u201d See Reuben Sivan, Edward A. Levenston, compilers,\u00a0<em>The Megiddo Modern Dictionary: Hebrew-English\u00a0<\/em>(Tel Aviv: Megiddo Publishing, 1965), 293.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The congenital lack of testicles in a male is also known as\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anorchia\" target=\"_blank\">anorchia<\/a>. See \u201cCongenital Absence of the Testes,\u201d\u00a0<em>Contact: For Families with Disabled Children<\/em>, accessed May 21, 2019,\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/contact.org.uk\/medical-information\/conditions\/c\/congenital-absence-of-the-testes\/?page=6&amp;f=C\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/contact.org.uk\/medical-information\/conditions\/c\/congenital-absence-of-the-testes\/?page=6&amp;f=C<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>I have not located a script for\u00a0<em>Yo man, nit a man<\/em>; so, I am relying primarily on the detailed plot summaries that were included in reviews of the July 1930 production in Buenos Aires. See Shmuel Rozhanski (Samuel Rollansky), \u201c\u2019Yo a man, nisht a man,\u2019 oyfgefihrt durkh Samuel Goldenburg, tsum debut fun Stela Adler in teater \u2018Ekselsyor\u2019,\u201d in\u00a0<em>Di idishe tsaytung<\/em>, July 13, 1930; and Yankev Botoshanski (Jacobo Botoshansky), \u201cS. Goldinburg un Stela Adler in a kuryoz pikanter pyese,\u201d in\u00a0<em>Di prese<\/em>, July 13, 1930. \u201cSpoiler alert\u201d seems to have been an alien concept to the Argentine Yiddish theatre critics.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Blair Niles,\u00a0<em>Strange Brother\u00a0<\/em>(New York: Horace Liveright, 1931). The ad is reproduced in George Chauncey,\u00a0<em>Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940\u00a0<\/em>(New York: Basic Books, 1994), 326. Regarding gay-themed novels of the early 1930s, Chauncey writes: \u201cMost ended with the death or suicide of the gay protagonist, but only a few made this end seem inevitable\u2026\u201d See Chauncey,\u00a0<em>Gay New York<\/em>, 324. The trajectory of the play\u2019s protagonist (minus his suicidal end) also bears comparison to that of David Levinsky, in Abraham Cahan\u2019s 1917 novel\u00a0<em>The Rise of David Levinsky\u2014<\/em>the protagonist channels his sex drive by pursuing business success, yet is dogged by social pressures to marry; ultimately, Levinsky remains a bachelor. The parallels between the plots of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>The Rise of David Levinsky\u00a0<\/em>were pointed out to me by Warren Hoffman, whose book\u00a0<em>The Passing Game: Queering Jewish American Culture\u00a0<\/em>(Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009) includes a chapter devoted to a queer reading of Cahan\u2019s novel.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>L[eo] Kesner, \u201cDi mitenvokhige pyesen,\u201d\u00a0<em>Yidishes tageblat\u00a0<\/em>(New York), November 25, 1927. See also the following reviews from the New York Yiddish press: N[athaniel] Buchwald, \u201cEyropeyer drame oyf second evenyu,\u201d\u00a0<em>Frayhayt\u00a0<\/em>(<em>Freiheit<\/em>), October 20, 1927; B. Y. Goldstein, \u201cOyf der teater evenyu,\u201d\u00a0<em>Fraye arbeter shtime\u00a0<\/em>(<em>Freie Arbeiter Stimme<\/em>), November 25, 1927.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>This claim was made in an advertisement by the Teatro Excelsior for\u00a0<em>Apariencia de hombre\u00a0<\/em>(the Spanish title that the theatre management used for\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man<\/em>), in the Spanish-language weekly\u00a0<em>Mundo israelita\u00a0<\/em>(Buenos Aires), July 12, 1930. Nick Underwood has gone through advertisements for some French newspapers, but these did not yield the proof that such a play was put on in France during the 1920s. The quest continues.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>\u201cFridman, Rubin (Meir Rubin),\u201d in Zalmen Zylbercweig (compiler; assisted by Jacob Mestel),\u00a0<em>Leksikon fun yidishn teater\u00a0<\/em>(<em>Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre<\/em>), vol. 3 (New York: Hebrew Actors Union, 1959), cols. 2378\u20132379.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>To date, I have come across reviews of and ads for Goldenberg\u2019s productions of\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>in New York City (1927), Detroit (1929, where its English title was advertised as\u00a0<em>Man, Not Man<\/em>), Buenos Aires (1930), and Warsaw (1934). At New York\u2019s National Theatre it was performed in the middle of the week, when ticket sales were generally lower. The chief attraction at that theatre during the 1927-1928 season was the Siegel-Olshanetzky operetta\u00a0<em>A Night in California<\/em>, starring Aaron Lebedeff and Jacob Jacobs. Lebedeff later recorded the operetta\u2019s hit song, \u201cI Like She.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>What follows largely draws upon treatments in the New York Yiddish press, from 1927, and the Argentine Jewish press in both Yiddish and Spanish, from 1930.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hillel Rogoff, \u201cSamuel Goldinburg in a interesante shtarke role,\u201d\u00a0<em>Forverts<\/em>, November 18, 1927.