Winner, 2001 National Jewish Book Award, Yiddish Language and CultureWinner, 2001 Barnard Hewitt Award, American Society of Theatre ResearchA Choice Outstanding Academic Book of 2001

An award-winning history of the rise and fall of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater

"Jeffrey Veidlinger relates a fascinating and little-known piece of history. . . . [He] distills a remarkable amount of research into a pithy, well-turned account that will interest readers of cultural and political history." —Publishers Weekly

Drawing from newly available archives, Jeffrey Veidlinger uses the dramatic story of the Moscow State Yiddish Theater, the premiere secular Jewish cultural institution of the Soviet era, to demonstrate how Jewish writers and artists were able to promote Jewish national culture within the confines of Soviet nationality policies.

Published with the generous support of the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation.

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Veidlinger's richly researched and observed history of an underrepresented historical topic depicts the problems attendant on creating and preserving Yiddish as a language and a national and theatrical culture within the restrictive and propagandistic Soviet culture that sought to appropriate and subvert it. The Yiddish theater movement also faced orthodox rabbinical opposition based on the rejection of pagan influences and the increased agency of women, whose role in traditional religious practices was severely limited. Modeled after the Moscow Art Theatre, the Moscow State Yiddish Theatre (MSYT) listed among its creative leaders director Granovsky (who employed Meyerhold's revolutionary biomechanics to train actors), painter—designer Chagall, actor—director Mikhoels (whose death Stalin most likely engineered), and cubist—supremacist designer Altman (who also worked with Meyerhold and at the Habirna Theatre). MSYT's advent in a decade during which the state was pushing to forge a new proletarian culture from a variety of cultural discourses provided some temporary protection from anti—Jewish and anti—Zionist attacks. Veidlinger is good both at delineating the suspicious, tactical relationship between artists and ideologues that characterized Soviet culture and in framing the question of what constitutes a national or narodnaia (people's, folk, or mass) culture, which haunted this nation for more than a century. Photographs and an extensive bibliography. Upper—division undergraduates and above.