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Abraham Goldfaden

Yiddish poet, playwright and composer, regarded as father of the Yiddish theater. Born in Staro Konstantinov, Ukraine in 1840, he received both a Jewish and secular education. In 1857 he entered the rabbinical seminary at Zhitomir. He studied there until 1857 and encouraged by his teachers (among others, E.Z. Zweifel, H.S. Slonimsky, A.B. Gottlober - leaders of the Enlightenment Movement), he began to write poems and plays in Hebrew and in Yiddish.

Goldfaden went to Romania, came in contact with the Broder Singers and initiated a professional Yiddish theater. The theater expanded, went on tour throughout Russia and enjoyed great success until, in 1883, the Russian government banned performances in Yiddish. Goldfaden worked mainly in European cities and immigrated to the US in 1903, where he lived his last five years. He died in New York in 1908.

Among his plays are "Shmendrik" (1877), "Der Fanatik oder di Tsvey Kuni Lemels" (1880), "Shulamit" (1880), operetta, "Doctor Almosado" (1882), "Bar Kochba" (1887) and "Ben Ami" (1907). Goldfaden himself composed the tunes to his plays, although he could neither write music nor play an instrument. He drew upon varied sources for his musical material and was aided by professional musicians in the arrangement of his scores (the score for "Di Kishefmakherin" was arranged in 1922 by Joseph Achron and in 1947 by Marc Lavry).