Nadene Goldfoot
Since my husband, Danny Eskow and I had started Yiddish Theater in English in Safed, Israel, I'll take time to inform people about the best the Yiddish Theater had to offer, Boris Thomashefsky.
"Boris Thomashefsky (Russian: Борис Пинхасович Томашевский, sometimes written Thomashevsky, Thomaschevsky, etc.; Yiddish: באָריס טאָמאשעבסקי) (1868–July 9, 1939), born Boruch-Aharon Thomashefsky, was a Ukrainian-born (later American) Jewish singer and actor who became one of the biggest stars in Yiddish theater." "He was born Boruch-Aharon Thomashefsky in Osytnyazhka (Ukrainian: Оситняжка; Yiddish: אָסיטניאַשקע), a village in the Chyhyryn county of the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire (today in the Kirovohrad Oblast, Ukraine). He grew up in the nearby town of Kamyanka (today in the Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine), until, at the age of 11, he left for Berdychiv where he trained as a meshoyrer (choir singer) in the renowned synagogue choir of cantor Nisan Belzer." Have you noticed that so many of the Jews that came to the USA were from Ukraine?
In 1881, he emigrated with his family to the United States, and just a year later, while still a teenager, he was largely responsible for the first performance of Yiddish theater in New York City, in what was to become the Yiddish Theater District. He has been credited as the pioneer of Borscht Belt entertainment.
Although Thomashefsky left Imperial Russia at a time when Yiddish theater was still thriving there (it was banned in September 1883), he had never seen it performed prior to the 1882 performance he brought together in New York. Thomashefsky, who was earning some money by singing on Saturdays at the Henry Street Synagogue on the Lower East Side, was also working as a cigarette maker in a sweatshop, where he first heard songs from the Yiddish theater, sung by some of his fellow workers.
On August 12th, 1882, the very first Yiddish theatrical performance in New York City was held in a building which still stands at 66 East 4th Street, between the Bowery and Second Avenue. Over the next four decades, the Yiddish theater would become a focal point and social outlet for the 3.5 million Jews that immigrated to the United States, many of whom came through and settled on the Lower East Side and what is now known as the East Village. The building which gave birth to Yiddish Theater continues to perform an important role in the cultural vitality and theater life of New York City today.
Shortly afterward, the teenage Thomashefsky was the pioneer of taking Yiddish theater "on the road" in the United States, performing Goldfaden's plays in cities such as Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Boston and Chicago, all in the 1880s; for much of the 1880s, Chicago was his base. After Yiddish theater was banned in Russia, his tours came to include such prominent actors as Siegmund Mogulesko, David Kessler, and Jacob Adler, with new plays by playwrights such
as Moses Ha-Levi Horowitz.
.
In 1887, playing in Baltimore, he met 14-year-old Bessie Baumfeld-Kaufman, when she came backstage to meet the beautiful young "actress" she had seen on stage, only to discover that "she" was Boris. Bessie soon ran away from home to join the company, and eventually took over the ingenue roles, as Boris moved on to romantic male leads. They married in 1891.
By 1910, Thomashefsky owned a 12-room home on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, plus a bungalow by the sea, and 20 acres (81,000 m²) in Hunter, New York, which included an open-air theater, Thomashefsky's Paradise Gardens. Each of his three sons had an Arabian horse. However, in 1915, Thomashefsky filed for bankruptcy, listing assets of $21,900 and debts of $76,297.65.
In 1935, late in his career, Thomashefsky was an actor/singer in Henry Lynn's Yiddish film Bar Mitzvah, in which he played a melodramatic role with gusto and co-produced the film. He sang, Erlekh Zayn (Be Virtuous), a song from a 1924 Yiddish play, Bar Mitzvah.
Both Thomashefskys did much to shape the world of modern theatre from the follies to Broadway and gave a start to many actors, composers and producers who went on to start and own theaters and movie studios. Even the Gershwin brothers had their start with the Thomashefkys. They were also prominent in addressing controversial social issues of the day and in teaching the Greenhorns how to be Americans. They not only founded theaters and production companies, but had publishing houses and many other successful business adventures. Boris Thomashefsky even founded and funded a Jewish Army which he sent to Israel and was named after him. The unit later became a unit in the British Army.
In the third Marx Brothers movie, Monkey Business, Groucho Marx (in defending his right to hide in a gangster's moll's closet) exclaims, "That's what they said to Thomas Edison, mighty inventor, Thomas Lindbergh, mighty flyer, and Thomashefsky, 'mighty like a rose'!" Tribute was also paid in Mel Brooks' stage and film musicals based on his 1968 film The Producers, when Max Bialystock attributes his acumen as a Broadway producer to the tutelage of "the great Boris Thomashefsky" in the song "The King of Broadway".
In 2011, Shuler Hensley portrayed Boris Thomashefsky in The Thomashefskys: Music and Memories of a Life in the Yiddish Theater, a concert stage show celebrating the Thomashefskys and the music of American Yiddish theatre hosted by their grandson the conductor Michael Tilson Thomas. The show aired on the PBS series Great Performances in 2012.
From what I've learned, there have been many Jewish performers in
Ukraine that immigrated to the USA. Ukraine's present president Zelensky
was one of descendants with talent in acting and comedy and he starred
in Servant of the People, which he certainly has done a brilliant job.
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy was born to Jewish parents on 25 January 1978 in Kryvyi Rih, then in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. His father, Oleksandr Zelenskyy, is a professor and computer scientist and the head of the Department of Cybernetics and Computing Hardware at the Kryvyi Rih State University of Economics and Technology; his mother, Rymma Zelenska, used to work as an engineer. His grandfather, Semyon (Simon) Ivanovych Zelenskyy, served as an infantryman, reaching the rank of colonel in the Red Army (in the 57th Guards Motor Rifle Division) during World War II; Semyon's father and three brothers were killed in the Holocaust. In March 2022, Zelenskyy said that his great-grandparents had been killed after German troops burned their home to the ground during a massacre.
Before starting elementary school, Zelenskyy lived for four years in the Mongolian city of Erdenet, where his father worked. Zelenskyy grew up speaking Russian.
At the age of 16 he passed the Test of English as a Foreign Language and received an education grant to study in Israel, but his father did not allow him to go. (He probably thought it was too dangerous over there.) He later earned a law degree from the Kryvyi Rih Institute of Economics, then a department of Kyiv National Economic University and now part of Kryvyi Rih National University, but never worked in the legal field.
Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Thomashefsky
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