160-552: Abraham Goldfaden ( Yiddish : אַבֿרהם גאָלדפֿאַדען ; born Avrum Goldnfoden ; 24 July 1840 – 9 January 1908), also known as Avram Goldfaden , was a Russian -born Jewish poet, playwright, stage director and actor in Yiddish and Hebrew languages and author of some 40 plays. Goldfaden is considered the father of modern Jewish theatre. In 1876 he founded in the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia what
320-457: A housepainter known as Reb Moishe Bas. He had no formal artistic training, but he proved to be good at the job, and joined the troupe, as did Sara Segal , their first actress. She was not yet out of her teens. After seeing her perform in their Galaţi premiere, her mother objected to her unmarried daughter cavorting on a stage. Goldstein – who, unlike Goldfaden and Grodner, was single – promptly married her and she remained with
480-579: A "dramatic society" to handle administrative matters. From those papers, it is known that the troupe at the Jigniţa included Moris Teich, Michel Liechman (Glückman), Lazăr Zuckermann, Margareta Schwartz, Sofia Palandi, Aba Goldstein, and Clara Goldstein. We also know from similar papers that when Grodner and Mogulescu walked out on Goldfaden to start their own company, it included (besides themselves) Israel Rosenberg , Jacob Spivakovsky , P. Şapira , M. Banderevsky , Anetta Grodner , and Rosa Friedman . Ion Ghica
640-582: A 1903 letter refers to asthma and spitting up blood – and he was running out of money. In 1903, he wrote Jacob Dinesohn from Paris, authorising him to sell his remaining possessions in Romania, clothes and all. This gave him the money to head once more to New York in 1904. In America, he again tried his hand at journalism, but a brief stint as editor of the New Yorker Yiddishe Ilustrirte Zaitung resulted only in getting
800-558: A Hebrew-language play David ba-Milchama ( David in the War ), which they performed in March 1906, the first Hebrew-language play to be performed in America. Repeat performances in March 1907 and April 1908 drew successively larger crowds. He also wrote the spoken portions of Ben Ami , loosely based on George Eliot 's Daniel Deronda . After Goldfaden's former bit player Jacob Adler —by now
960-489: A child, he is said to have appreciated and imitated the performances of wedding jesters and Brody singers to the degree that he acquired the nickname Avromele Badkhen, "Abie the Jester." In 1857 he began studies at the government-run rabbinical school at Zhytomyr , from which he emerged in 1866 as a teacher and a poet (with some experience in amateur theatre), but he never led a congregation. Goldfaden's first published poem
1120-545: A collection of narrative poems on themes from the Hebrew Bible and the Haggadah . The advent of the printing press in the 16th century enabled the large-scale production of works, at a cheaper cost, some of which have survived. One particularly popular work was Elia Levita 's Bovo-Bukh ( בָּבָֿא-בּוך ), composed around 1507–08 and printed several times, beginning in 1541 (under the title Bovo d'Antona ). Levita,
1280-532: A comedy, Fishl der balegole un zayn knecht Sider ( Fishel the Carter and His Servant Sider ). As the season for outdoor performances was coming to a close, Goldfaden tried and failed to rent an appropriate theatre in Iaşi. A theatre owner named Reicher, presumably Jewish himself, told him that "a troupe of Jewish singers" would be "too dirty." Goldfaden, Grodner, and Goldstein headed first to Botoşani , where they lived in
1440-475: A commercially successful medium, it was Goldfaden's higher aspirations for it that eventually earned him recognition as "the Yiddish Shakespeare." As a man broadly read in several languages, he was acutely aware that there was no Eastern European Jewish tradition of dramatic literature – that his audience was used to seeking just "a good glass of Odobeşti and a song." Years later, he would paraphrase
1600-472: A cosmopolitan community, Chernivtsi was once dubbed "Little Vienna " and " Jerusalem upon the Prut ". The city is a major regional rail and road transportation hub, also housing an international airport . Aside from its Ukrainian name of Chernivtsi, the city is also known by several different names in various languages, which still are used by the respective population groups much as they used to be throughout
1760-489: A decent, though not earth-shattering, actor and singer.) After that time, Goldfaden continued miscellaneous newspaper work, but the stage became his main focus. Later that summer, the famous Romanian poet Mihai Eminescu , then a journalist, saw one of the Pomul Verde performances. He recorded in his review that the company had six players. (A 1905 typographical error would turn this into a much-cited sixteen, suggesting
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#17327880368601920-600: A delegate from Paris to the World Zionist Congress in 1900. Still, he spent most of his life (and set slightly more than half of his plays) in the Pale of Settlement and in the adjoining Jewish areas in Romania, and when he left it was never to go to Palestine, but to cities such as New York, London or Paris. This might be understandable when the number of his potential Jewish spectators in Palestine in his time
2080-460: A garret and Goldfaden continued to churn out songs and plays. An initial successful performance of Di Rekruten ( The Recruits ) in an indoor theatre ("with loges!" as Goldfaden wrote) was followed by days of rain so torrential that no one would come out to the theatre; they pawned some possessions and left for Galaţi , which was to prove a bit more auspicious, with a successful three-week run. In Galaţi they acquired their first serious set designer,
2240-641: A good bit of improvisation. The performance by Goldfaden, Grodner, Sokher Goldstein , and possibly as many as three other men went over well. The first performance was either Di bobe mitn einikl ( Grandmother and Granddaughter ) or Dos bintl holts ( The Bundle of sticks ); sources disagree. (Some reports suggest that Goldfaden himself was a poor singer, or even a non-singer and poor actor; according to Bercovici, these reports stem from Goldfaden's own self-disparaging remarks or from his countenance as an old man in New York, but contemporary reports show him to have been
2400-639: A grander beginning for Yiddish theatre.) He was impressed by the quality of the singing and acting, but found the pieces "without much dramatic interest. His generally positive comments would seem to deserve to be taken seriously: Eminescu was known generally as "virulently antisemitic ." Eminescu appears to have seen four of Goldfaden's early plays: a satiric musical revue Di velt a gan-edn ( The World and Paradise ), Der farlibter maskil un der oyfgeklerter hosid (a dialogue between "an infatuated philosopher" and "an enlightened Hasid "), another musical revue Der shver mitn eidem ( Father-in-law and Son-in-Law ), and
2560-560: A job as a cashier in a hat shop. In 1875, Goldfaden headed for Munich , intending to study medicine. This did not work out, and he headed for Lvov/Lemberg in Habsburg -ruled Galicia , where he again met up with Linetsky, now editor of a weekly paper, Isrulik or Der Alter Yisrulik (which was well reputed, but was soon shut by the government). A year later, he moved on to Chernivtsi in Habsburg Bukovina , where he edited
2720-492: A lesser extent, the United Kingdom. This has resulted in some difficulty in communication between Yiddish speakers from Israel and those from other countries. There is significant phonological variation among the various Yiddish dialects . The description that follows is of a modern Standard Yiddish that was devised during the early 20th century and is frequently encountered in pedagogical contexts. Uvular As in
2880-541: A lot more of a market for Yiddish-language theatre. Librescu offered Goldfaden 100 francs for a public recital of his songs in the garden of Shimen Mark, Grădina Pomul Verde ("the Green Fruit-Tree Garden"). Instead of a simple recital, Goldfaden expanded the program into something of a vaudeville performance; either this or an indoor performance he and his fellow performers gave later that year in Botoşani
3040-401: A play that he didn't finish at that time, and put together a theatre company that never got to the point of putting on a play (because the cashier made off with all of their funds). In October 1889 he scraped together the money to get to Lvov , where his reputation as a poet again came to his rescue. Lviv was not exactly a dramatist's dream. Leon Dreykurs described audiences bringing meals into
3200-592: A prolific pace, now mostly serious pieces such as Doctor Almasada, oder Die Yiden in Palermo ( Doctor Almasada, or The Jews of Palermo ), Shulamith , and Bar Kokhba , the last being a rather dark operetta about Bar Kokhba's revolt , written after the pogroms in Russia following the 1881 assassination of Czar Alexander II . A Frenchman named Victor Tissot happened to be in Berdichev when Goldfaden's company
3360-649: A remarkable literary production in German began in this period, featuring most prominently Karl Emil Franzos . During the 19th and early 20th century, Chernivtsi became a center of both Romanian and Ukrainian national movements. In 1908, it was the site of the first Yiddish language conference, the Czernowitz Conference , coordinated by Nathan Birnbaum . When Austria-Hungary dissolved in 1918, followed by two years of political uncertainty in Europe due to