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Leib Malach, \u201cSamuel Goldinburg,\u201d\u00a0<em>Di prese<\/em>, June 13, 1930. Indeed, in at least one performance of the 1927 New York production, Goldenberg actually broke character and shushed the audience during the first act, when some members of the public inappropriately broke out in laughter at moments that he intended to be serious. See Goldstein, \u201cOyf der teater evenyu,\u201d and Kesner, \u201cDi mitenvokhige pyesen.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The biblical episode of Balaam is recounted in the Torah portion Balak (<em>Numbers<\/em>, chapters 22\u201324).<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hoffman,\u00a0<em>The Passing Game<\/em>, 13\u201314, 21.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dr. Paulina Rabinovitz, \u201cA por verter fun a doktor vegen Tshardans drame \u2018Yo a man nisht a man,\u2019 un artist S. Goldenburg\u2019s oyffihrung,\u201d in\u00a0<em>Di idishe tsaytung<\/em>, July 20, 1930.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Like Dr. Rabinovitz, B. Y. Goldberg, in his review for\u00a0<em>Fraye arbeter shtime\u00a0<\/em>(\u201cOyf der teater evenyu\u201d), interchangeably employs the terms\u00a0<em>saris<\/em>and\u00a0<em>tumtum\u00a0<\/em>to describe Morris Green\u2019s sexual identity. Introduction of\u00a0<em>saris\u00a0<\/em>adds yet another layer of ambiguity (or confusion) to our understanding of the character\u2019s complicated predicament. Drawing upon Tractate Yevamot in the Babylonian Talmud, Alana Suskin writes that the rabbis may have recognized as many as seven gender categories: male, not-male (female),\u00a0<em>androgunos\u00a0<\/em>(\u201ca person who has aspects of both male and female genitalia\u201d),\u00a0<em>tumtum\u00a0<\/em>(\u201ca person whose genitals are obscured, making their gender uncertain\u201d),\u00a0<em>aylonit\u00a0<\/em>(\u201ca female who fails to produce signs of female maturity by the age of twenty\u201d),\u00a0<em>saris\u00a0<\/em>(\u201cthe general term for a male who does not produce signs of maturity by the age of twenty\u201d)\u2014which \u201ccan further be broken down into two: a\u00a0<em>saris khama\u00a0<\/em>is a male who is sterile because he was born that way, and a\u00a0<em>saris adam\u00a0<\/em>is a male who is sterile because he was castrated.\u201d See Suskin, \u201cBet You Didn\u2019t Know\u2026 What the Talmud Says about Gender Ambiguity,\u201d\u00a0<em>Lilith\u00a0<\/em>(Spring 2002), accessed June 17, 2019,\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lilith.org\/articles\/bet-you-didnt-know-what-the-talmud-says-about-gender-ambiguity\/\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.lilith.org\/articles\/bet-you-didnt-know-what-the-talmud-says-about-gender-ambiguity\/<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Dr. Rabinovitz invoked the following medical experts:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eugen_Steinach\">Eugen Steinach<\/a>\u00a0(1861-1944), an Austrian physiologist and pioneer in endocrinology, who helped to identify testosterone through his experiments on guinea pigs;\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Serge_Voronoff\" target=\"_blank\">Serge Voronoff<\/a>\u00a0(1866-1951), a Russian-French surgeon whose experiments in grafting \u201cmonkey glands\u201d (testicle tissue) on the testicles of men have since been largely discredited; and\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Charles-%83douard_Brown-S%8Equard\" target=\"_blank\">Charles-\u00c9douard Brown-S\u00e9guard<\/a>\u00a0(1817-1894), a French-American physiologist and neurologist who\u2014according to the Wikipedia article on him\u2014was \u201ca controversial and eccentric figure\u2026known for self-reporting, at age seventy-two, \u2018rejuvenated sexual prowess after subcutaneous injection of extracts of monkey testis.\u2019\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hoffman,\u00a0<em>The Passing Game,<\/em>\u00a0132.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Chauncey,\u00a0<em>Gay New York<\/em>, 190. During the 1920s, as Chauncey relates, Greenwich Village\u2014a fifteen-minute walk from Second Avenue\u2014developed as a middle-class mecca of gay-and lesbian-friendly clubs and speakeasies.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Schwartz\u2019s production of\u00a0<em>Hinkemann\u00a0<\/em>had its Buenos Aires premiere at the Teatro Nuevo on July 6, 1930.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>At the New York premiere, for example, Rosa Goldberg was Beatrice opposite Goldenberg\u2019s Morris.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>N. M. [Nakhmen Mayzil], \u201cFarn nayem teater-sezon: Semuel Goldinburg in\u00a0<em>Yo a man nisht a man<\/em>,\u201d\u00a0<em>Literarishe bleter<\/em>, August 24, 1934. Mayzil\u2019s disdainful review pairs\u00a0<em>Yo a man, nit a man\u00a0<\/em>with another of Goldenberg\u2019s favorite vehicles,\u00a0<em>In a Romanian Tavern<\/em>, which the actor had staged in Warsaw earlier that summer.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Zolatarefsky\u2019s 1910 potboiler served as the chosen vehicle for Stella Adler\u2019s benefit performance at the Teatro Excelsior, shortly before her departure from Buenos Aires in early September 1930.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Kesner, \u201cDi mitenvokhige pyesen.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Chauncey,\u00a0<em>Gay New York<\/em>, 301 &amp; 341.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Hoffman,\u00a0<em>The Passing Game<\/em>, 71.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Kesner, \u201cDi mitenvokhige pyesen.