Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Art and Politics of the Artef, 1925-1940.(Review)

Edna Nahshon. Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Art and Politics of the Artef, 1925-1940. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1998. Pp. xv + 260. + 12 photographs. $59.95.

The proliferating of Yiddish theatrical activity from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1940s has been almost neglected in scholarship. Books on the history of the Jewish theater are usually confined to memoirs and yearbooks of the theater companies, while others generally quote bits of old recollections and hardly engage in commentary at all. There are two studies worthy of mention: Nahama Sandrow's comprehensive book Vagabond Stars (1977) embraces the entire history of the Jewish theater; and Marvin L. Seiger's well informed dissertation "Yiddish Theatre in New York City to 1892" (1960), which deals extensively with its American chapter up to 1892. Against this gloomy background, Edna Nahshon's book Yiddish Proletarian Theatre: The Art and Politics of the Artef, 1925-1940 has been long awaited. The publication of this excellently researched and well-written book on Artef by Edna Nahshon, a prominent scholar of Jewish theater, should be celebrated.

Artef (1925-1940)--an acronym for Arbeter Teater Farband (= Workers' Theatrical Alliance)--played an extraordinary and interesting role in the annals of Jewish theater. Between 1881 and 1925, nearly three and a half million Jews, mostly of East-European descent, immigrated to the United States. The majority of these Yiddish-speaking emigrants settled in eastern cities, notably New York, which by the beginning of the First World War was the single largest urban Jewish center in the world. With nearly one and a half million Jews, who constituted almost thirty percent of its population, New York became a leading force in Jewish political, intellectual, and artistic life. The Yiddish theater, a late arrival in Jewish life, came to New York in 1882, and quickly became immensely popular with the city's immigrant community, offering a rich spectrum of productions ranging from simplistic musical melodramas to sophisticated artistic experiments.

It is therefore surprising that the lively and much-beloved American-Yiddish theater has not received the scholarly attention it so dearly deserves. Nahshon, in her inclusive monograph, shows that the Artef transformed not merely the Yiddish theatrical landscape. In the mid-1930s it transcended the ethnic barrier. It was widely praised for its artistic achievements and was regarded as one of the most important companies of the American theater of social consciousness. Quite a few critics of the period considered it the premier company of the American extreme left. The actors and directors and stage designers associated with these left-wing companies of the 1930s were the ones who would shape the face of the American stage for decades to come. Voluntary and forced assimilation and the cataclysmic results of the Holocaust led to the rapid decline of Yiddish and to the near disappearance of its theater in the post World War II era. This vivid style, which included a generous use of music and dance, was especially well suited to plays with a "folksy" character Accordingly, the Artef, born and bred within the folds of American Jewish communism, totally rejected the star-system that typified the commercial Yiddish American stage. The company's radical ethos was reflected in its organization as an acting collective and in its ideological and artistic commitment to ensemble acting. The "star" of the Artef was not the individual actor. Rather it was Benno Schneider, the company's talented and imaginative artistic ...