Abraham Goldfaden - Back To Bucharest

Back To Bucharest

Buoyed by his success in Lvov, he returned to Bucharest in 1892, as director of the Jigniţa theater. His new company again included Lazăr Zuckermann; other players were Marcu (Mordechai) Segalescu, and later Iacob Kalich, Carol Schramek, Malvina Treitler-Löbel and her father H. Goldenbers. Among his notable plays from this period were Dos zenteh Gebot, oder Lo tachmod (The Tenth Commandment, or Thou Shalt Not Covet), Judas Maccabaeus, and Judith and Holfernes and a translation of Johann Strauss's Gypsy Baron.

However, it was not a propitious time to return to Romania. Yiddish theater had become a business there, with slickly written advertisements, coordinated performances in multiple cities using the same publicity materials, and cutthroat competition: on one occasion in 1895, a young man named Bernfeld attended multiple performances of Goldfaden's Story of Isaac, memorized it all (including the songs), and took the whole package to Kalman Juvilier, who put on an unauthorized production in Iaşi. Such outright theft was possible because once Ion Ghica headed off on a diplomatic career, the National Theater, which was supposed to adjudicate issues like unauthorized performances of plays, was no longer paying much attention to Yiddish theater. (Juvilier and Goldfaden finally reached an out-of-court settlement.)

Cutthroat competition was nothing to what was to follow. The 1890s were a tough time for the Romanian economy, and a rising tide of anti-Semitism made it an even tougher time for the Jews. One quarter of the Jewish population emigrated, with intellectuals particularly likely to leave, and those intellectuals who remained were more interested in politics than in theater: this was a period of social ferment, with Jewish socialists in Iaşi starting Der Veker (The Awakener).

Goldfaden left Romania in 1896; soon Juvilier's was the only active Yiddish theater troupe in the country, and foreign troupes had almost entirely ceased coming to the country. Although Lateiner, Horowitz, and Shumer kept writing, and occasionally managed to put on a play, it was not a good time for Yiddish theater – or any theater – in Romania, and would only become worse as the economy continued to decline.

Goldfaden wandered Europe as a poet and journalist. His plays continued to be performed in Europe and America, but rarely, if ever, did anyone send him royalties. His health deteriorated – a 1903 letter refers to asthma and spitting up blood – and he was running out of money. In 1903, he wrote Jacob Dinesohn from Paris, authorizing him to sell his remaining possessions in Romania, clothes and all. This gave him the money to head once more to New York in 1904.