menakhem

Lives in the Yiddish Theatre
SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"
1931-1969

Menakhem
(Menakhem Goldberg)

M. was born in 1888 in Brest-Litovsk, Polish Lithuania. He is the brother of journalist Abraham Goldberg. He was raised under the influence of his father, a Hebrew teacher, who learned Tenach with him, grammar and a little Gemorah. In the cheder he almost didn't learn. He attended the Russian city school, and for a certain time became an extern.

In 1905 he came to Warsaw, where he debuted in 1906 with a series of songs in "Der veg". Later he became one of the prominent, young Yiddish poets, who had grouped himself around I. L. Peretz.

M. then took up journalism and became a editorial member of "Haynt" and "Dos idishe vakhenblat", where he also wrote very often about Yiddish theatre under the pseudonym "M.M".

Close to the outbreak of the World War, he wrote the operetta "Hanka", which (with the music of Yitzhak Schlossberg) was staged in Warsaw in Kaminski's theatre.

During the war he went away to Switzerland and over to Paris and London and immigrated to America, where he worked in various daily newspapers and journals, also under the pseudonym of M. Boreysho, and about the theatre under the pseudonym of M. Grim in the "Fraye arbayter shtime", then in "Di vokh" and "Yiddish".

In 1924 he was one of the editors of the monthly journal "Tealit".

In the journal "Der hamer" (N.Y., May and June 1928), M. had under the pseudonym Menakhem Boreysho, published his "Der pastukh Dovid, a play with a biblical motif in six scenes", which in 1922 was published by the publisher B. Kletskin, Vilna [152 pp., 16°].

In the weekly "Di vokh" (N. Y., N' 33, 1930), he had under the same pen name published "A gast" (two fragments).

On 12 September 1931 in Kessler's Second Avenue Theatre, there was staged the operetta "Dos meydl fun varshe, libretto in two acts by Menakhem and Benjamin Ressler, music -- Joseph Rumshinsky" (with Ola Lilith and Willie Godik in the main roles).

In December 1931 in the Folks Theatre, there was staged by Misha German M.'s play "Eyn froy" (with Misha and Lucy German in the main roles).

M. wrote by hand a play "Di brudershaft".

Z. Reyzen -- "Lexicon of Yiddish Literature", Vol. II, pp. 438-441.
Z. Veynper --Menakhem, "Literarishe bleter", Warsaw, 34, 1928.
Hillel Rogoff -- Ola lilith, di neye opereten star oyf sekond avenue, "Forward", N. Y., 18 September 1931.
Ray Raskin -- Dos meydl fun varshe, "Unzer folk", N. Y., 23 September 1931.

Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 2, page 1338.