Yiddish Theater: The Thomashefsky Family

The Thomashefsky Project has unearthed some 1,000 documents relating to the private and public lives of famed Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, the grandparents of San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas.

In 1998, Tilson Thomas set up a foundation to research the archives of Yiddish theater and collect and curate Thomashefsky artifacts. As a result of seven years of family history research, the project has uncovered photographs, posters, scores, scripts and more. Fragments of musical manuscripts were pieced together and transcribed, while scripts have been preserved and translated. Items were found in the family’s own collection, at YIVO and the New York Public Library.

A multimedia show, “The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater,” will be at Chicago’s Symphony Center on Tuesday, June 3; click here for details. Tilson Thomas will conduct Chicago Symphony Orchestra members in a program ranging from Kaddish to Thomashevsky originals.

In a Chicago Sun Times story, he relates one of his grandmother’s stories:

“In the late 1890s, Bessie was arrested by Theodore Roosevelt, who, well before he was elected President of the U.S., was New York City’s Police Commissioner. My grandparents’ theater had apparently violated the ‘blue laws’ which required businesses to close on Sunday. But Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath, so Sunday was a golden day for the Yiddish theater box office. My grandmother, who was then in her twenties, but always looked much younger than she actually was, recalled how Roosevelt barged into the place and shouted ‘Look out little girl!,’ to which she quickly replied, ‘Hey, I’M the star’.

Born in 1868 in Tarasche (Tarasche) near Kiev, 12-year-old Boris Thomashefsky arrived in New York in 1881, and organized the first Yiddish theater performance only a year later. The teenager took Yiddish theater on the road in the 1880s, performing in Philadelphia, Washington DC, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Boston and Chicago.

Among his famous roles: Hamlet in “Der Yisheve Bokher,” (the yeshiva student); the poster read “translated and improved upon by Boris Thomashefsky;” King Lear, Romeo, Judah Maccabee and the “Jewish Yankee Doodle.” The theater also performed Ansky, Chekhov, Faust, and even Wagner’s Parsifal.

In addition to Shakespeare, the Yiddish theater covered Ibsen (who, says Tilson Thomas, was censored in English, but not in Yiddish), American themes such as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and operettas. It also looked at controversial and topical issues such as birth control, women’s rights, assimilation and class struggle.

For more information, read this story.

Want to know more about the Yiddish theater? click All About Jewish Theatre, and an additional link to the Library of Congress pdf file, Lawrence Marwick Collection of Copyrighted Yiddish Plays.

Revised Russian Empire Name Dictionary

Avotaynu’s Gary Mokotoff has announced that the long-awaited revised edition of A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire, by Dr. Alexander Beider, will be published this summer.

The original 1993 edition (760 pages; the new one will have 1,048 pages) is one of my most frequently used books, and I’m looking forward with great anticipation to the new edition.

It “lives” on top of my computer’s CPU, and every time I’m asked a question about a name, I mark that entry with a transparent colored stick-on tab – there are a lot of tabs today. I’ve also gone through the entire book and marked all the Sephardic-origin names in green (no reason for that color, that’s what I had when I started!).

When the new edition arrives, I’ll have to transfer all these little tabs to the new book, and add more, because the new edition offers 20,000-plus additional surnames or variants – 72,000 total. There’s also a 200-page intro section on the origin and evolution of Eastern European Jewish surnames and the index to 5,000-plus Russian Jewish surnames referenced in the intro.

The dictionary section references Beider’s other works to indicate a surname may have migrated from elsewhere; the etymology (origin) of nearly all 72,000 surnames; Czarist Russia districts where the name was found, the root surname description, and variant surnames of the root.

Authors of 19th-early 20th century works solicited advance subscribers to finance publication and printed the subscriber’s names and towns in Prenumerantn lists. These lists help family history researchers pinpoint where ancestors may have lived at a specific time. Those who pre-subscribe to the revised edition – by June 15 – will see their names and towns included as advance subscribers.

See the differences between the first page of each edition here and here. The complete table of contents for the two-volume work is here.

I wrote to Gary asking if our family’s entry – Beider spells it Talalaj – includes any new information. The short 1993 entry for our very rare name says it is found in Mogilev and Chernigov, and that its meaning in old Ukrainian is idle talker or chatterer. Unfortunately, for us, no new information is included, but I’m sure thousands of other readers will find more information for their own names.

We were hoping for something on its Hebrew/Aramaic construction and its meaning (related to rebirth or hope – Isaiah 26), its inclusion in the Anim Zemirot sung on Shabbat mornings, or the variant Talalaikhin (which indicates descent from a female Talalai). It’s OK; maybe in the third edition?

Until June 15, order both volumes ($118); volume I ($99) or volume 2($20); to order books now, click here. Current subscribers to Avotaynu’s quarterly journal will receive an additional 15% discount, if ordered by June 15. Subscribe to the journal now to receive the discount.

Beider’s other essential reference works (Avotaynu): A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire (1993), A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland (1996), A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names (2001), and A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia (2004).

A new Jewish identity

I never expected to find an essentially Jewish identity and genealogy story in Vanity Fair, but here it is.