\u201d A search of the keyword\u00a0<em>tumtum<\/em>(\u05d8\u05d5\u05de\u05d8\u05d5\u05dd) in the Historical Jewish Press Project (JPress) database yields results in the Yiddish press where this term was used both literally and metaphorically.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Chauncey,\u00a0<em>Gay New York<\/em>, 313.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>See, for example, the following front-page newspaper articles, which appeared the morning after the police raids: \u201cPolice Raid Three Shows: Sex, Captive and Virgin Man; Hold Actors and Managers,\u201d\u00a0<em>The New York Times<\/em>, February 10, 1927; \u201cPolitsey arestirt aktyorn un menedzhers fun dray Brodveyer shous,\u201d\u00a0<em>Forward<\/em>, February 10, 1927. These plays and other gay-themed entertainments are discussed by George Chauncey in Chapter 11 (\u201c\u2019Pansies on Parade\u2019: Prohibition and the Spectacle of the Pansy\u201d) of\u00a0<em>Gay New York<\/em>. Among the plays that he mentions are\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Captive_(play)\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Captive<\/em><\/a>, by \u00c9douard Bourdet (a three-act melodrama dealing with lesbianism, produced in 1926 and suppressed in 1927), and Mae West\u2019s play\u00a0<em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Pleasure_Man\" target=\"_blank\">The Pleasure Man<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(produced in 1928), which ended with a drag ball.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Buchwald, \u201cEyropeyer drame oyf second evenyu.\u201d<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In this connection, the Wikipedia entry on the French surgeon\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Serge_Voronoff\" target=\"_blank\">Serge Voronoff<\/a>\u00a0notes the following: \u201c\u2019The Adventure of the Creeping Man\u2019 1923 is one of twelve Sherlock Holmes short stories (fifty-six total) by Arthur Conan Doyle in\u00a0<em><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Case-Book_of_Sherlock_Holmes\" target=\"_blank\">The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>first published in Strand Magazine October 1921 &#8211; April 1927. In the story a professor injects himself with an extract of langur, with Jekyll-and-Hyde consequences.The song \u2018Monkey-Doodle-Doo,\u2019 written by Irving Berlin and featured in the\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Marx_Brothers\" target=\"_blank\">Marx Brothers<\/a>\u00a0film\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Coconuts\" target=\"_blank\"><em>The Coconuts<\/em><\/a>, contains the line: \u2018If you\u2019re too old for dancing\/Get yourself a monkey gland.\u2019 Strange-looking\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ashtray\" target=\"_blank\">ashtrays<\/a>\u00a0depicting monkeys protecting their private parts, with the phrase (translated from\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/French_language\" target=\"_blank\">French<\/a>) \u2018No, Voronoff, you won\u2019t get me!\u2019 painted on them began showing up in Parisian homes. At about this same time, a new cocktail containing gin, orange juice, grenadine and absinthe was named\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Monkey_Gland\" target=\"_blank\">The Monkey Gland<\/a>.\u201d The eight-page Yiddish play script, which was registered for U.S. copyright on October 19, 1925, is by Abraham Blum. It includes the lyrics for four songs; among them are \u201cMonkey Glands\u201d and \u201cMolly Dolly,\u201d a signature number for Molly Picon (the music for \u201cMolly Dolly,\u201d composed by Joseph Rumshinsky, is not included in Blum\u2019s script). See Zachary M. Baker (with assistance by Bonnie Sohn),\u00a0<em>The Lawrence Marwick Collection of Copyrighted Yiddish Plays at the Library of Congress\u00a0<\/em>(Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2004) 31, item 96, accessed June 13, 2019,\u00a0<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/rr\/amed\/marwick\/marwickbibliography.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.loc.gov\/rr\/amed\/marwick\/marwickbibliography.pdf<\/a>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>However, I have not encountered references to Morris as\u00a0<em>androgunus<\/em>.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Indeed, for all we know, the treatment of this character in the French version of the play (if such existed) may actually have been closer to the ways in which novelists like Blair Niles depicted gay male protagonists in their books. (\u201cSociety had made him ashamed of what he was,\u201d etc.)<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>For lack of concrete evidence, such as access to scripts of both versions of the play, this remains, of course, rank conjecture on my part.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read about the gender-bending play Yo a man, nit a man (Yes a Man, Not a Man).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":1656,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[47,10,22,19,36,26,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-1918-1945","category-audiences","category-central-europe","category-north-america","category-politics","category-south-america","category-western-europe"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - 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