Articles

Paula Ansaldo’s book brings about a long-await­ed return of Yid­dish and the IFT to their right­ful place in Argen­tine the­ater his­to­ry and Jew­ish the­ater history.

Feb 26, 2025

These three wriers with lives unfold­ing in three dif­fer­ent local­i­ties — Tsarist Rus­sia, Poland, and the US — wrote plays that grap­ple with issues —such as the trag­ic fate of the agune (“chained wife”), moth­er­hood, self-real­iza­tion, sex work, finan­cial inde­pen­dence, and repro­duc­tive auton­o­my— that unfor­tu­nate­ly are still urgent a cen­tu­ry later.

Jul 09, 2024

Today’s Yid­dishists can find his­tor­i­cal mod­els for polit­i­cal­ly-engaged cul­tur­al activism in Nick Under­wood’s account of inter­war Paris.

Feb 07, 2024

Nov 20, 2023

Focus­ing on Abra­ham M. Sharkansky’s 1896 play Kol nidre, oder di geheyme yidn in madrid (Kol Nidre, or the Secret Jews of Madrid), this arti­cle exam­ines how, on both sides of the Atlantic, the Kol Nidre prayer per­formed in the Yid­dish the­atre reflect­ed pro­found mod­ern and migra­to­ry cul­tur­al trans­gres­sions, between cat­e­gories such as high and low, reli­gion and enter­tain­ment, the holy and the theatrical.

Apr 21, 2023

Ivo Pelay’s 1926 plays Judío and Judía, ​“Jew” and ​“Jew­ess,” the­ma­tize anx­i­ety not only about the Argen­tine­ity of Jews, but also about the Jew­ish­ness of Argenti­na: the promise of assim­i­la­tion and the threat of subversion.

May 02, 2021

What if Shy­lock spoke Yid­dish? One exper­i­men­tal pro­duc­tion of Shake­speare’s ​“The Mer­chant of Venice” did just that.

Jul 07, 2020

The Rise of the Mod­ern Yid­dish Stage is a mon­u­men­tal work that tells the sto­ry of Avrom Gold­faden, Yid­dish the­ater’s most cen­tral, con­found­ing, and enig­mat­ic fig­ure while also sit­u­at­ing it in the con­text of Yid­dish theater’s ini­tial development. 

Nov 25, 2019