Yiddish Theatre - Precursors and Early Influences

Precursors and Early Influences

Noah Prilutski (1882–1941) noted that Yiddish theatre did not arise simultaneously with theatre in other European "national" languages; he conjectured that this was at least in part because the Jewish sense of nationality favored Hebrew over Yiddish as a "national" language, but few Jews of the period were actually comfortable using Hebrew outside of a religious/liturgical context. Nonetheless, the culture of the Eastern European Jews was permeated with music, song, and dance. These elements were to figure prominently in the Yiddish theater.

As with ancient Greek drama, many elements of Yiddish theatre arose as an artistic refinement of religious practice. In a Jewish context psalms to the glory of God were almost always sung rather than spoken. Religious services involved what was known in Hebrew as menatseach, essentially call-and-response. Traditional dances were associated with certain holidays, such as Sukkot, but above all there were the Purim plays.

Often satiric and topical, Purim plays were traditionally performed in the courtyard of the synagogue, because they were considered too profane to be performed inside the building. These made heavy use of masks and other theatrical devices; the masquerade (and the singing and dancing) generally extended to the whole congregation, not just a small set of players. While many Purim plays told the story in the Book of Esther commemorated by the Purim holiday, others used other stories from Jewish scripture, such as the story of Joseph sold by his brothers or the sacrifice of Isaac. Over time, these well-known stories became less a subject matter than a pretext for topical and satiric theatre. Mordechai became a standard role for a clown.

Purim plays were published as early as the early 18th century. At least eight Purim plays were published between 1708 and 1720; most of these do not survive (at least some were burned in autos da fe), but one survives in the Jüdische Merkwürdigkeiten (1714), a collection by Johann Jakob Schudt (1664–1722).

Another similar current in Jewish culture was a tradition of masked dancers performing after weddings. The most elaborate form of this was the Dance of Death, a pageant depicting all layers of a society, which had originated among Sephardic Jews in Spain in the 14th century and had spread through Europe among both Jews and Gentiles. 16th century Italian Jews had taken music and dance to an even more refined level of art: at that time in Italy there were Jewish virtuosi and dancing masters in Mantua, Ferrara, and Rome, and the first known troupes of Jewish performers in Europe. Less refined versions of the same also occurred in 18th century Germany.

Additionally, there was a rich tradition of dialogues in the Jewish poetry known as Tahkemoni, dating back at least to Yehuda al-Harizi in 12th century Spain. Al-Harizi's work contained dialogues between believer and heretic, man and wife, day and night, land and ocean, wisdom and foolishness, avarice and generosity. Such dialogues figured prominently in early Yiddish theater.

The origin of theatre in Christian societies in Europe is often traced to Passion Plays and other religious pageants, similar in some ways to the Purim plays. In the Middle Ages, few Jews would have seen these: they were often performed in the courtyards of Christian churches (few of which were near the Jewish ghettos), on Christian holidays, and they often had significant antisemitic elements in their plots and dialogue. However, in later times, the Romanian Orthodox Christmas tradition of Irozii — minstrel shows centered around the figure of Herod the Great (Rom: Irod), which were the origin of Romanian-language theater — definitely influenced Purim plays and vice versa.

Jews had far more exposure to secular European theater once that developed. Meistersinger Hans Sachs' many plays on Old Testament topics were widely admired by the Jews of the German ghettos, and from the 16th century through the 18th, the biblical story of Esther was the most popular theatrical theme in Christian Europe, often under the Latin name Acta Ahasuerus.