Wonder of Wonders: A Cultural History of Fiddler on the Roof Read Online Free PDF Page A

was neither as heartening nor as lucrative as the ones back home. Arranged by Zionist organizations, which had slim followings in those years, the events—where Sholem-Aleichem served essentially as the warm-up act for Zvi Hirsch Masliansky’s fiery orations—deflated his spirits further. The winter tour left him, as Berkowitz recounted, “with only a hard chill that later drove him to his lung disease, and a pack of … stories from American country Jews.”
    At last, however, the theater was coming through. Early in the new year of 1907, Thomashefsky paid the handsome sum of $1,000—nearly two years’ wages for a local presser in the garment trade—for the rights to Stempenyu . The role of the philandering musician seemed perfect for a man so handsome and adored that—as the influential writer and editor of the Forverts , Abe Cahan, put it—“When girls objected to the grooms their parents encouraged, their mothers would say, ‘What? You expect a Thomashefsky?’” He had no doubt that the multitudes would come to swoon at him as the irresistible musical romantic. The turmoil of a young woman chafing at the strictures of shtetl life would also speak to many spectators who, not so long ago, left just such a world behind. Rokhele’s ambivalence would allow them both to indulge their nostalgia and to affirm their break with the old home.
    Then, just as Thomashefsky was beginning rehearsals in mid-January, and much to his surprise (or so he claimed years later), announcements appeared in the Forverts , Tageblat , and other papers boasting of “the first play by the famous literary author Sholem-Aleichem for the first time.” They were advertisements for Shmuel Pasternak oder Der oysvurf ( Samuel Pasternak, or The Scoundrel ), produced by and starring Jacob Adler. He was counting on his audience of sweatshop workers to embrace a farce that traces the downfall of a crooked small-town stockbroker. Ridiculing a speculator in over his head and revealing finance capitalism to be thoroughly corrupting—what could be better for drawing proletarian ticket buyers, many of them roused by the growing labor movement?
    If nothing else, the two directors, old friends and bitter rivals, knew how to fan a conflict for publicity—and they were desperate to boost ticket sales. Thomashefsky stepped up the pace of his rehearsals and took out his own ads: “Sholem-Aleichem for the first time as a playwright! Sholem-Aleichem’s greatest masterpiece, Stempenyu , which has amazed the whole world, been translated into every language, and has now been dramatized by Sholem-Aleichem exclusively for the People’s Theater!” The race—and hyperbole—was on as the impresarios vied for the premiere of the brand-name author. A friend of Sholem-Aleichem’s persuaded the showmen to declare a draw: they would open on the same night, February 8, leaving both companies little time to get ready.
    A couple of nights before the opening, a storm dumped eight inches of snow on New York. Six horses died after slipping and falling on the ice. Streetcars came to a standstill—a Twenty-third Street crosstown car remained stuck for a full night. Shops stayed closed for days. But the twenty-nine-mile-per-hour winds did nothing to cool the feverish preparations and flaming tempers in the Yiddish theaters. Both directors rushed their companies through rehearsals; Sholem-Aleichem dashed from one to the other, apparently unable to prevent the hasty “improvements” the two directors were making to his scripts. Thomashefsky added in some rhyming couplets; Adler embellished his part with jokes that lay “like poor patches on a rich garment,” as far as Sholem-Aleichem’s son-in-law, Berkowitz, was concerned.
    When opening night came, fans traipsed through slush to fill both the two thousand seats at Adler’s Grand at the corner of Chrystie and Grand and, three blocks away, the 2,500 seats at the People’s Theater on the Bowery near Delancey.