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#17327880368603520-436: A resting point for refugees on their way to nearby Romania . Some Chernivtsi residents have also left the country. The Chernivtsi coat of arms is framed by a bronze ornamental cartouche, and a red heraldic shield depicting an open stone gate with a figured trident in the middle. Under the gate, there are two crossed laurel branches, tied with ribbons. The crown of the symbol is the stone crown. The Chernivtsi flag consists of
3680-516: A stage star. Orphaned by the time he reached his teen years, Mogulescu had already made his way in the world as a singer – not only as a soloist in the Great Synagogue of Bucharest but also as a performer in cafes, at parties, with a visiting French operetta company, and even in a church choir. Before his voice changed, he had sung with Zuckerman, Dinman, and Moses Wald in the "Israelite Chorus", performing at important ceremonies in
3840-482: A stage, I want it to be a school for you. In youth you didn't have time to learn and cultivate yourself... Laugh heartily if I amuse you with my jokes, while I, watching you, feel my heart crying. Then, brothers, I'll give you a drama, a tragedy drawn from life, and you, too, shall cry – while my heart shall be glad." Nonetheless, his "war with the public" was based on understanding that public. He would also write, "I wrote Di kishefmakhern ( The Witch ) in Romania, where
4000-671: A theatrical hall, a big building made of rough boards, where theatre troupes passing through now and then put on a play." Although there was a proper stage with a curtain, the cheap seats were bare benches, the more expensive ones were benches covered in red percale. Although there were many full beards, "there were no long caftans, no skullcaps." Some of the audience were quite poor, but these were assimilated Jews, basically secular. The audience also included Russian officers with their wives or girlfriends. In Russia, Goldfaden and his troupe drew large audiences and were generally popular with progressive Jewish intellectuals, but slowly ran afoul of both
4160-446: A translation of Johann Strauss 's Gypsy Baron . However, it was not a propitious time to return to Romania. Yiddish theatre had become a business there, with slickly written advertisements, coordinated performances in multiple cities using the same publicity materials, and cut-throat competition: on one occasion in 1895, a young man named Bernfeld attended multiple performances of Goldfaden's Story of Isaac , memorised it all (including
4320-551: A tree, the top, and a rectangular cloth, the front of which forms framed by a red tooth-like ornament white background with an inscription in Ukrainian in the center, over which there is inscribed in Ukrainian: "Chernivtsi". Under the coat of arms, there is the sign "1408" – the date of the first written mention of the city. On both sides of the coat of arms and all four corners of the field are filled with floral ornaments and with
4480-627: Is 621 mm ( 24 + 1 ⁄ 2 "), with the lowest – in October and January–February, the highest – in June–July. Sometimes there are heavy rains during the summer. Snow cover is formed each winter, but its altitude is insignificant. The average wind speed ranges from 3.3 m/s (7 mph) in July to 4.0 m/s (9 mph) in January. The average annual humidity is 76%. The total area of Chernivtsi within
4640-644: Is Avroham ben Schemuel Pikartei, who published a paraphrase on the Book of Job in 1557. Women in the Ashkenazi community were traditionally not literate in Hebrew but did read and write Yiddish. A body of literature therefore developed for which women were a primary audience. This included secular works, such as the Bovo-Bukh , and religious writing specifically for women, such as the צאנה וראינה Tseno Ureno and
4800-475: Is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews . It originated in 9th century Central Europe , and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew (notably Mishnaic ) and to some extent Aramaic . Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages . Yiddish has traditionally been written using
4960-576: Is a Ukrainian-language version of the Latin Viribus Unitis ("With United Forces"), the personal motto of Franz Joseph , who personally bestowed the right to use it on Chernivtsi. This indicates a special attitude of the emperor to the city. Along with the capital of Bukovina, only the first naval ship of the Austro-Hungarian Navy ( SMS Viribus Unitis ) was honoured with such honour. The official ''Chernivtsi 600'' logo
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5120-478: Is a beech branch. The obverse depicts the emblem of Chernivtsi and the inscription – "To the glory of Chernivtsi". On the reverse – the official Chernivtsi logo, designed and approved for the anniversary. The medal is awarded, according to the decision of the executive committee of the City Council, annually during the celebration of the city day. The official motto of modern Chernivtsi, "Спільними зусиллями!",
5280-645: Is a city in southwestern Ukraine on the upper course of the Prut River. Formerly the capital of the historic region of Bukovina , which is now divided between Romania and Ukraine, Chernivtsi serves as the administrative center for the Chernivtsi urban hromada , the Chernivtsi Raion , and the oblast itself . In 2022, the Chernivtsi population, by estimate, is 264,298 (2022 estimate), and
5440-427: Is a trumpet player who wins the trumpet tune "Marichka". In the middle of the background, there is the town hall. The former Metropolitan Residence of Bukovina and Dalmatia which is recognized as the architectural pearl of the city is pictured to the right in the background. The colour scheme of the logo represented in orange, blue and red, the name is purple. Such a combination is characteristic of tourism, which uses
5600-487: Is also used in the adjectival sense, synonymously with "Ashkenazi Jewish", to designate attributes of Yiddishkeit ("Ashkenazi culture"; for example, Yiddish cooking and "Yiddish music" – klezmer ). Hebrew Judeo-Aramaic Judeo-Arabic Other Jewish diaspora languages Jewish folklore Jewish poetry By the 10th century, a distinctive Jewish culture had formed in Central Europe. By
5760-500: Is considered to be a "green city": the large territory is occupied by parks, squares, gardens, alleys and flower gardens. Nine objects are recognized as monuments of landscape art. The city has a botanical garden at the Yuriy Fedkovych National University with a unique orangery. Among the relict plants growing in the botanical garden, a special place is occupied by a giant Sequoiadendron . Chernivtsi
5920-578: Is generally counted as the first professional Yiddish theatre performance. However, in the circumstances, the designation of a single performance as "the first" may be nominal: Goldfaden's first actor, Israel Grodner , was already singing Goldfaden's songs (and others) in the salons of Iaşi. Also, in 1873, Grodner sang in a concert in Odessa (songs by Goldfaden, among others) that apparently included significant improvised material between songs, although no actual script. Although Goldfaden, by his own account,
6080-773: Is generally credited as the world's first professional Yiddish-language theatre troupe. He was also responsible for the first Hebrew-language play performed in the United States. The Avram Goldfaden Festival of Iaşi , Romania, is named after him and held in his honour. Jacob Sternberg called him "the Prince Charming who woke up the lethargic Romanian Jewish culture". Israil Bercovici wrote of his works: "we find points in common with what we now call 'total theatre'. In many of his plays he alternates prose and verse, pantomime and dance, moments of acrobatics and some of jonglerie , and even of spiritualism..." Goldfaden
6240-427: Is located in a temperate climate zone. The climate is continental with mild winters and warm summers. The average annual temperature is +8,6 °C (47 °F), the lowest in January (-2,9 °C; 27 °F), the highest – in July (+19,8 °C; 68 °F). Winter weather usually comes on 28 November and ends 9 March; summer weather begins on 20 May, and ends on 10 September. The average annual rainfall in Chernivtsi
6400-484: Is located in the center of Chernivtsi Regional Park , which borders zakaznik "Thetzino" in the west and Mount Berda in the north. At the end of the twentieth century, the main pollutants of the Chernivtsi environment were industrial enterprises, including the MIC. In the 1990s much of them ceased to exist or significantly reduced production capacity and thus reduced industrial emissions. Despite this, 58 enterprises (38.4% of
6560-489: Is periodically released into the atmosphere of the city. Emissions from stationary sources were 7.9 tonnes per 1 km (0.39 sq mi) of Chernivtsi territory. Each inhabitant of the regional center accounts for an average of 4.8 kg (11 lb) of harmful emissions per year. In 2008, Chernivtsi established an Environmental Monitoring System (EMS), an information structure that integrates environmental monitoring organizations and industrial enterprises that pollute
