Boris Thomaskefsky (Billy Rose Theater Collection: NYPL)

Name: BORIS THOMASHEFSKY (1868-1939)

Born: UKRAINE

Occupation: Singer and Actor, one of the biggest stars of Yiddish Theater.

When Boris Thomashefsky was only sixteen, he was in The Sorceress, the first Yiddish stage production in New York on the Lower East Side.  He suffered discrimination and hate as a Yiddish actor because most of the immigrants in America did not appreciate the theatre, especially German and Orthodox Jews.  To gain popularity, Boris did renditions of women’s roles.  An audience member recalls one of Thomashefsky’s performances, “He had a vibrating, crackling voice, somewhere between baritone and tenor, going into falsetto in the upper ranges.  Thomashefsky playing Hasidic rabbis and Cardinal Richelieu, Elisha ben Abuya and Judas Maccabeus.  In the early days he often appeared on horseback, naked to the waist, with his legs in golden tights” (Howe 465).  Thomashefsky also starred in the Yiddish version of Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. Boris became great friends with Adler and Kessler in the 1890’s when the three brought realistic theatre to the Yiddish stage.