Theater, Yiddish

This collection contains Hebrew, Yiddish and English sheet music compositions, programs, playbills, and reviews, with extensive files relating to the operas "The Golem" and "The Thief and the Hangman" and the musical "Great to Be Alive." There are also some photographs and correspondence.

This collection contains papers of Abraham Moshe Bernstein, a renowned cantor, choir master, composer of Jewish liturgical and secular music, music teacher, musicologist, writer, and translator. The bulk of the materials consists of Bernstein’s liturgical compositions and arrangements in both published and manuscript form, as well as a substantial collection of manuscripts and published works by various composers and arrangers. The materials include Hasidic folk songs and melodies, religious songs, Jewish hymns, popular songs, children’s songs, operettas, liturgical pieces, and musical exercises for students; choral volumes and partbooks; unidentified and fragmented musical manuscripts; manuscripts of Bernstein’s own writings; personal correspondence; a photo of Bernstein on his deathbed; secular and religious songs, Sabbath hymns, Hasidic folk songs and melodies, assembled by Bernstein for the S. Ansky Jewish Historical Ethnographic Society in Vilna.

The Abraham Sutzkever-Szmerke Kaczerginski Historical Collection contains letters, manuscripts, and historical documents which were saved by the Yiddish poets Avraham Sutzkever and Szmerke Kaczerginski in the Vilna Ghetto. Sutzkever, Kaczerginski, and other members of the Paper Brigade, conscripted Jewish workers who were forced to work under the Einsatzstab Rosenberg, saved thousands of books, manuscripts and documents at great risk to their lives by hiding them in various places in the Vilna Ghetto. After the war the surviving members recovered many of the hidden items. Sutzkever sent many of these rescued materials to the YIVO Institute in New York from the period 1947 to 1956. The collection consists of 8 series and includes correspondence of writers, intellectuals, communal leaders, rabbinical figures; manuscripts of Yiddish and Hebrew writers; theater documents; folklore materials; rabbinical responsa and writings; historical and legal documents; pinkasim and Jewish communal records.

The bulk of the collection contains documents generated by the Judenrats of the Vilna ghetto during Nazi occupation. The Yiddish poets Abraham Sutzkever and Szmerke Kaczerginski, interned in the Vilna Ghetto before escaping to the forests as partisans, were instrumental in the removal of this collection from Vilna and its subsequent transfer to the YIVO Archives in New York. The collection is therefore named in their honor.

This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Celia Adler and Lazar Freed, including theatrical materials such as scripts, programs and sheet music, correspondence, newspaper clippings, assorted publications, and photographs of many of the members of the Adler family and their friends from the Yiddish theater. These materials reflect the wide scope of the Adler acting family and their immense influence on Yiddish theater, Broadway and motion pictures.

This collection contains the records of Ben Gailing (1898-1999), a New York and Boston-based Yiddish theater actor and radio host. Collection includes two Yiddish playscripts, "Yo a Mame, Nit a Mame" by Ben Gailing, and "Oy iz dos a Yingel" by Hershel Glick; Gailing’s book, Git a Shmeykhl; Yiddish sheet music; Yiddish theater programs; and photographs of Ben and Frieda Gailing and other actors and actresses from the Yiddish theater.

This collection consists of copies of the plays Mountain Climbers, and Better Not to be Born, by Yiddish playwright, editor and author David Pinski (1872-1959). Collection also includes some programs and a stock prospectus.

German, Lithuanian, and Polish. 1 printed page, with handwritten entries.

The collection contains play manuscripts, programs, playbills, posters, photographs, correspondence, agreements, scrapbooks, clippings, printed ephemera, and memorabilia relating to Yiddish theater primarily in the early twentieth century, especially the interwar period. Also included are items of printed ephemera related to Yiddish film, Hebrew theater, and a broad range of Jewish performers, including cantors, singers and dancers. Geographically, the materials originate predominantly in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, including parts of the Russian Empire and, later, the Soviet Union; and, to a lesser extent, the United States, especially New York City. Also included are materials from Western Europe, Palestine (Eretz Israel), South America, and other regions around the world. Among the theater personalities represented in the collection with significant amounts of material are Herz Grossbard, David Herman, Joseph Winogradoff, Rudolf Zaslavsky, Zygmunt Turkow, Jonas Turkow, Moyshe Lipman, Ida Kaminska, and Esther Rachel Kaminska. The theater groups best represented include the Varshever Yidisher Kunst-Teater (VYKT; Warsaw Yiddish Art Theater), founded by Zygmunt Turkow and Ida Kaminska; the Vilna Troupe; Yung Teater / Nay Teater (Warsaw; Vilna), under the direction of Michael Weichert; the Moscow State Yiddish Theater (known by its Russian acronym "GOSET"); Maurice Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre, of New York; and the Hebrew theater "Habimah." A wide variety of other professional as well as amateur theater groups are represented with smaller amounts of material.