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6720-447: Is printed in Hebrew script.) According to a study by the German media association Internationale Medienhilfe (IMH), more than 40 printed Yiddish newspapers and magazines were published worldwide in 2024, and the trend is rising. The Western Yiddish dialect—sometimes pejoratively labeled Mauscheldeutsch , i. e. "Moses German" —declined in the 18th century, as the Age of Enlightenment and
6880-457: Is pronounced [haɡˈdɔmɜ] . The vowel phonemes of Standard Yiddish are: In addition, the sonorants /l/ and /n/ can function as syllable nuclei : [m] and [ŋ] appear as syllable nuclei as well, but only as allophones of /n/ , after bilabial consonants and dorsal consonants , respectively. The syllabic sonorants are always unstressed. Stressed vowels in the Yiddish dialects may be understood by considering their common origins in
7040-588: Is reflected in some Ashkenazi personal names (e.g., Kalonymos and Yiddish Todres ). Hebrew, on the other hand, was regarded as a holy language reserved for ritual and spiritual purposes and not for common use. The established view is that, as with other Jewish languages , Jews speaking distinct languages learned new co-territorial vernaculars, which they then Judaized. In the case of Yiddish, this scenario sees it as emerging when speakers of Zarphatic (Judeo-French) and other Judeo-Romance languages began to acquire varieties of Middle High German , and from these groups
7200-575: Is the Prut River in its upper reaches, which divides the city in half. Besides, there are six small streams and nine lakes within the city. The relief is characterized by significant relief dip – from 150 metres (492') above sea level in the Prut valleys to 537 metres (1762') in the western outskirts (Mount Tsetzino ), which is caused by the location on the Chernivtsi Upland . Chernivtsi
7360-498: Is uncertain). An additional distinctive semicursive typeface was, and still is, used for rabbinical commentary on religious texts when Hebrew and Yiddish appear on the same page. This is commonly termed Rashi script , from the name of the most renowned early author, whose commentary is usually printed using this script. (Rashi is also the typeface normally used when the Sephardic counterpart to Yiddish, Judaeo-Spanish or Ladino ,
7520-567: The Haskalah led to a view of Yiddish as a corrupt dialect. The 19th century Prussian-Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz , for example, wrote that "the language of the Jews [in Poland] ... degenerat[ed] into a ridiculous jargon, a mixture of German, Polish, and Talmudical elements, an unpleasant stammering, rendered still more repulsive by forced attempts at wit." A Maskil (one who takes part in
7680-657: The Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Chernivtsi enjoyed prosperity and culture as the capital of the Bukovina crown land . Until 1918, the main language of the city was German, which, in addition to the Germans, was also spoken by Jews (together they made up half the population of the city) and even partly by Ukrainians, Romanians and Poles. After World War II , the Shoah and Porajmos , and the resettlement and expulsion of
7840-711: The Habsburg Empire ; this region became known as Bukovina . The city became the region's capital, organized as the Bukovina District part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria , which in 1849 was raised in status and became known as the Duchy of Bukovina , a crownland of the Austrian Empire . The city received Magdeburg rights . The city began to flourish in 1778 when Knight Karl von Enzenberg
8000-660: The Haskalah ) would write about and promote acclimatization to the outside world. Jewish children began attending secular schools where the primary language spoken and taught was German, not Yiddish. Yiddish grates on our ears and distorts. This jargon is incapable in fact of expressing sublime thoughts. It is our obligation to cast off these old rags, a heritage of the dark Middle Ages. – Osip Aronovich Rabinovich , in an article titled "Russia – Our Native Land: Just as We Breathe Its Air, We Must Speak Its Language" in
8160-600: The Hebrew alphabet . Prior to World War II , there were 11–13 million speakers. Eighty-five percent of the approximately six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers, leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Assimilation following World War II and aliyah (immigration to Israel) further decreased the use of Yiddish among survivors after adapting to Hebrew in Israel. However,
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#17327880368608320-632: The High Holy Days ) and בֵּיתֿ הַכְּנֶסֶתֿ , 'synagogue' (read in Yiddish as beis hakneses ) – had been included. The niqqud appears as though it might have been added by a second scribe, in which case it may need to be dated separately and may not be indicative of the pronunciation of the rhyme at the time of its initial annotation. Over the course of the 14th and 15th centuries, songs and poems in Yiddish, and macaronic pieces in Hebrew and German, began to appear. These were collected in
8480-586: The Middle High German diphthong ei and long vowel î to /aɪ/ , Yiddish has maintained the distinction between them; and likewise, the Standard German /ɔʏ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong öu and the long vowel iu , which in Yiddish have merged with their unrounded counterparts ei and î , respectively. Lastly, the Standard German /aʊ/ corresponds to both the MHG diphthong ou and
8640-536: The Odessan journal Рассвет (dawn), 1861. Owing to both assimilation to German and the revival of Hebrew , Western Yiddish survived only as a language of "intimate family circles or of closely knit trade groups". In eastern Europe, the response to these forces took the opposite direction, with Yiddish becoming the cohesive force in a secular culture (see the Yiddishist movement ). Notable Yiddish writers of
8800-517: The Principality of Moldavia , one of the historic provinces of Romania ; the city being the administrative center of the homonymous ținut (county) . The name Cernăuți is first attested in a document by Alexandru cel Bun (Alexander the Good) on 8 October 1408. In Ottoman sources, the city was mentioned as "Çernovi". In 1775, the northwestern part of the territory of Moldavia was annexed by
8960-484: The Slavic languages with which Yiddish was long in contact (Russian, Belarusian , Polish , and Ukrainian ), but unlike German, voiceless stops have little to no aspiration ; unlike many such languages, voiced stops are not devoiced in final position. Moreover, Yiddish has regressive voicing assimilation , so that, for example, זאָגט /zɔɡt/ ('says') is pronounced [zɔkt] and הקדמה /hakˈdɔmɜ/ ('foreword')
9120-565: The high medieval period , their area of settlement, centered on the Rhineland ( Mainz ) and the Palatinate (notably Worms and Speyer ), came to be known as Ashkenaz , originally a term used of Scythia , and later of various areas of Eastern Europe and Anatolia. In the medieval Hebrew of Rashi (d. 1105), Ashkenaz becomes a term for Germany, and אשכּנזי Ashkenazi for the Jews settling in this area. Ashkenaz bordered on
9280-431: The תחנות Tkhines . One of the best-known early woman authors was Glückel of Hameln , whose memoirs are still in print. The segmentation of the Yiddish readership, between women who read מאַמע־לשון mame-loshn but not לשון־קדש loshn-koydesh , and men who read both, was significant enough that distinctive typefaces were used for each. The name commonly given to the semicursive form used exclusively for Yiddish
9440-447: The 11 January 1888 edition of the New Yorker Yiddishe Ilustrirte Zaitung ), he briefly took on the job of director of Mogulescu's new "Rumanian Opera House"; they parted ways again after the failure of their first play, whose production values were apparently not up to New York standards. Goldfaden attempted (unsuccessfully) to found a theatre school, then headed in 1889 for Paris , rather low on funds. There he wrote some poetry, worked on
9600-655: The 1925 founding of the Yiddish Scientific Institute, YIVO . In Vilnius , there was debate over which language should take primacy, Hebrew or Yiddish. Yiddish changed significantly during the 20th century. Michael Wex writes, "As increasing numbers of Yiddish speakers moved from the Slavic-speaking East to Western Europe and the Americas in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they were so quick to jettison Slavic vocabulary that
9760-457: The 600th Anniversary of Chernivtsi (2008) in order to reward individuals who actively contributed to the prosperity of the city and its promotion in Ukraine and the world. The award is made of silver-gilt , it has a circle shape with a diameter of 28 mm (1"). The medal's strip is white with red stripes, which corresponds to the colours of the Chernivtsi flag. At the bottom of the strip, there
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#17327880368609920-592: The Ashkenazi community took shape. Exactly what German substrate underlies the earliest form of Yiddish is disputed. The Jewish community in the Rhineland would have encountered the Middle High German dialects from which the Rhenish German dialects of the modern period would emerge. Jewish communities of the high medieval period would have been speaking their own versions of these German dialects, mixed with linguistic elements that they themselves brought into
