Evolving Yiddish audiences’ interest in theatre in Europe in the 19th - first half of the 20th centuries: Yiddish plays in the YIVO Library digital collections

On July 21, 2014 YIVO Head Librarian and Acting Chief Archivist Lyudmila Sholokhova delivered a presentation, “Evolving Yiddish audiences’ interest in theatre in Europe in the 19th - 1st half of the 20th centuries: Yiddish plays in the YIVO Library digital collections,” on a panel entitled “New perspectives on Jewish and non-Jewish relations in modern European Jewish culture based on Judaica Europeana digital collections” at the 10th Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies in Paris.

YIVO was established in Poland in an era which saw the blossoming of Yiddish culture, literature and social movements in Europe. Its prewar library and archival collections reflect the interests, activities and tastes of its constituency, including the many Yiddish-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe. Theater was among the most popular entertainments of the time.  Yiddish’s rich and vivid vocabulary brought out colorful humor in the simple shund-style Yiddish plays that were enjoyed by the masses, but it was also capable of communicating sophisticated ideas in the Yiddish classical and contemporary dramatic works of Abraham Goldfaden, Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Leib Peretz, Mendele Moykher Sforim, and Jacob Dinezon. Theater was also a powerful vehicle for introducing Yiddish audiences to the treasures of the world theater. Yiddish translations and adaptations of European plays significantly extended the repertoire of the Yiddish theater in general, and played an important role in educating audiences while setting up new opportunities and challenges for the talented Yiddish actors. Among the well-known authors whose masterpieces were made available in Yiddish translation were William Shakespeare, Alexandre Dumas, Henrik Ibsen, Leo Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, Anton Chekhov, and Emile Zola.

The Library of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research holds one of the world’s largest collections of Yiddish theaterworks from 1850 to 1950, the period that coincided with the flourishing of Jewish theater in Europe and the United States. Materials from the YIVO collections include many European editions often not available anywhere else in the world. Microfilms of the Yiddish theater works have been recently digitized and are now available online through the Internet Archive, and will soon be integrated into Europeana via Judaica Europeana.

View a PowerPoint of sample books and artifacts discussed in Lyudmila’s talk.