"THE ETERNAL JEW, a historic drama in a  prologue and two acts, by David Pinski, with music by Alexander Krein. Settings by N. E. Yakulow; staged by W. L. Mtschedelow; presented in Hebrew by the Habima Players. At the  Mansfield Theatre."


From the NY Times review,
"Habima Players Act 'The Eternal Jew'"
December 21, 1926

"...The Pinski play is  concerned with the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem and relies for its tragic effect upon the intense realization of the significance of that event...The performance was...a very interesting exhibition of the Habima's methods and  a demonstration of their courage. It may be suggested that what they were attempting was impossible because they undertook to combine melodrama with a theme too lofty and sublimate.The opening, after the music which suggested the fall of Jerusalem and the cries and  the weeping  of the inhabitants as the Romans slew and burned, was a colorful bazaar scene in the little town in Palestine where the entire action occurs. Merchants cried their wares and then came women bargaining and plying the most ancient  of their trades. There was a fat member of that most ancient trade who danced in scant garments which hardly conveyed the East somehow. But the rest of the Oriental color was highly effective. So was the heavily accented and mask-like make up of (sic) the men, with the sharp hooked beaks on the faces and deep shadows around the eyes. It is a curious fact that the women were not made up to match.

...Naum L. Zemach as the "Stranger," who is the central figure of the play, was the chief sufferer from the curious situation which the combination of play and method forced upon him. The most effective individual player was Anna Rovina as the young woman, mother of the child, who is marked by prophecy as the Messiah. She stood out as an intensely tragic human being in the midst of a too obviously stylized group. Especially was she effective in her chants of grief over the child, so unhappily born on the day of the destruction of the Temple...

...The scene of the action is a town within a few days' journey from the Holy City. Into Birath Arba, along with rumors of the calamity which has befallen Jerusalem, comes a man with a strange story of a child that he shall find there--a child born in the hour when he temple fell and destined to be the saviour of his people.

The man seeks the child in the guise of a peddler of swaddling clothes. But  the elders of the town refuse to believe  him--or, indeed, to  believe that Jerusalem has really fallen--and he narrowly escapes being stoned to death by the populace. For nobody has heard of such a child. Then comes a strange young  woman lamenting that her child is accursed because he was born in that  evil hour for his people. The young woman has come all the way from Jerusalem, fleeing from the destruction and the massacre. Messengers also have arrived with tales of other fugitives.

So the  peddler of swaddling clothes is  proved no bearer of false tidings, and the elders are persuaded. But at that moment comes a servant crying out that the child has disappeared--vanished in a whirlwind. And the peddler walks out from the clamor of the astonished crowd to continue his search for the Messiah..."