Stardust Lost

the long version

Writer Kanfer traces the meteoric rise, precipitous fall, and lasting mark of Yiddish theater on American theater, film, and culture in general. The venues in New York City have all gone. So have the performers and their immigrant audiences. But here they live again as Kanfer meticulously unravels the history of Jewish theater. He begins with the drama of the Old Testament and moves to the cultural explosions of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, the oppressions of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and the pogroms of czarist Russia. Fleeing anti-Semitic edicts, the Jews of Eastern Europe push westward, migrating first to England and then to America. With them come the extravagant personages who bring drama--in every sense of the word--to Manhattan's Lower East Side. Kanfer invokes the energy and chutzpah it took to establish and run the thriving, influential theaters, and reveals the drama and comedy that played out nightly behind the scenes as well as onstage.--From publisher description.