In “Jewish Like Me,” author Amy Fine Collins reflects on her lifelong role — above and below the Mason-Dixon Line — of being the only Jew in the room, and how an unexpected declaration by her daughter helped her reconstitute her identity.

Doesn’t everybody at some point in their lives have something about themselves that they wish to conceal? It could be a class background, an actual age, an accent, an ex-spouse, an illness, a habit, a trait, an ethnicity, a proclivity, a perversion. You feel shame and you fear discovery, and shudder at others who you sense share the same distasteful characteristic. Often the very feature that one imagines to be hidden is to the rest of the world an open secret.

From childhood experiences as one of only a few Jews in a town, a make-shift Hebrew School, a little Yiddish, dual holiday celebrations, embarrassing school moments, stereotypes, trying to fit in, school prayers, Jews in hiding, education quotas, anti-Semitism, Tay-Sachs, David Mamet, Theodore Herzl, Israel, Hebrew, and her daughter who brought her back to her faith.

Read the complete article here.

Crystal Skulls with a ‘kipa’ ?

Even the movies are getting into Jewish genealogy. The Jewish Exponent’s Michael Elkin offers a Jewish look at Indiana Jones and his crystal skulls, or as we call them in Yiddish, chochkes (dust-catchers)

Did you know that Harrison Ford’s maternal grandparents – Anna Lifschutz and Harry Nidelman – came from Minsk? Admit it – how many of you will now go to JewishGen to see if there are Belarus SIG records for his bubbe (grandma) and zayde (grampa)? Or to Steve Morse’s One-Step to check the Ellis Island Databse?

Jones and bones: Indiana (Harrison Ford) and his kid (Shia LeBouf) meet up with some skullduggery in their new adventure.

Who knew that when Indiana Jones went raiding for the lost ark, he was looking to return it to his synagogue?

According to Elkins, the original Temple of Doom was a synagogue on La Cienega in Los Angeles that couldn’t pay the real estate taxes and went out of business.

There’s more, and Elkins even mentions that hit series of a certain generation, “Bonanza.”

It’s always been that way, especially when it makes for a bonanza at the box office. Or TV, for that matter. After all, all four actors playing Papa Ben and the sibling Cartwright clan of “Bonanza” were Jews.

And what was it that Hop-Sing and half-sister Hip-Hop served up for Sunday brunch to the kosher cowboys? Beans and rice? No. Lox and bagel.

C’mon, you never heard of the famous … Ponderosa Spread?

Kick back and giggle. Put the kipa on the chochke! For those who aren’t members of the tribe, a kipa (Hebrew) is a yarmulke (Yiddish) or skullcap.

Read more here.

Yiddish Theater: The Thomashefsky Family

The Thomashefsky Project has unearthed some 1,000 documents relating to the private and public lives of famed Yiddish theater stars Boris and Bessie Thomashefsky, the grandparents of San Francisco Symphony music director Michael Tilson Thomas.

In 1998, Tilson Thomas set up a foundation to research the archives of Yiddish theater and collect and curate Thomashefsky artifacts. As a result of seven years of family history research, the project has uncovered photographs, posters, scores, scripts and more. Fragments of musical manuscripts were pieced together and transcribed, while scripts have been preserved and translated. Items were found in the family’s own collection, at YIVO and the New York Public Library.

A multimedia show, “The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater,” will be at Chicago’s Symphony Center on Tuesday, June 3; click here for details. Tilson Thomas will conduct Chicago Symphony Orchestra members in a program ranging from Kaddish to Thomashevsky originals.

In a Chicago Sun Times story, he relates one of his grandmother’s stories:

“In the late 1890s, Bessie was arrested by Theodore Roosevelt, who, well before he was elected President of the U.S., was New York City’s Police Commissioner. My grandparents’ theater had apparently violated the ‘blue laws’ which required businesses to close on Sunday. But Saturday is the Jewish Sabbath, so Sunday was a golden day for the Yiddish theater box office. My grandmother, who was then in her twenties, but always looked much younger than she actually was, recalled how Roosevelt barged into the place and shouted ‘Look out little girl!,’ to which she quickly replied, ‘Hey, I’M the star’.

Born in 1868 in Tarasche (Tarasche) near Kiev, 12-year-old Boris Thomashefsky arrived in New York in 1881, and organized the first Yiddish theater performance only a year later. The teenager took Yiddish theater on the road in the 1880s, performing in Philadelphia, Washington DC, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Boston and Chicago.

Among his famous roles: Hamlet in “Der Yisheve Bokher,” (the yeshiva student); the poster read “translated and improved upon by Boris Thomashefsky;” King Lear, Romeo, Judah Maccabee and the “Jewish Yankee Doodle.” The theater also performed Ansky, Chekhov, Faust, and even Wagner’s Parsifal.

In addition to Shakespeare, the Yiddish theater covered Ibsen (who, says Tilson Thomas, was censored in English, but not in Yiddish), American themes such as “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and operettas. It also looked at controversial and topical issues such as birth control, women’s rights, assimilation and class struggle.

For more information, read this story.

Want to know more about the Yiddish theater? click All About Jewish Theatre, and an additional link to the Library of Congress pdf file, Lawrence Marwick Collection of Copyrighted Yiddish Plays.