(Library of Congress)

Yiddish theatre was for the most part comedic and lighthearted.

The beginnings of Yiddish theatre and its lighthearted foundation was seen during Purim festivals where people would become more relaxed and where improvised comic-heroic performances became traditional. Only during the mid 19th century did being a Yiddish actor actually become a profession. Yiddish actors took on a nomadic life and wandered from shtetl to shtetl.

Abraham Goldfaden was a songwriter who became a Yiddish playwright and founded the first Yiddish language speaking acting troupe in the former folk singers of Broder Zinger.

His plays became smash hits and his company began to perform in cities all over Russia including Moscow and St. Petersburg. Many rival theatre groups cropped up.

This came to a screeching halt when in August of 1883 all Yiddish theatre was banned by the Russian tsarist government and was enforced by police authorities.

Some suggest it might have been banned because the Russian Jewish middle class of St. Petersburg were embarrassed by the lower class Yiddish productions. Others suggest that Goldfaden’s operetta Bar Kokhba was taken by the Russian authorites to be an allegory that favored revolution within Russia since it was about the Judean uprising against Rome. This latter suggestion seems to be the more logical one.

The ban lasted 17 years and reiterated its validity in 1888, 1891, 1897 and 1900.

The ban probably lasted so long because Jews were considered treasonous, who were constantly plotting to destroy Russia using the theatre stage as their sphere of influence. The lower classes were considered the most dangerous class and since they all flocked to the theatre, the theatre needed to be censored.

Some attempted to continue performing Yiddish plays were the authorities were lax about enforcing the ban or they performed under the pretext of being German plays. Eventually though many including Goldfaden, and famous Yiddish actors such as Jacob Adler, Boris Tomashevsky and Zigmund Mogulesko moved to America due to the tight constraints in Russia.

Finally the ban was lifted and a renaissance of Yiddish theatre began in 1905 due to the tsarist authorities loosening their reins on the population.