10080-780: The Bukovina Germans were "repatriated" according to a Soviet-Nazi agreement. Under the regime of military dictator Ion Antonescu , Romania had switched from an ally of France and Britain to one of Nazi Germany; subsequently, in July 1941, the Romanian Army retook the city as part of the Axis attack on the Soviet Union during World War II. Chernivtsi would become the capital of the Romanian Bukovina Governorate . In August 1941, Antonescu ordered
10240-641: The Czarist government and conservative elements in the Jewish community. Goldfaden was calling for change in the Jewish world: A call like this might be a bit ambiguous, but it was unsettling to those who were on the side of the status quo. Yiddish theatre was banned in Russia starting September 14, 1883, as part of the anti-Jewish reaction following the assassination of Czar Alexander II . Goldfaden and his troupe were left adrift in Saint Petersburg. They headed various directions, some to England, some to New York City, some to Poland, some to Romania. While Yiddish theatre continued successfully in various places, Goldfaden
10400-507: The English language in this country." In November 2009, Goldfaden was the subject of postage stamps issued jointly by Israel and Romania. Goldfaden had an on-again off-again relationship with Zionism . Some of his earliest poetry was Zionist avant la lettre and one of his last plays was written in Hebrew; several of his plays were implicitly or explicitly Zionist ( Shulamith set in Jerusalem , Mashiach Tzeiten?! ending with its protagonists abandoning New York for Palestine ); he served as
10560-404: The Jewish community. Goldfaden seems, in Bercovici's words, to have lost "his theatrical elan" in this period. He briefly put together a theatre company in 1886 in Warsaw , with no notable success. In 1887 he went to New York (as did Mogulescu, independently). After extensive negotiations and great anticipation in the Yiddish-language press in New York ("Goldfaden in America," read the headline in
10720-438: The Jewish community. Mogulescu's audition for Goldfaden was a scene from Vlăduţu Mamei ( Mama's Boy ), which formed the basis later that year for Goldfaden's light comedy Shmendrik, oder Die Komishe Chaseneh ( Shmendrik or The Comical Wedding ), starring Mogulescu as the almost painfully clueless and hapless young man (a role later famously played in New York and elsewhere by actress Molly Picon ). This recruiting of cantors
10880-492: The Proto-Yiddish sound system. Yiddish linguistic scholarship uses a system developed by Max Weinreich in 1960 to indicate the descendent diaphonemes of the Proto-Yiddish stressed vowels. Each Proto-Yiddish vowel is given a unique two-digit identifier, and its reflexes use it as a subscript, for example Southeastern o 11 is the vowel /o/, descended from Proto-Yiddish */a/. The first digit indicates Proto-Yiddish quality (1-=*[a], 2-=*[e], 3-=*[i], 4-=*[o], 5-=*[u]), and
11040-450: The Prut dates back to the time of the Principality of Halych and is thought to have been built by Grand Prince Yaroslav Osmomysl . Legendary accounts refer to this fortress-city as Chern' , or Black city ; it is said to owe its name to the black color of the city walls, built from dark oak layered with local black-colored soil . This early stronghold was destroyed during the Mongol invasion of Europe by Boroldai in 1259. However,
11200-419: The Red Army, the city was reincorporated into the Ukrainian SSR. Over the following years, most of the Jews emigrated to Israel; the city was an important node in the Berihah network. Bukovina Poles were expelled by the Soviets after World War II. The city became a predominantly Ukrainian one. Since 1991, Chernivtsi has been a part of an independent Ukraine. In May 1999, Romania opened a consulate general in
11360-460: The Yiddish-language daily Dos Bukoviner Israelitishe Folksblatt . The limits of the economic sense of this enterprise can be gauged from his inability to pay a registration fee of 3000 ducats. He tried unsuccessfully to operate the paper under a different name, but soon moved on to Iaşi in Moldavia on the invitation of Isaac Librescu (1850–1930), a young wealthy community activist interested in theatre. Arriving in Iaşi (Jassy) in 1876, Goldfaden
11520-405: The addition of two beech branches with nuts and leaves. The reverse side is formed by a yellow background with the coat of arms of Ukraine in the center with frames and ornaments similar to the front side. The mayor's honorary chain is a symbol of Chernivtsi mayor's authority, which is served on behalf of the territorial community. Founded in 1908 and restored in 2008. The symbol is a medallion with
11680-414: The administrative boundaries of 2013 is about 153 km (59 sq mi). According to the functional purpose the lands of the city are divided as follows: land of residential and public buildings (64%), lands of agricultural purpose (17%), lands of industry (9%), lands of recreational and environmental purpose (5%), lands of general use (3%), commercial land (2%). The main water source of Chernivtsi
11840-433: The aftermath of World War I , the city and its surrounding area became part of the Kingdom of Romania , which gained worldwide diplomatic recognition by the end of 1920. During those two years, even most city residents did not know of which country they were citizens, with most assuming Czernowitz still belonged to Austria-Hungary. German remained the lingua franca of the city and its suburbs for another decade. In 1930,
12000-619: The aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War . Chernivtsi (known at that time as Czernowitz ) became the center of the Galicia 's Bukovina District until 1848, later becoming the Duchy of Bukovina until 1918. In the aftermath of World War I , Romania united with Bukovina in 1918, which led to the city regaining its Romanian name of Cernăuți ; this lasted until the Soviets occupied Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Chernivtsi
12160-598: The area inhabited by another distinctive Jewish cultural group, the Sephardi Jews , who ranged into southern France . Ashkenazi culture later spread into Eastern Europe with large-scale population migrations. Nothing is known with certainty about the vernacular of the earliest Jews in Germany, but several theories have been put forward. As noted above, the first language of the Ashkenazim may have been Aramaic ,
12320-720: The area surrounding Chernivtsi indicates that a population inhabited it since the Neolithic era. Later settlements included those of the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture , the Corded Ware culture ; artifacts from the Bronze and Iron Ages were also found in the city. In the Middle Ages there lived East Slavic tribes White Croats and Tivertsi . A fortified settlement located on the left (north-eastern) shore of
12480-640: The border between the Carpathians and the East European Plain, 40 km (25 miles) from the border with Romania. The city lies 248 meters (817') above sea level and is surrounded by forests and fields. The River Prut runs through the city's landscape. The city is located in the Eastern European time zone in the region of meridian 26. Chernivtsi is located at the intersection of the transport arteries: E85, H03, and H10 The city
12640-838: The calibre of performance in Lviv during his brief time there, reporting that Goldfaden worked with every actor on understanding his or her character, so as to ensure that the play was more than just a series of songs and effects, and was respected by all. Buoyed by his success in Lvov, he returned to Bucharest in 1892, as director of the Jigniţa theatre. His new company again included Lazăr Zuckermann; other players were Marcu (Mordechai) Segalescu, and later Iacob Kalich, Carol Schramek, Malvina Treitler-Löbel and her father H. Goldenbers. Among his notable plays from this period were Dos zenteh Gebot, oder Lo tachmod ( The Tenth Commandment, or Thou Shalt Not Covet ), Judas Maccabaeus , and Judith and Holofernes and
12800-569: The city reached a population of 112,400: 26.8% Jews , 23.2% Romanians , 20.8% Germans , 18.6% Ukrainians , the remainder Poles and others. It was one of the five university centers of interwar Romania. In 1940, the Red Army occupied the area ; the area around the city became known as Chernivtsi Oblast , and was allotted to the Ukrainian SSR by the Soviet Union. The city's large Romanian intelligentsia found refuge in Romania; while
12960-478: The city will be finally resolved after the construction of the third branch of the bypass road, which will connect the directions "Suceava-Chernivtsi" and "Chernivtsi-Lviv". Chernivtsi is the administrative center of the Chernivtsi Oblast ( province ) and the city itself has own government within the oblast under subordination to Chernivtsi Raion . Until 1 January 2016, the territory of Chernivtsi
13120-501: The city's history, either in connection with the rule by one country or another or independently from it: Romanian : Cernăuți ( [tʃernəˈutsʲ] ); German : Czernowitz ( [ˈtʃɛɐ̯novɪts] ); Polish : Czerniowce ; Hungarian : Csernovic , Yiddish : טשערנאָוויץ , romanized : Tshernovits , Russian : Черновцы́ , romanized : Chernovtsy , (In Russian until 1944: Чернови́цы , romanized : Chernovitsy ). In