The collection is of mixed provenance and consists mostly of 16 mm films and some 8 mm and 35 mm films. There is also a group of VHS and 3/4 in. tapes. Many of the films are registered as part of other record groups in the YIVO Archives and were physically separated from these record groups, placed in the Collection of Films, and cataloged, for preservation purposes and for improved access to researchers. The collection includes the following series: Amateur Films. ca. 75 items, 1920s-1930s. Amateur home movies made by American Jews on trips to Eastern Europe, mainly Poland. One segment of this series consists of films produced by Gustave Eisner, who owned the Gustave Eisner Travel Agency in the inter-war period and arranged trips back to Poland and to Palestine. The Eisner films include some of Palestine and of American Jewish life. Amateur films made by Abraham Twersky of the Sholem Aleichem Houses in the Bronx which include images of a number of notable cultural figures in the Yiddish secular world. Films of Towns and Cities Commissioned by Landsmanshaftn. 2 items. 1920s-1930s. A Pictorial Review of Kolbuszowa, 1929. A film about Sedziszow, Poland, 1935. Post-war films made by social welfare organizations. 1940s-1960s. About 40 items. Films produced by social welfare organizations such as the HIAS and the AJDC describing the situation of Jewish refugees and displaced persons and organizational work carried out on their behalf. Included are films about HIAS's involvement with Hungarian refugees in 1956. Miscellaneous films. A film about Jewish refugees in Shanghai in the late 1940s. 8 mm footage of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Cracow Ghetto during World War II. Yiddish language newsreel made of a memorial ceremony held in Skierniewice, Poland, in 1947 for Holocaust victims. A Scientific Expedition to Birobizhan (1929), a silent film by the faculty of Brigham Young University, Utah.

Constitution. Minutes, 1968-1971. Memorial journal, United Austiler Relief Committee, 1948. Theater programs from Ustilug, pre-World War II.

The Yidisher Artistn Fareyn, or Yiddish Actors' Union, advocated for actors' economic interests while striving to create a professionally run, artistically ambitious, Yiddish theatrical scene in Warsaw. From 1919-1938, its influence gradually increased until it included the majority of actors working in Poland, and collaborated with the most significant Polish Yiddish cultural figures and institutions, including E. R. Kaminska, YIVO, Literarishe Bleter, and the Landrat, or National Council of Class Trade Unions (Krajowa Rada Klasowych Związków Zawodowych). This collection contains records of annual conventions, Executive Committee meetings, correspondence with actors and theaters from Poland and around the world, and membership files on almost 600 actors.

This collection contains the prompt-books for numerous plays, both those originally written in Yiddish as well as Yiddish translations of well-known authors. There is also an original play by Boaz Young and notes for a study on female Jewish writers.

This collection contains handwritten and typed drafts of plays, a novel, and notes for plays and for a newspaper column by Yiddish writer Jacob Lazarus Snitzer (1874-1947). There is also correspondence and contracts relating to Snitzer's plays and five scrapbooks of newspaper articles.

The collection of Jacob Mestel consists of the general, professional and personal correspondence of Jacob Mestel, manuscripts of plays by other authors, manuscripts of poetry, essays and plays by Jacob Mestel, translations of plays into Yiddish, production material, clippings, theater programs, personal documents, and theater photographs.

This collection contains posters, programs, and newspaper reviews for performances of Jewish theater in cities in Germany, Austria, and Lithuania, including theater produced by and about displaced persons in post-World War II Germany.

Correspondence with Yiddish literary figures including Jacob Adler, Jacob Ben-Ami, H. Leivick, Shmuel Niger, H. Rosenblatt. Manuscripts of Alkon's novels and plays. Playbills, program notes.

