New York
In America, he again tried his hand at journalism, but a brief stint as editor of the New Yorker Yiddishe Ilustrirte Zaitung resulted only in getting the paper suspended and landing himself a rather large fine. On March 31, 1905, he recited poetry at a benefit performance at Cooper Union to raise a pension for Yiddish poet Eliakum Zunser, even worse off than himself because he had found himself unable to write since coming to America in 1889. Shortly afterwards, he met a group of young people who had a Hebrew language association at the Dr. Herzl Zion Club, and wrote a Hebrew-language play David ba-Milchama (David in the War), which they performed in March 1906, the first Hebrew-language play to be performed in America. Repeat performances in March 1907 and April 1908 drew successively larger crowds.
He also wrote the spoken portions of Ben Ami, loosely based on George Eliot's Daniel Deronda. After Goldfaden's former bit player Jacob Adler — by now the owner of a prominent New York Yiddish theater — optioned and ignored it, even accusing Goldfaden of being "senile", it premiered successfully at rival Boris Thomashefsky's People's Theater December 25, 1907, with music by H. Friedzel and lyrics by Mogulescu, who was by this time an international star.
He died in New York City in 1908. At the time of his death, the New York Times called him not only "the Yiddish Shakespeare", but "both a poet and a prophet", and added that "...there is more evidence of genuine sympathy with and admiration for the man and his work than is likely to be manifested at the funeral of any poet now writing in the English language in this country." An estimated 75,000 attended his funeral procession from the People's Theater in the Bowery to Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn.
In November 2009 Goldfaden was the subject of postage stamps issued jointly by Israel and Romania.
Read more about this topic: Abraham Goldfaden
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