In 1937, the great author-critic Alexander Mukdoiny
wrote, "The Yiddish Theatre is finished. It is no longer even bad
theatre. It has no actor, no repertoire, no directors and no
designers. Professionalism, talent and ambition are practically
dead."
Zygmunt Salkin's attempt
at a solution that summer of 1938 was to gather a group of
stage-struck youngsters and present them with his own English
translation of the I.L. Peretz play, to be produced under Singer's
guidance. The practical part of his agenda was the free use by the
troupe of a gathering hall in the bungalow colony known as Grine
Felder (Green Fields). But this was no ordinary Catskill resort for
the families of middle-class Jewish shopkeepers and businessmen who
would come for a respite from Manhattan's swelter. When Salkin and
Singer arrived, Grine Felder had been for two years summer home to
the most concentrated assemblage of Yiddishist elite anywhere on
Earth. While other groups-artists, leftists, Bohemians-organized
their own colonies, none equaled the caliber of talent at Grine
Felder...
Among the notables who pioneered Grine Felder
were David Pinski, a major Yiddish playwright whose work a decade
earlier had dominated both Schwartz's Yiddish Art Theatre and
Ben-Ami's Jewish Art Theatre; Mendl Elkin, one of the founders of
the Bronx's Unzer Theatre and a writer, director, teacher, and
lecturer also involved with Pinski and Hirshbein in various ripples
of Jewish and cultural life in New York City; Nahum Stutchkoff,
author and playwright, whose radio series Tzores bei Leiten
("Trouble Increases") ran for 20 years on WEVD in New York City,
"the station that speaks your language."
Samuel Charney, who wrote under the name "S.
Niger," was also an original at the colony. Editor, journalist and
historian, founder of the Zionist Socialist Party and president of
the Shalom Aleichem Folk Institute, Charney was considered the dean
of Yiddish literary criticism...
Hear Gabriel Pinski talk about the time he spent
as a child at Grine Felder with his grandfather David.