13280-487: The city. Until 18 July 2020, Chernivtsi was designated as a city of oblast significance and did not belong to any raion. As part of the administrative reform of Ukraine, which reduced the number of raions of Chernivtsi Oblast to three, the city was merged into Chernivtsi Raion. Since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine , the city has been a host for refugees from the fighting in eastern and central Ukraine and
13440-418: The creation of a ghetto in the lowland part of the city, where 50,000 Bukovina Jews were crammed, two-thirds of whom would be deported in October 1941 and early 1942 to Transnistria , where the majority died. The Romanian mayor of the city Traian Popovici managed to persuade Antonescu to raise the number of Jews exempted from deportation from 200 to 20,000. In 1944, when Axis forces were driven out by
13600-556: The earliest named Yiddish author, may also have written פּאַריז און װיענע Pariz un Viene ( Paris and Vienna ). Another Yiddish retelling of a chivalric romance, װידװילט Vidvilt (often referred to as "Widuwilt" by Germanizing scholars), presumably also dates from the 15th century, although the manuscripts are from the 16th. It is also known as Kinig Artus Hof , an adaptation of the Middle High German romance Wigalois by Wirnt von Grafenberg . Another significant writer
13760-536: The early Vlach ( Romanian ) feudal formations, a fort was mentioned under the name Țețina ; it was defending the ford and crossing point on the Prut River . It was part of a group of three fortifications; the other two being the fortress of Hotin on the Dniester to the east, and a fort on the Kolachin River , an upriver tributary of Prut. Between 1359 and 1775, the city and its surroundings were part of
13920-563: The early spring at the salon Lazăr Cafegiu on Calea Văcărești ( Văcărești Avenue, in the heart of the Jewish quarter), then, once the weather turned warm, at the Jignița garden, a pleasant tree-shaded beer garden on Str. Negru Vodă that up until then had drawn only a neighbourhood crowd. He filled out his cast from the great pool of Jewish vocal talent: synagogue cantors . He also recruited two eminently respectable classically trained prima donnas ,
14080-532: The end of the high medieval period. It is first recorded in 1272, with the oldest surviving literary document in Yiddish, a blessing found in the Worms machzor (a Hebrew prayer book). This brief rhyme is decoratively embedded in an otherwise purely Hebrew text. Nonetheless, it indicates that the Yiddish of that day was a more or less regular Middle High German written in the Hebrew alphabet into which Hebrew words – מַחֲזוֹר , makhazor (prayerbook for
14240-903: The end of the war meant that much of his best audience were now in Odessa rather than Bucharest; Rosenberg had already quit Goldfaden's troupe and was performing the Goldfadenian repertoire in Odessa. With a loan from Librescu, Goldfaden headed east with a group of 42 people, including performers, musicians, and their families. After the end of the Russo-Turkish War he and his troupe travelled extensively through Imperial Russia, notably to Kharkov (also in Ukraine), Moscow, and Saint Petersburg . Jacob Adler later described him at this time as "a bon vivant ," "a cavalier," "as difficult to approach as an emperor." He continued to turn out plays at
14400-507: The end of the year, others were writing Yiddish plays as well, such as Moses Horowitz with Der tiranisher bankir ( The Tyrannical Banker ), or Grodner with Curve un ganev ( Prostitute and Thief ), and Yiddish theatre had become big theatre, with elaborate sets, duelling choruses, and extras to fill out crowd scenes. Goldfaden was helped by Ion Ghica , then head of the Romanian National Theatre to legally establish
14560-429: The environment or which may adversely affect the environment or its components. Since the late 1990s, transport is a significant factor in the negative impact on the environment. To some extent, the situation was improved with the construction of the first (2004) and the second (2010) queues of the bypass road , which connected the directions "Kyiv-Chernivtsi" and "Chernivtsi-Suceava". The problem of transit transport in
14720-445: The extensive inclusion of words of Slavic origin. Western Yiddish is divided into Southwestern (Swiss–Alsatian–Southern German), Midwestern (Central German), and Northwestern (Netherlandic–Northern German) dialects. Yiddish is used in a number of Haredi Jewish communities worldwide; it is the first language of the home, school, and in many social settings among many Haredi Jews, and is used in most Hasidic yeshivas . The term "Yiddish"
14880-501: The fact that one of the first to write about Yiddish theatre was Romania's national poet , Mihai Eminescu , is testimony that interest in Yiddish theatre went beyond the Jewish community. Almost from the first, Yiddish theatre drew a level of theatre criticism comparable to any other European theatre of its time. For example, Bercovici cites a "brochure" by one G. Abramski, published in 1877, that described and gave critiques of all of Goldfaden's plays of that year. Abramski speculated that
15040-515: The inscription engraved on it: "From Chernivtsi community to freely elected head", on the reverse – "The foundation of a free state is a free community". The medallion is attached to a chain consisting of stylized coats of arms Ukraine, Chernivtsi region and the city of Chernivtsi. The symbol is made of gold colour metal. The medal "To the glory of Chernivtsi" is an honorary distinction of the Chernivtsi City Council , introduced to
15200-473: The itinerary of a Romanian-language troupe. Yiddish theatre may have been seen from the outset as an expression of a Jewish national character, but the theatrical values of Goldfaden's company were in many ways those of a good Romanian theatre of the time. Also, Yiddish was a German dialect which became a well-known language even among non-Jews in Moldavia (and Transylvania ), an important language of commerce;
15360-431: The language's origins, with points of contention being the characterization of its Germanic base, the source of its Hebrew/Aramaic adstrata , and the means and location of this fusion. Some theorists argue that the fusion occurred with a Bavarian dialect base. The two main candidates for the germinal matrix of Yiddish, the Rhineland and Bavaria, are not necessarily incompatible. There may have been parallel developments in
15520-678: The last available Soviet data, the population of the city, as of 1 January 1989, was 258,375 residents. Among these, there are some 171,925 Ukrainians (66.5%), 45,865 Russians (17.8%), 13,017 Romanians (5%), 6,361 Moldovans (2.5%), 2,205 Poles (0.9%), 1,725 Belarussians (0.7%) and 15,671 Jews (6.1%). At that time, 62.57% of the population was Ukrainian-speaking, 30.18% Russian-speaking, and 5.18% Romanian-speaking (of which 3.02% said that they were Romanian speaking, and 2.16% Moldovan-speaking). The Romanian population in Chernivtsi started decreasing rapidly after 1950. Many Romanians fled to Romania or were deported to Siberia (where most of them died), and
15680-537: The late 15th century by Menahem ben Naphtali Oldendorf. During the same period, a tradition seems to have emerged of the Jewish community's adapting its own versions of German secular literature. The earliest Yiddish epic poem of this sort is the Dukus Horant , which survives in the famous Cambridge Codex T.-S.10.K.22. This 14th-century manuscript was discovered in the Cairo Geniza in 1896, and also contains
15840-685: The late 19th and early 20th centuries are Sholem Yankev Abramovitch, writing as Mendele Mocher Sforim ; Sholem Rabinovitsh, widely known as Sholem Aleichem , whose stories about טבֿיה דער מילכיקער ( Tevye der milkhiker , " Tevye the Dairyman") inspired the Broadway musical and film Fiddler on the Roof ; and Isaac Leib Peretz . In the early 20th century, especially after the Socialist October Revolution in Russia, Yiddish
16000-553: The latest census in 2001 was 240,600. The first document that refers to this city dates back to 1408, when Chernivtsi was a town in the region of Moldavia , formerly as a defensive fortification, and became the center of Bukovina in 1488. In 1538, Chernivtsi was under the control of the Principality of Moldavia under Polish suzerainty, later under Ottoman Empire suzerainty, and the Moldavian control lasted for two centuries until 1774, when Austria took control of Bukovina in
16160-522: The limitations of its origins. There were few Yiddish words for animals and birds. It had virtually no military vocabulary. Such voids were filled by borrowing from German , Polish and Russian . Yiddish was particularly good at borrowing: from Arabic , from Hebrew , from Aramaic and from anything with which it intersected. On the other hand, it contributed to English – American . [sic] Its chief virtue lay in its internal subtlety, particularly in its characterization of human types and emotions. It
16320-470: The logo, represented by dark blue and yellow, has a higher degree of comfortable contrast and coincides with the colors of the State Flag of Ukraine . In the early 2010s, a new city logo was developed and approved, and at the same time the official slogan was affixed: "Chernivtsi is unique in diversity". Old and new symbols of Chernivtsi were chosen for its creation. To the left, in the foreground, there