Photographs, mementos, and album recordings of the Kadimah Group of Hadassah, Central Chapter, Brooklyn Region, documenting their performances in Yiddish of Gilbert and Sullivan’s musicals, Pirates of Penzance and H.M.S. Pinafore.

The papers relate to Kadison's theatrical career and personal life. Art works: original stage designs for the Yiddish theater; drawings of stage characters; portraits of the Kadison family; miscellaneous drawings. Photographs of the Vilna Troupe including scenes of performances. Individual and group photographs of troupe members, including photographs of Luba Kadison and Joseph Buloff. Photographs of Leib Kadison and family. Programs of Vilna Troupe productions. Clippings, theater posters.

This collection consists of typescripts and manuscripts of Yiddish radio plays written by Yiddish actor and director Mark Schweid (1891-1969). Also includes There are also four items of ephemera related to the Bronx Art Theatre.

Correspondence with Yiddish writers and theater personalities including A. Almi, Salo Baron, Yitzhak Dov Berkowitz, Menahem Boraisha, Reuben Brainin, Daniel Charney, Mendl Elkin, Peretz Hirschbein, Yudel Mark, David Pinsky, Melech Ravitch, Zalman Reisen, Maurice Schwartz, Abraham Sutzkever, Zalmen Zylbercweig. Correspondence with organizations including Congress for Jewish Culture, American Jewish Historical Society, Jewish National Workers Alliance, Jewish Daily Forward. Programs and playbills of theatrical performances. Manuscripts of radio scripts, translations of works by Shakespeare. Clippings of articles by and about Schweid, including reviews and obituaries. Material for an anthology of German-Jewish authors.

The papers relate primarily to Oppenheim's acting career and include correspondence, personal documents, scripts of plays, sheet music, and photographs.

Correspondence, personal documents, reviews, clippings, playscripts, programs, posters, and photographs relating to Preiss's career.

Manuscript of the memoirs of Vera Zaslavska. Manuscript of the memoirs of Misha Fishzon, titled Untern forhang fun yidish teater (Behind the Curtain of the Yiddish Theater). Playscripts. Photographs of Vera Zaslavska, Misha Fishzon, Jewish actors in Russia and Romania, the Lyric Theater in New York. Clippings, including obituaries.

Photographs, scripts, playbills, musical scores, correspondence, recordings, plaques, and art objects relating to Picon's theatrical career. Personal photographs of Picon and her husband Jacob Kalich. Photographs of Picon in various stage and film productions including the films Fiddler on the Roof, East and West, Mamele, Yidl mitn fidl, Milk and Honey, and the plays Kuni Leml, Motel Payse. Manuscripts of plays including Shmendrik and Yankele. Music by Abe Ellstein, Mordecai Gebirtig, Abraham Goldfaden, Molly Picon, Joseph Rumshinsky. Playbills and programs from films and theater. Scrapbook of correspondence, theater tickets. Recordings of songs performed by Picon. Plaques, citations, awards. Original art items including portraits, illustrations and cartoons on various topics, many of them studies of Picon.

Memoirs by Schorr of his theatrical career. Manuscripts of Schorr's plays. Correspondence, speeches, articles.

Manuscripts of plays, sketches, radio dramas, stories, articles and autobiographical writings in Russian, Yiddish, English, and German. Family correspondence. Clippings by and about Dymow. Theater programs, contract.

The collection is divided into 5 series: I) Personal Papers and General Correspondence (folders 1-5); II) Journalistic Articles (6-51b); III) Jewish Folklore (52-99); IV) Various Materials (100-105); V) Photographs (106-117).The collection includes Yiddish folkore materials, including notebooks of songs, folk plays, folktales, folk humor, anecdotes, proverbs. Clippings of Litwin's articles relating to various topics, including: Russia, 1917-1930; Palestine and Zionism; towns and cities in Europe; landsmanshaftn; Poale Zion activities, 1915-1928; Jewish occupations; colonization and farming; Jewish holidays; Yiddish theater; education. Poems by Litwin. Photographs of personalities, towns in Europe. Correspondence with Abraham Cahan, Saul Ginsburg, Abraham Liessin, Baal Makhshoves (Isidor Eliashev), Shmuel Niger, Zalman Reisen, Sholem Aleichem, Israel Zinberg. Family correspondence.

Manuscripts of Meisels's plays. Clippings of Meisels's articles, reviews of his productions. Materials on the Yiddish theater in England.