Description
Book SynopsisTrade ReviewA witty and absorbing demonstration of the interplay of minority and mainstream-with the minority culture here being of outsize influence over the larger culture of Broadway, Hollywood, and America. Kirkus Reviews The many photos of famous actors and comics, old posters, packed theaters, and stage scenes balance out the richly sourced text, making this a visually lively, comprehensive, and accessible addition to any collection on theater or Jewish American history and heritage. Booklist A comprehensive... readable and lavishly illustrated history of the Yiddish Theater... This essential book is an important addition to library collections focusing on theater, pop culture, and Jewish studies. Library Journal (starred review) A tribute in scholarly scrapbook form to a dramatic phenomenon that acculturated immigrant Jews and left a legacy often defined as New York humor. -- Sam Roberts The New York Times [A] scholarly scrapbook full of vivid illustrations that buttress essays from leading critics and historians. Haaretz A richly-illustrated approachable work about the Lower East Side's entertainment legacy. Southern Jewish Life [A] marvelous book. -- Norman J. Fedder Jewish Book Council A comprehensive guide... the book is as entertaining as New York's once-thriving Yiddish theater. -- Robert A. Cohn St. Louis Jewish Light Anyone interested in Yiddish New York will want to read New York's Yiddish Theater. Theater buffs will be delighted to the learn the connections between Yiddish theater and the American stage. The book is also highly recommended for anyone interested in American Jewish history. -- Rabbi Rachel Esserman The Reporter New York's Yiddish Theater serves as an excellent history through images, together with illuminating essays... This welcome publication also fills a long-felt need for an illustrated history of an important chapter in the city's musical life. -- Michael Ochs Notes: the Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association Prodigiously illustrated... This indispensable book is a fun read, easy to browse through, get lost in. It is no dry academic treatise, but a generous yet scholarly account of a now-vanished era of popular Yiddish culture. Highly recommended. -- Richard C. Norton Operetta Research Center
Table of ContentsDirector's Foreword, by Susan Henshaw Jones Overture: From the Bowery to Broadway, by Edna Nahshon 1. Yiddish New York, by Hasia Diner 2. Popular Yiddish Theater: Music, Melodrama, and Operetta, by Nahmha Sandrow 3. Jacob Gordin: The Great Reformer, by Barbara Henry 4. Pathbreakers and Superstars, by Edna Nahshon, Stefanie Halpern, and Joshua S. Walden Intermission 5. Maurice Schwartz and the Yiddish Art Theater Movement, by Edna Nahshon 6. Yiddish Political Theater: The Artef, by Edna Nahshon 7. Yiddish Theater and the Transformation of American Design, by Arnold Aronson 8. Modicut: The Yiddish Puppet Theater of Yosl Cutler and Zuni Maud, by Eddy Portnoy 9. Yiddish Vaudeville, by Edna Nahshon and Judith Thissen 10. Borscht Belt Entertainment, by Edna Nahshon 11. Tevye's Travels: From Yiddish Everyman to American Icon, by Alisa Solomon Finale: A Gallery of Stars of the American Yiddish Stage, by Stefanie Halpern and Edna Nahshon Editor's Acknowledgments List of Contributors Endnotes Selected Bibliography Index