16480-518: The long vowel û , but in Yiddish, they have not merged. Although Standard Yiddish does not distinguish between those two diphthongs and renders both as /ɔɪ/ , the distinction becomes apparent when the two diphthongs undergo Germanic umlaut , such as in forming plurals: The vowel length distinctions of German do not exist in the Northeastern (Lithuanian) varieties of Yiddish, which form the phonetic basis for Standard Yiddish. In those varieties,
16640-484: The mid-1950s. In Weinreich's view, this Old Yiddish substrate later bifurcated into two distinct versions of the language, Western and Eastern Yiddish. They retained the Semitic vocabulary and constructions needed for religious purposes and created a Judeo-German form of speech, sometimes not accepted as a fully autonomous language. Yiddish was a rich, living language, the chattering tongue of an urban population. It had
16800-531: The most famous being Shulamith , also from 1880. Goldfaden himself suggested that this increasingly serious turn became possible because he had educated his audience. Nahma Sandrow suggests that it may have had equally as much to do with the arrival in Romania, at the time of the Russo-Turkish War , of Russian Jews who had been exposed to more sophisticated Russian language theatre. Goldfaden's strong turn toward almost uniformly serious subject matter roughly coincided with bringing his troupe to Odessa . Goldfaden
16960-586: The most frequently used designation in the literature until the 18th century. In the late 19th and into the 20th century, the language was more commonly called "Jewish", especially in non-Jewish contexts, but "Yiddish" is again the most common designation today. Modern Yiddish has two major forms : Eastern and Western. Eastern Yiddish is far more common today. It includes Southeastern (Ukrainian–Romanian), Mideastern (Polish–Galician–Eastern Hungarian) and Northeastern (Lithuanian–Belarusian) dialects. Eastern Yiddish differs from Western both by its far greater size and by
17120-533: The most prominent Yiddish writers of the time—the founders of modern Yiddish literature, who were still living in Slavic-speaking countries—revised the printed editions of their oeuvres to eliminate obsolete and 'unnecessary' Slavisms." The vocabulary used in Israel absorbed many Modern Hebrew words, and there was a similar but smaller increase in the English component of Yiddish in the United States and, to
17280-449: The newspaper Kol-Mevaser . He also wrote his first two plays, Die Tzwei Sheines ( The Two Neighbours ) and Die Murneh Sosfeh ( Aunt Susie ), included with some verses in a modestly successful 1869 book Die Yidene ( The Jewish Woman ), which went through three editions in three years. At this time, he and Paulina were living mainly on his meagre teacher's salary of 18 rubles a year, supplemented by his giving private lessons and taking
17440-424: The notion of happiness, well-being, the joy of relaxation, visualizing positive symbols and images in a colourful, warm and vibrant colour scheme. The new logo uses old symbols from the "Chernivtsi 600" logo. Chernivtsi is located in the historic region of Bukovina , which is currently shared between Romania (south) and Ukraine (north). Chernivtsi is located in the southwest of Ukraine, in the eastern Carpathians, on
17600-461: The number of Yiddish-speakers is increasing in Hasidic communities. In 2014, YIVO stated that "most people who speak Yiddish in their daily lives are Hasidim and other Haredim ", whose population was estimated at the time to be between 500,000 and 1 million. A 2021 estimate from Rutgers University was that there were 250,000 American speakers, 250,000 Israeli speakers, and 100,000 in the rest of
17760-593: The owner of a prominent New York Yiddish theatre—optioned and ignored it, even accusing Goldfaden of being "senile", it premiered successfully at rival Boris Thomashefsky 's People's theatre December 25, 1907, with music by H. Friedzel and lyrics by Mogulescu, who was by this time an international star. Goldfaden died in New York City in 1908. A contemporary account in The New York Times estimated that 75,000 people turned out for his funeral, joining
17920-476: The paper suspended and landing himself a rather large fine. On March 31, 1905, he recited poetry at a benefit performance at Cooper Union to raise a pension for Yiddish poet Eliakum Zunser , even worse off than himself because he had found himself unable to write since coming to America in 1889. Shortly afterwards, he met a group of young people who had a Hebrew language association at the Dr. Herzl Zion Club, and wrote
18080-458: The play Di shtume kale ( The Mute Bride ) — a work that Goldfaden apparently wrote to accommodate a pretty, young actress who in the performance was too nervous to deliver her lines — that the only evidence of Goldfaden's authorship was his name. Goldfaden's father wrote him to solicit the troupe to come to Odessa in Ukraine , which was then part of Imperial Russia . The timing was opportune:
18240-578: The play he'd started in Paris, Rabi Yoselman, oder Die Gzerot fun Alsas ("Rabbi Yoselman, or The Alsatian Decree"), in five acts and 23 scenes, based on the life of Josel of Rosheim . At this time he also wrote an operetta Rothschild and a semi-autobiographical play called Mashiach Tzeiten ( Messiah Times ) that gave a less-than-optimistic view of America. Kalman Juvelier, an actor in Ber Ghimpel's company, credited Goldfaden with greatly strengthening
18400-532: The populace – Jews as much as Romanians – believe strongly in witches." Local superstitions and concerns always made good subject matter, and, as Bercovici remarks, however strong his inspirational and didactic intent, his historical pieces were always connected to contemporary concerns. Even in the first couple of years of his company, Goldfaden did not shy away from serious themes: his rained-out vaudeville in Botoşani had been Di Rekruten ( The Recruits ), playing with
18560-538: The present day might be for Yiddish theatre a moment comparable to the Elizabethan era for English theatre. He discussed what a Yiddish theatre ought to be, noted its many sources (ranging from Purim plays to circus pantomime ), and praised its incorporation of strong female roles. He also criticized where he saw weaknesses, noting how unconvincingly a male actor played the mother in Shmendrik , or remarking of
18720-534: The procession from the People's theatre on Bowery to Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn ; in recent scholarship the number of mourners has been given as 30,000. In a follow-up article The New York Times called him "both a poet and a prophet", and noted that "there was more evidence of genuine sympathy with and admiration for the man and his work than is likely to be manifested at the funeral of any poet now writing in
18880-665: The region, including many Hebrew and Aramaic words, but there is also Romance. In Max Weinreich 's model, Jewish speakers of Old French or Old Italian who were literate in either liturgical Hebrew or Aramaic , or both, migrated through Southern Europe to settle in the Rhine Valley in an area known as Lotharingia (later known in Yiddish as Loter ) extending over parts of Germany and France. There, they encountered and were influenced by Jewish speakers of High German languages and several other German dialects. Both Weinreich and Solomon Birnbaum developed this model further in
19040-521: The remaining Romanian population quickly became a minority and assimilated with the majority. According to minority organizations, the Romanian minority in Chernivtsi is still decreasing nowadays as a result of cultural assimilation and emigration to Romania. Chernivtsi once had a Jewish community of over 50,000, less than a third of whom survived World War II. Romanian lawyer and reserve officer Theodor Criveanu [ he ; ro ] , as well as
19200-518: The remaining ramparts of the fortress were still used for defense purposes; in the 17th century they were augmented with several bastions, one of which is still extant. Following the destruction of the fortress, later settlements in the area centered on the right (south-western) shore of the Prut River, at a more strategically advantageous, elevated location. In 1325, when the Kingdom of Poland seized control of Galicia , and came into contact with
19360-478: The second refers to quantity or diphthongization (−1=short, −2=long, −3=short but lengthened early in the history of Yiddish, −4=diphthong, −5=special length occurring only in Proto-Yiddish vowel 25). Vowels 23, 33, 43 and 53 have the same reflexes as 22, 32, 42 and 52 in all Yiddish dialects, but they developed distinct values in Middle High German ; Katz (1987) argues that they should be collapsed with
19520-399: The sisters Margaretta and Annetta Schwartz . Among the cantors in his casts that year were Lazăr Zuckermann (also known as Laiser Zuckerman; as a song-and-dance man, he would eventually follow Goldfaden to New York and have a long stage career), Moishe Zilberman (also known as Silberman), and Simhe Dinman, as well as the 18-year-old Zigmund Mogulescu (Sigmund Mogulesko), who soon became
