New Yiddish Rep, one of two Yiddish theaters still operating in the United States, is running what the Forward says is the first full-length original American Yiddish drama in seven decades.
“The Gospel According to Chaim” (“Di Psure loyt Chaim”), a new Yiddish play by Mikhl Yashinsky, is currently running until January 7 in the Manhattan theater. The play, directed by Dmitri Barcomi, stars Yashinsky himself, alongside seasoned Yiddish actress Melissa Weisz, as well as Sruli Rosenberg and Joshua Horowitz in their stage debuts, reported the Forward.
The play is based on the true story of Chaim Henry Einspruch, a Galician-born Jew who became a born-again Christian, and who translated the New Testament into Yiddish for the benefit of other Jews.
Einspruch, portrayed by Yashinsky, was waylaid in publishing his translation because Jewish presses declined to print it. “The Gospel According to Chaim” recounts Einspruch’s travails as he shops around the Yiddish word of Christ.
The New Yiddish Rep was founded in 2007 by actors who left an older Yiddish outfit, the Folksbiene, to produce more avantgarde plays that would appeal to members of a younger generation, many of whom no longer speak Yiddish, according to a 2010 profile in The New York Times. In 2013, for example, the New Yiddish Rep produced Samuel Beckett’s iconic existentialist play “Waiting for Godot,” translated into Yiddish with supertitles in English and Russian.
When New Yiddish Rep was founded, the Folksbiene was the last remaining Yiddish theater in the United States. In the mid-20th century, the heyday of American Yiddish theater, the Folksbiene was one of a dozen such troupes in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. It had some recent success with its 2018 and 2022 productions of “Fiddler on the Roof” in Yiddish (“Fidler Afn Dakh”).
Yashinsky, who has written some short plays in Yiddish, and Weisz, who appeared in Netflix’s “Unorthodox,” are both native Yiddish speakers, having been raised in Hasidic communities. The Forward reported that New Yiddish Rep prides itself on employing actors in their native language.
Cast of ‘The Gospel According to Chaim (left to right): Mikhl Yashinsky, Melissa Weisz, Sruli Rosenberg, and Joshua Horowitz. (Credit: Tatiana Stolovskaya)
According to the Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages, there are some 600,000 Yiddish speakers in the world today, down from 11 million on the eve of the Holocaust. About 150,000 Yiddish speakers live in the United States.
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NYC gets first original American Yiddish drama in 70 years - The Times of Israel
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