• 17. [A Center for East End Culture During the War] New Yiddish Theatre

THEATER MIRROR. TEATER SHPIGL. VOL II, NRS 8, 9, & VOL III, NR 12/13 [NOVEMBER 1946, DECEMBER 1946, MARCH-APRIL 1947] [THREE ISSUES]

London: Nay-Idish teater, 1946-1947. Item #43361

First edition. Original stapled paper wrappers, 4to, xx pages including illustrations and photos. 29 cm. Text in Yiddish and English.
Monthly periodical published by the New Yiddish Theater in London. Numbering was continuous despite the volume change with the start of the new calendar year.
“In 1945, playwright, producer and manager Abish Meisels staged an adaptation of Abraham Goldfaden’s The Ten Commandments at the New Yiddish Theatre in the East End. An Austrian refugee, Meisels immigrated to London in 1938. Five years later he walked down Adler Street and entered Adler Hall. He turned a key, unlocking the doors to the New Yiddish Theatre. According to Meisels, his mission was ‘to present the best in Jewish drama; to keep alive the art of the Jewish theatre, and to inculcate into the minds of the younger generation a love and appreciation of their lives, customs, and language.’
…Meisels’ production may have been salient for London’s post-war Jewish community. Many of his 20-person company were refugees from Nazi-occupied Europe, as were others of London’s Jewish population. They found in Meisels’ theatre, as he put it, a ‘much needed cultural, educational and social centre,’ and a sense of belonging. By the time Meisels opened his theatre in 1943, the Yiddish stage had been in existence for nearly 70 years. Its story began in 1876, when writer Abraham Goldfaden staged the first Yiddish theatrical productions in Romania and Russia. Yiddish plays were first performed in the UK in the 1880s, concurrent with the mass migration of Yiddish-speaking Eastern European Jews to Britain. Between 1881 and 1914, nearly 120,000 of these immigrants entered the country, most settling in the East End. These Yiddish-speaking Jews brought with them the desire for entertainment in their native tongue.
Meisels’ company was the last theatre in Britain devoted to Yiddish productions. It followed the Hebrew Dramatic Club on Princes Street (1886-1887); the Pavilion Theatre onWhitechapel Road (1906-1934); the Temple of Art, known as the Feinman Yiddish People’s Theatre on Commercial Road; the Grand Palais on Commercial Road (1934-1970) and the Jewish National Theatre at Adler Hall (1936- 1939). The use of Yiddish declined asthe community became assimilated. In 1947, Meisels locked the doors to the NewYiddish Theatre for the last time.” (Stefanie Halpern, Jewish Renaissance).For more on London’s New Yiddish Theatre and Theater Mirror/Teater Shpigl, see the London Jewish Museum’s interview with Katie Power (https://jewishmuseum.org.uk/whats-on/exhibitions-2/pitch-up-community-voic es-katie-power).
SUBJECT(S): Jewish theater -- Periodicals. Jewish theater. OCLC: 35448905. OCLC locates 5 holdings in the US (NYPL, LOC, Columbia, HUC, UWisc-Madison)
Some bent corners and fading, rusting to staples. Good+ Condition. (YID-48-82-GG-’xmccel).

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