[Live on Zoom] The Accidental Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater

Yiddish Civilization Lecture Series See all lectures » Admission: Free Registration is required. Watch the video

Alyssa Quint | Delivered in English.

View the Program & Bibliography

The Accidental Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater explores the particular social, commercial, cultural, linguistic, and historical circumstances that gave rise to the first public performances of Yiddish operetta in Romania and Russia from 1876 to 1883, a period considered the first chapter of the modern Yiddish theater. These performances kickstarted the global cultural phenomenon that became the modern Yiddish theater. Under what circumstances was this complex institution allowed to grow? And what accident of history—without which there may have been no Yiddish theater—lies at the intersection of all of these circumstances?

About the Speaker

Alyssa Quint is the Tablet Magazine-Senior Scholar at YIVO, a Senior Research Scholar at Yeshiva University’s Center for Israel Studies and a contributing editor of The Digital Yiddish Theater Project. Her book The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater (2019) documents the first days of the modern Yiddish theater in late Imperial Russia and is the basis of today’s talk. It was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award's Scholarship category. She is the co-author with Michael Steinlauf of “Jewish Theater in Poland” in The Cambridge History of Polish Theater (forthcoming 2021); co-editor of a scholarly edition of Avrom Goldfaden’s operetta Shulamis with Nahma Sandrow and Ron Robboy (forthcoming with Dusseldorf UP); co-editor with Miryem-Khaye Seigel Women on the Yiddish Stage, forthcoming with Syracuse UP (2021); and a co-editor of Arguing the Modern Jewish Canon (Harvard 2013). She is currently at work on a translation of Leyb Malakh’s Mississippi and a project entitled “The Jewish Book of Questions” based on an array of questionnaires that were in circulation from 1925-1955.