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Born approximately in 1857 in Staro-Konstantinov
in Volhynia. He was the second son of Haim-Lipa
Goldenfodem, the brother of Avraham. He worked for
his father as a watchmaker.
Jacob P. Adler relates that when in 1878, Israel
Rosenberg heard that Avraham Goldfaden had come to
Odessa, he took notice of the attention that
appeared with the mere mention of the name
"Goldfaden." He decided to cozy up to Goldfaden’s
brother Naftali (nicknamed Tulleh), and together
with him created an acting troupe that started to
perform in Kherson in Ukraine. It was here that
Adler put his foot for the first time on the stage.
B. Gorin tells us in his "History of the Yiddish
Theatre": "When Abraham Goldfaden in 1879 rented the
Mariinsky Theatre in Odessa, that he had no desire
to become partners with Krug (a lobbyist for the
police). At that time it was forbidden to perform
Yiddish theatre and Krug took it upon himself to
work out a solution. Goldfaden promised to make him
a partner in the theatre if Krug’s intervention
could be productive. However, Goldfaden put
together a company to appear in that same province
under the direction of his brother Tuvia (Naftali).
Krug sent them to Southern Russia. The company was
comprised of Israel Rosenberg, Jacob Katzman, Sonia
Oberlander, Shabbtai (the older), David Sabsey, and
others. Jacob P. Adler joined the company as an
extra. This was only for a short time since
eventually he became a full-fledged actor and very
quickly.
"Understandably, the company did not play any new
plays and indeed didn’t need to. For in the towns
and villages in which the company appeared,
everything that the company played seemed for, their
audience, to be brand new. Other skills were not
needed by the company, but if a specific skill was
indeed needed they could find it in whatever town
they were. They could always seek out needed skills
and find them. The most important skill that an
actor needed in those days was that he could sing.
Already on the first trip in Kherson (this was
in1878 under the directorship of Rosenberg and
Naftali Goldfaden) the company needed a comedian to
play the role of "Hotzmach" in the "Female
Magician." They started to search for a boy who was
familiar with the entire repertoire as the folk
singer. They found someone among their own members.
In a few days he had put together his role so that
he gave up his former position on the directorship
of the company and started to travel all over,
playing young and old women and other comic roles.
This was the well-known comedian Abraham Fishkind.
"In Kishinev the same company gave Dovid Kessler
the opportunity to enjoy the taste of the
professional stage. He had never been given such a
quick appointment right into a minor role. At first
this role on the stage sufficed but when he had the
privilege to appear on the stage as a leading
performer, and since he had a good voice and also
had hopes to attain even a higher goal which was to
become an actor.
"In Kishinev other folksingers joined them, M.
Haimovitch (Heine) and (Berl) Grudberg. As
folksingers they had no privileges to perform on the
stage in speaking roles, but they were immediately
given acting roles.
"When this company came to Smila they were lacking
an actress. Till then Miss Diane (later known as
Mrs. Katzman) was their leading actress. Her father
did not like her appearance on the stage and her
travels with actors so he came and took her home.
However even in such a small town as Smila it wasn’t
long before they could find someone to take on the
role left empty. Here the company encountered Miss
Sonias and she went onto the stage. Miss Sonias was
no other than the later famous actress Keni Lipzin."
Yitzhak Libresko tells us in his memoirs that
appear in Z. Zylberczweig’s "Behind the Curtain":
(Abraham) Goldfaden could not deny that he didn’t
need me any longer. He however had a matter to
discuss with me. Since he had a brother Naftali whom
he sent out to Kishinev and since he knew that this
brother is not doing much that was good for the
company and that he is a party animal, that I should
go to him as a manager... The troupe in Kishinev
played in Grossman’s theatre. This was a state
theatre that belonged to a Jew who also owned a
hotel where the actors held rooms. The actors were
drunk all day long. They continued to play cards,
not one of them had any thought about playing in the
theatre. And their business was such that those
actors were accused of many wrong doings. No one
wanted to trust them with even a pruta’s worth of
purchases. It was chaos and not a theatre. I could
see that from here that I could not manage the
situation.
The same account appears in G. Auslander and O.
Finkel in his book "A. Goldfaden":
... That this very same matter had to be dealt
with came to Avraham Goldfaden’s mind, and he
decided to do something very early on in 1879. But
at that time he dismissed a number of performers
from his troupe that was under the leadership of his
brother Naftali Goldfaden. His job was to scout out
several towns near to Odessa for future
appearances. The first trip by this troupe had
apparently been no great success. So, for example,
we read in the Odessa "Pravda" about the failure of
Goldfaden’s brother in Kishinev. The same newspaper
wrote a few months later that the traveling troupe
have not had any artistic successes, and that it is
financially unsuccessful and cannot save itself from
its heavy burden. Later, after a short time, the
same newspaper wrote that a guest performance from
this traveling troupe in Nikolayev performed in a
negative rendition of its material that had been
introduced by Goldfaden’s brother Naftali to the
towns around Odessa. As much as we don’t want to
place too much emphasis on the reviews from
"Pravda," which had a bad opinion of Yiddish
theatre, we must realize that A. Goldfaden’s brother
and his traveling troupe had little to offer Yiddish
theatre in order for it to gain popularity in the
province. It appears that this traveling troupe not
having a reliable leader none-the-less brought to
its presentations the most earnest methods of the
earlier Romanian period of Yiddish theatre. But
A. Goldfaden’s traveling troupe lost much more
than it won in his brother’s troupe... Worst of all
was the attachment to Goldfaden’s theatre in the
news outlet in the Odessa bourgeois "Pravda." In
fact the newspaper had a secondary realization,
which was that the traveling troupe led by
Goldfaden’s brother had some positive aspects. This
announcement of the Kishinev failure was obviously
only the beginning. That which was started by
"Pravda" in Odessa initiated a continuum by the
Jewish/Russian press in Petersburg in the "Russian
Jewry" and "Raskvet." They used the performances of
Goldfaden’s brother in order to attack A. Goldfaden
himself, and they did not hold back from blaming,
sometimes justified and sometimes with false
accusations.
After playing in Kishinev (four weeks) G. with his
troupe traveled to the town of Ackerman and after
that to Elizavetgrad (where Israel Grade took over
the troupe), Kremenchug, Ekatarinoslav, Poltava and
its surroundings, and after that returned with only
half of the troupe to Odessa to his brother Avraham.
Jacob
Katzman, who played in this troupe, tells us that
apart from Avraham Goldfaden’s repertoire, they also
performed Naftali’s play by the name (which I think
is) "The Oath." |