19680-504: The songs), and took the whole package to Kalman Juvilier, who put on an unauthorised production in Iaşi. Such outright theft was possible because once Ion Ghica headed off on a diplomatic career, the National theatre, which was supposed to adjudicate issues like unauthorised performances of plays, was no longer paying much attention to Yiddish theatre. (Juvilier and Goldfaden finally reached an out-of-court settlement.) Cutthroat competition
19840-495: The theatre, rustling paper, treating the theatre like a beer garden. He also quotes Jacob Schatzky: "All in all, the Galician milieu was not favourable to Yiddish theatre. The intellectuals were assimilated, but the masses were fanatically religious and they viewed Jewish 'comedians' with disdain." Nonetheless, Iacob Ber Ghimpel, who owned a Yiddish theatre there, was glad to have a figure of Goldfaden's stature. Goldfaden completed
20000-570: The theme of the press gangs working the streets of that town to conscript young men into the army. Before the end of 1876, Goldfaden had already translated Desolate Island by August von Kotzebue ; thus, a play by a German aristocrat and Russian spy became the first non-comic play performed professionally in Yiddish. After his initial burst of mostly vaudevilles and light comedies (although Shmendrik and The Two Kuni-Lemls were reasonably sophisticated plays), Goldfaden would go on to write many serious Yiddish -language plays on Jewish themes, perhaps
20160-419: The then Mandate Palestine from the difficult conditions after the War. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the majority of the remaining Jewish population emigrated to Israel and the United States. A famous member of this latter emigration is the actress Mila Kunis . Chernivtsi was inhabited by Ukrainians, Romanians, Poles, Ruthenians , Jews, Roma , and Germans . During its affiliation with
20320-495: The then city mayor Traian Popovici , supported by General Vasile Ionescu saved 19,689 Jewish people. Initially, Governor of Bukovina Corneliu Calotescu allowed only 190 Jewish people to stay, but Traian Popovici, after an incredible effort, obtained from the then dictator of Romania Marshal Ion Antonescu an allowance of 20,000. After World War II, the city was a key node in the Berihah network, which helped Jews to emigrate to
20480-938: The times of Halych-Volyn Principality (1199-1253), the city's name was Chern . In "Documents of Western Russia" ( Russian : Акты Западной России ) published in Saint Petersburg in 1846 (Volume 1, page 32, document #21), the city is mentioned as Chernov'tsi ( Russian : Черновьци ). [REDACTED] Golden Horde 1241–1342 [REDACTED] Moldavia 1346–1775 [REDACTED] Habsburg Monarchy 1775–1804 [REDACTED] Austrian Empire 1804–1867 [REDACTED] Austria-Hungary 1867–1918 [REDACTED] Kingdom of Romania 1918–1940 [REDACTED] Soviet Union ( Ukrainian SSR ) 1940–1941 [REDACTED] Kingdom of Romania 1941–1944 [REDACTED] Soviet Union ( Ukrainian SSR ) 1944–1991 [REDACTED] Ukraine 1991– present Archaeological evidence discovered in
20640-414: The total amount in the region) are the main pollutants of the environment. Approximately 1.2 tonnes of pollutants are released into the air annually (34.9% of the total area emissions). Non-methane volatile organic compounds , carbon dioxide and substances in the form of solid suspended solids predominate in the structure of the emitted pollutants. In addition, carbon dioxide, which has a greenhouse effect ,
20800-650: The troupe. (Besides being known as Sara Segal and Sofia Goldstein, she became best known as Sofia Karp, after a second marriage to actor Max Karp .) After the successful run in Galaţi came a less successful attempt in Brăila , but by now the company had honed its act and it was time to go to the capital, Bucharest . As in Iași, Goldfaden arrived in Bucharest with his reputation already established. He and his players performed first in
20960-636: The two regions, seeding the Western and Eastern dialects of Modern Yiddish. Dovid Katz proposes that Yiddish emerged from contact between speakers of High German and Aramaic-speaking Jews from the Middle East. The lines of development proposed by the different theories do not necessarily rule out the others (at least not entirely); an article in The Forward argues that "in the end, a new 'standard theory' of Yiddish's origins will probably be based on
21120-476: The typical Yiddish theatregoer of the time as saying to him: "We don't go to the theatre to make our head swim with sad things. We have enough troubles at home... we go to the theatre to cheer ourselves up. We pay up a coin and hope to be distracted, we want to laugh from the heart." Goldfaden wrote that this attitude put him "pure and simply at war with the public." His stage was not to be merely "a masquerade"; he continued: "No, brothers. If I have arrived at having
21280-583: The vernacular of the Jews in Roman-era Judea and ancient and early medieval Mesopotamia . The widespread use of Aramaic among the large non-Jewish Syrian trading population of the Roman provinces, including those in Europe, would have reinforced the use of Aramaic among Jews engaged in trade. In Roman times, many of the Jews living in Rome and Southern Italy appear to have been Greek -speakers, and this
21440-868: The vowel qualities in most long/short vowel pairs diverged and so the phonemic distinction has remained. There are consonantal differences between German and Yiddish. Yiddish deaffricates the Middle High German voiceless labiodental affricate /pf/ to /f/ initially (as in פֿונט funt , but this pronunciation is also quasi-standard throughout northern and central Germany); /pf/ surfaces as an unshifted /p/ medially or finally (as in עפּל /ɛpl/ and קאָפּ /kɔp/ ). Additionally, final voiced stops appear in Standard Yiddish but not Northern Standard German. Chernivtsi Chernivtsi ( Ukrainian : Чернівці , pronounced [tʃerniu̯ˈtsi] ; Romanian : Cernăuți , pronounced [tʃernəˈutsʲ] ; see also other names )
21600-524: The whole ethnic groups, including Germans and Romanians, this status was diminished. Today, the Ukrainians are the dominant population group. Chernivtsi's change in demographic diversity is demonstrated by the following population statistics. Once, Romanians and Ukrainians formed the majority of the population. However, after 1870, Yiddish -speaking or German -speaking Jews surpassed the Romanians as
21760-608: The work of Weinreich and his challengers alike." Paul Wexler proposed a model in 1991 that took Yiddish, by which he means primarily eastern Yiddish, not to be genetically grounded in a Germanic language at all, but rather as " Judeo-Sorbian " (a proposed West Slavic language ) that had been relexified by High German. In more recent work, Wexler has argued that Eastern Yiddish is unrelated genetically to Western Yiddish. Wexler's model has been met with little academic support, and strong critical challenges, especially among historical linguists. Yiddish orthography developed towards
21920-586: The world (for a total of 600,000). The earliest surviving references date from the 12th century and call the language לשון־אַשכּנז ( loshn-ashknaz , "language of Ashkenaz") or טײַטש ( taytsh ), a variant of tiutsch , the contemporary name for Middle High German . Colloquially, the language is sometimes called מאַמע־לשון ( mame-loshn , lit. "mother tongue"), distinguishing it from לשון־קודש ( loshn koydesh , "holy tongue"), meaning Hebrew and Aramaic. The term "Yiddish", short for Yidish Taitsh ("Jewish German"), did not become
22080-461: The −2 series, leaving only 13 in the −3 series. In vocabulary of Germanic origin, the differences between Standard German and Yiddish pronunciation are mainly in the vowels and diphthongs . All varieties of Yiddish lack the German front rounded vowels /œ, øː/ and /ʏ, yː/ , having merged them with /ɛ, e:/ and /ɪ, i:/ , respectively. Diphthongs have also undergone divergent developments in German and Yiddish. Where Standard German has merged
22240-520: Was ווײַבערטײַטש ( vaybertaytsh , 'women's taytsh ' , shown in the heading and fourth column in the Shemot Devarim ), with square Hebrew letters (shown in the third column) being reserved for text in that language and Aramaic. This distinction was retained in general typographic practice through to the early 19th century, with Yiddish books being set in vaybertaytsh (also termed מעשייט mesheyt or מאַשקעט mashket —the construction
22400-560: Was a valuable ally for Yiddish theatre in Bucharest. On several occasions he expressed his favourable view of the quality of the acting, and even more of the technical aspects of the Yiddish theatre. In 1881, he obtained for the National Theatre the costumes that had been used for a Yiddish pageant on the coronation of King Solomon, which had been timed in tribute to the actual coronation of Carol I of Romania . While light comedy and satire might have established Yiddish theatre as
22560-497: Was an established fact. The influx of Jewish merchants and middlemen to the city at the start of the Russo-Turkish War had greatly expanded the audience; among these new arrivals were Israel Rosenberg and Jacob Spivakovsky , the highly cultured scion of a wealthy Russian Jewish family, both of whom actually joined Goldfaden's troupe, but soon left to found the first Yiddish theatre troupe in Imperial Russia . Goldfaden
