The fol­low­ing is a sum­ma­ry of the first pirem-shpil or ​“Purim play” writ­ten, pro­duced and per­formed by Bobover Hasidim in the Unit­ed States after the Sec­ond World War. The Bobover Hasidim, orig­i­nal­ly from Bobowa, Poland, are a com­mu­ni­ty of Holo­caust sur­vivors, their chil­dren, grand­chil­dren, and great-grand­chil­dren. The play was per­formed in the old Bobover besme­dresh on the Upper West Side of New York City dur­ing Purim 5708 (1948).

The sum­ma­ry was writ­ten from mem­o­ry in 1978 by Moyshe Aftergut, a retired dia­mond deal­er, who wrote, direct­ed and played the main role in the pirem-shpil. Aftergut direct­ed the annu­al Bobover pirem-shpiln for six­ty-five years, up until Purim 2014. ^{1 1} I would like to thank Dr. Cha­va Lapin, a board mem­ber of the YIVO Insti­tute for Jew­ish Research, for her valu­able assis­tance in the translation. 

The idea to revive the tra­di­tion of the pirem-shpil in the Unit­ed States was that of R. Shloyme Hal­ber­stam (1906−2000), who was the Third Bobover Rebbe, the first in Amer­i­ca; and a Holo­caust sur­vivor who lost his wife and two of his chil­dren dur­ing the war. R. Hal­ber­stam had met Aftergut after the war in the Dis­placed Per­sons Camp in Bary, Italy, where he noticed his musi­cal tal­ents. R. Hal­ber­stam arranged a visa to the USA for Aftergut, where he became one of the first mem­bers of the Bobover com­mu­ni­ty there. Before Purim 1948, the Rebbe asked Moyshe Aftergut, then a stu­dent at the Bobover yeshi­va, to write and per­form a pirem-shpil so that the tra­di­tion­al Bobover pirem-shpil would not be forgotten.

The result was In tsayt fun far­numen­em poyln, ^{2 2} For more on the Bobover Hasidim pirem-shpiln, see Shifra Epstein, ​“The Bobover Hasidim Piremsh­piyl: From Folk Dra­ma for Purim to a Rit­u­al of Tran­scend­ing the Holo­caust,” in Janet S. Belkow-Shalin, ed., New World Hasidim: Ethno­graph­ic Stud­ies of Hasidic Jews in Amer­i­ca (New York: SUNY Press, 1994) 237 – 255. which was per­formed just three years after the atroc­i­ties of the war and before an audi­ence com­posed of survivors.

The first two scenes are set in a Ger­man occu­pied ghet­to, while the final scene takes place after the Amer­i­can sol­diers had lib­er­at­ed the camps. Actors even wore the striped uni­forms which they brought with them to the USA after the war. 

As in the pirem-shpiln per­formed by the Bobover pre-World War II, in In tsayt fun far­numen­em poyln all the play­ers were ama­teurs and male. Moyshe Aftergut played the only woman in the play, Beyle Yakobow­itch, whose son is tak­en away. 

Music, which was cen­tral to the per­for­mance of the pirem-shpiln in East­ern Europe, was also cen­tral to In Tsayt fun far­numen­em poyln. The roles were most­ly sung with musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment, and the music was most­ly bor­rowed from old­er pirem-shpiln as well as from pop­u­lar Yid­dish songs and can­to­r­i­al music, cre­at­ing the appro­pri­ate ambiance.

The music of one song, ​“Mame, gib dayn brukhe tsu dayn kind (“Moth­er, Give a Bless­ing to Your Child”), best illus­trates the role of music in cre­at­ing the set­ting for the play. The song was writ­ten by an unknown com­pos­er and was sung by moth­ers in the ghet­tos dur­ing World War II as farewell songs to their chil­dren before they were tak­en away. ^{3 3} The song was pub­lished in Eleonor Melotek and Malke Got­tlieb, We are here: Songs of the Holo­caust (New York, 1983) 18 – 19.

As the fol­low­ing recon­struct­ed text shows, In tsayt fun far­numen­em poyln is a psy­chodra­ma in which the Holo­caust expe­ri­ence is reversed in the mirac­u­lous sur­vival of Yankele. As in DP camps in Europe and even dur­ing the Holo­caust itself, the sto­ry of Esther tra­di­tion­al­ly told at Purim and the purim­spiel as a for­mat served many sur­vivor com­mu­ni­ties as a means for express­ing and explor­ing their expe­ri­ences of the Holocaust.

In tsayt fun far­numen­em poyln pro­vid­ed sur­vivors with a stage to act out their emo­tions, anx­i­eties, and beliefs con­nect­ed to the Holo­caust. By cheat­ing death, the play invert­ed the Holo­caust expe­ri­ence and pro­vid­ed a rit­u­al­is­tic chan­nel to pub­li­cal­ly pro­claim belief in God and His mir­a­cles dur­ing the Holo­caust. Accord­ing to eye­wit­ness­es, In tsayt fun far­numen­em poyln had a great impact on the audi­ence and many view­ers sobbed dur­ing the per­for­mance.

The fol­low­ing year, aware that the play had such a strong emo­tion­al impact on the com­mu­ni­ty, the Bobover Rebbe pro­hib­it­ed its per­for­mance and rec­om­mend­ed a return to themes from the tra­di­tion­al pirem-shpiln that the Bobover per­formed before the war. In the years since then, the Bobover have per­formed more than thir­ty pirem-shpiln in Bobover Yid­dish, both on bib­li­cal and non-bib­li­cal themes. The major­i­ty of them are new, writ­ten in the Unit­ed States.