22720-576: Was appointed the chief of the Military Administration. He invited many merchants, craftsmen and entrepreneurs to help develop trade and other businesses. Saint Peter 's Fairs (1–15 July) had given a new vibrant impulse to the market development from 1786. In the late 19th century the German language—due to the Habsburg and the very important Jewish influence—became the lingua franca and more and more newspapers were edited in German, also
22880-573: Was born in Starokonstantinov (Russia; present day Ukraine ). His birth date is sometimes given as 12 July, following the "Old Style" calendar in use at that time in the Russian Empire . He attended a Jewish religious school (a cheder ), but his middle-class family was strongly associated with the Haskalah , or Jewish Enlightenment, and his father, a watchmaker, arranged that he receive private lessons in German and Russian. As
23040-587: Was both a theoretician and a practitioner of theatre. That he was in no small measure a theoretician – for example, he was interested almost from the start in having set design seriously support the themes of his plays – relates to a key property of Yiddish theatre at the time of its birth: in general, writes Bercovici, theory ran ahead of practice. Much of the Jewish community, Goldfaden included, were already familiar with contemporary theatre in other languages. The initial itinerary of Goldfaden's company – Iaşi, Botoşani, Galaţi, Brăila, Bucharest – could as easily have been
23200-503: Was called "Progress"; his The New York Times obituary described it as "a plea for Zionism years before that movement developed". In 1865 he published his first book of poetry, Tzitzim u-Ferahim (in Hebrew ); The Jewish Encyclopaedia (1901–1906) says that "Goldfaden's Hebrew poetry ... possesses considerable merit, but it has been eclipsed by his Yiddish poetry, which, for strength of expression and for depth of true Jewish feeling, remains unrivalled". The first book of verse in Yiddish
23360-451: Was churning out a repertoire – new songs, new plays and translations of plays from Romanian, French, and other languages (in the first two years, he wrote 22 plays, and would eventually write about 40) – and while he was not always able to retain the players in his company once they became stars in their own right, he continued for many years to recruit first-rate talent, and his company became a de facto training ground for Yiddish theatre. By
23520-424: Was developed and approved by the anniversary of the city in 2008. It was recognized so successful that it continues to be used. The main idea of components for emblem is based on the antiquity of the city, its exceptional architectural heritage and the hard work of its inhabitants. The symbol is made in the form of a blacksmith's work of art, which testifies to the soundness, prosperity, and success. The color scheme of
23680-872: Was divided into three administrative urban districts : The current mayor of Chernivtsi is Roman Klichuk, who has been elected in 2020 Ukrainian local elections . Religion in Chernivtsi (2024) The population, according to the data of the 2001 population census in Ukraine, was 236,691 inhabitants. Among them, there 189,021 identified themselves as ethnic Ukrainians (79.86%), 26,733 as Russians (11.29%), 10,553 as Romanians (4.36%), 3,829 as Moldovans (1.62%), 1,408 as Poles; (0.59%), 1,308 as Jews (0.55%) and 971 as members of other groups (0.41%). The city of Chernivtsi had 236,691 inhabitants in 2001, of which 187,465 stated that they spoke Ukrainian (79.20%), 10,353 Romanian (4.37%, out of which 7,706 Romanian called it Romanian, or 3.26%, and 2,557 called it Moldovan, or 1.36%), 284 Polish (0.11%), and 36,150 Russian (15.27%). Based on
23840-470: Was emerging as a major Eastern European language. Its rich literature was more widely published than ever, Yiddish theatre and Yiddish cinema were booming, and for a time it achieved the status of one of the official languages of the short-lived Galician Soviet Socialist Republic . Educational autonomy for Jews in several countries (notably Poland ) after World War I led to an increase in formal Yiddish-language education, more uniform orthography, and to
24000-406: Was familiar at this time with "practically all of Russian literature", and also had plenty of exposure to Polish theatre, and had even seen an African American tragedian, Ira Aldridge , performing Shakespeare , the performance at Grădina Pomul Verde was only a bit more of a play than Grodner had participated in three years earlier. The songs were strung together with a bit of character and plot and
24160-408: Was fortunate to be better known as a good poet — many of whose poems had been set to music and had become popular songs — than as a less-than-successful businessman. Nevertheless, when he sought funds from Isaac Librescu for another newspaper, Librescu was uninterested in that proposition. Librescu's wife remarked that Yiddish-language journalism was just a way to starve and suggested that there would be
24320-503: Was not on the best terms at this time with Mogulescu. They had quarrelled (and settled) several times over rights to plays, and Mogulescu and his partner Moishe "Maurice" Finkel now dominated Yiddish theatre in Romania, with about ten lesser companies competing as well. Mogulescu was a towering figure in Bucharest theatre at this point, lauded on a level comparable to the actors of the National theatre, performing at times in Romanian as well as Yiddish, drawing an audience that went well beyond
24480-495: Was not without controversy: Cantor Cuper (also known as Kupfer), the head cantor of the Great Synagogue, considered it "impious" that cantors should perform in a secular setting, to crowds where both sexes mingled freely, keeping people up late so that they might not be on time for morning prayers. While one may argue over which performance "started" Yiddish theatre, by the end of that summer in Bucharest Yiddish theatre
24640-509: Was nothing to what was to follow. The 1890s were a tough time for the Romanian economy, and a rising tide of anti-Semitism made it an even tougher time for the Jews. One quarter of the Jewish population emigrated, with intellectuals particularly likely to leave, and those intellectuals who remained were more interested in politics than in theatre: this was a period of social ferment, with Jewish socialists in Iaşi starting Der Veker ( The Awakener ). Goldfaden left Romania in 1896; soon Juvilier's
24800-661: Was published in 1866, and in 1867 he took a job teaching in Simferopol on the Crimean Peninsula . A year later, he moved on to Odessa . He lived initially in his uncle's house, where a cousin who was a good pianist helped him set some of his poems to music. In Odessa, Goldfaden renewed his acquaintance with fellow Yiddish-language writer Yitzkhok Yoel Linetzky , whom he knew from Zhytomyr and met Hebrew-language poet Eliahu Mordechai Werbel (whose daughter Paulina would become Goldfaden's wife) and published poems in
24960-503: Was the language of street wisdom, of the clever underdog, of pathos, resignation and suffering, all of which it palliated by humor, intense irony and superstition. Isaac Bashevis Singer , its greatest practitioner, pointed out that it is the only language never spoken by men in power. – Paul Johnson , A History of the Jews (1988) Later linguistic research has refined the Weinreich model or provided alternative approaches to
25120-557: Was the only active Yiddish theatre troupe in the country, and foreign troupes had almost entirely ceased coming to the country. Although Lateiner , Horowitz, and Shumer kept writing, and occasionally managed to put on a play, it was not a good time for Yiddish theatre – or any theatre – in Romania, and would only become worse as the economy continued to decline. Goldfaden wandered Europe as a poet and journalist. His plays continued to be performed in Europe and America, but rarely, if ever, did anyone send him royalties. His health deteriorated –
25280-405: Was there. He saw two plays – Di Rekruten , first premiered in Botoşani, and the later Di Shvebleh ( Matches ), a play of intrigue. Tissot's account of what he saw gives an interesting picture of the theatres and audiences Goldfaden's troupe encountered outside of the big cities. "Berdichev," he begins, "has not one cafe, not one restaurant. Berdichev, which is a boring and sad city, nonetheless has
25440-464: Was under the control of the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1941, after which Romania recovered the city, and then again from 1944 until the dissolution of the Soviet Union , after which it became part of independent Ukraine . Chernivtsi is viewed as one of Western Ukraine's main cultural centers. The city is also considered one of Ukraine's important educational and architectural sites. Historically
25600-531: Was very small. Sources disagree about the dates (and even the names) of some of Goldfaden's plays. The titles here represent YIVO Yiddish>English transliteration, though other variants exist. Goldfaden wrote hundreds of songs and poems. Among his most famous are: Yiddish language Yiddish ( ייִדיש , יידיש or אידיש , yidish or idish , pronounced [ˈ(j)ɪdɪʃ] , lit. ' Jewish ' ; ייִדיש-טײַטש , historically also Yidish-Taytsh , lit. ' Judeo-German ' )
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