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7 Jewish highlights from the new Museum of Broadway
(New York Jewish Week) — There’s a reliably funny Twitter account called @JewWhoHasItAll, which imagines a universe where nearly everyone is Jewish and those who aren’t are the outliers.
That’s the sensation I got on a visit to the Museum of Broadway, which opened last month. A three-story tribute to the Theater District located in its very heart, it is organized around a series of rooms dedicated to landmark musicals and plays, and the majority bear the stamp of Jewish creators: Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s “Showboat,” Richard Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma!”, Leonard Bernstein’s “West Side Story,” Stephen Sondheim’s “Company,” Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.”
Other projects dedicated to the history of Broadway aren’t shy about noting the over-representation of Jews in the business. “Broadway Musicals: A Jewish Legacy,” a documentary that seems to run on a nearly endless loop on my local PBS station, notes that “over the [first] 50-year period of its development, the songs of the Broadway musical were created almost exclusively by Jewish Americans.”
If the Museum of Broadway acknowledges this, I didn’t notice. Some might take this as an omission or a snub, the way critics objected when a new museum about the history of Hollywood initially overlooked the essential Jewish contribution to the movie business. But in this case, the Jewishness of Broadway is taken as a given. You’d have to be culturally illiterate not to notice how many of the most celebrated creators are Jewish: In addition to the musical tributes, there are wall placards singling out the contributions of Sondheim and the director Harold Prince, a corner devoted to “Fiddler on the Roof” and a gallery celebrating Joe Papp (born Joseph Papirofsky) and his Public Theater, that reliable pipeline of breakthrough Broadway shows.
(There were, however, frequent mentions of the specifically African-American contributions to Broadway. That seemed a deliberate attempt to counter perceptions that Broadway is indeed the “Great White Way.”)
The museum, whose opening was delayed by the pandemic, is a collaboration with Playbill, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS (which is supported by a portion of the stiff $39 admission charge), the Al Hirschfeld Foundation, Concord Theatricals and Goodspeed Musicals. Its approach is chronological, with a timeline that pulls visitors from room to room, from vaudeville, through Broadway’s “Golden Age” and up to the present. Original costumes and props are on display in Instagram-ready settings that resemble the original sets for various shows.
Among the paraphernalia and stagecraft are a number of Jewish highlights. Here are seven:
A whirligig of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals
A sample of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals, on display at the Museum of Broadway. (NYJW)
Just past the cornstalks celebrating the ground-breaking 1943 musical “Oklahoma!” is a wall display showcasing the duo’s most important collaborations, including “Carousel,” “South Pacific,” “The King and I,” “Flower Drum Song” and “The Sound of Music.” Rodgers, working with Hammerstein and before him Lorenz Hart, wrote more than 900 songs and 41 Broadway musicals. Combine that with Hammerstein’s work with Kern, and it is hard to imagine two more important figures in the history of musical comedy.
Jerome Robbins’ notes on “West Side Story”
Choreographer Jerome Robbins suggested a “seder” scene in an early conception of what became “West Side Story.” (NYJW)
Look closely at this list of proposed scenes for a musical based on “Romeo and Juliet” and you’ll see the word “seder.” Robbins, the choreographer, originally proposed that the show focus on a star-crossed love story between a Jewish girl and an Irish boy, but he and his fellow Jewish collaborators — composer Leonard Bernstein, lyricist Stephen Sondheim and playwright Arthur Laurents — soon felt the interfaith idea had already been exhausted in plays like “Abie’s Irish Rose.” When the show premiered in 1957, the gangs were Puerto Rican and a medley of ethnic whites.
Florence Klotz’s costume “bible”
Florence Klotz won six Tony Awards for her costume designs. (NYJW)
Costume designer Florence Klotz frequently collaborated with Prince and Sondheim. The museum displays her sketches for Sondheim’s “Follies” and “A Little Night Music.” Born in Brooklyn, Klotz would win six Tony awards. She died in 2006. The museum also includes an entire floor dedicated to the “backstage” talent: costume and set designers, stage managers, prop masters and writers.
A shrine to “Company”
A display at the Museum of Broadway celebrates a recent revival of “Company.” (NYJW)
Sondheim and Prince emerge as the museum’s lodestars. “Their intense and fruitful partnership and their creative trailblazing in [the 1970s] resulted in an extraordinary artistic innovation and a slew of provocative new works,” a wall card proclaims. “Company” (1970) was a largely plotless exploration of urban anomie. The museum calls it a “frank, even painful look at modern life,” perfectly attuned to the upper-middle class theatergoers who, it says, are the “backbone” of the Broadway audience. It’s the show people love or hate if they love or hate Sondheim. The “Company” exhibit includes photos of the original cast and spare set, and a backdrop that draws on the recent gender-bending revival.
A tribute to Joseph Papp
Costumes from productions that originated at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater on display at the Museum of Broadway. (NYJW)
Joe Papp flipped the script on how shows made it to Broadway: His Public Theater produced edgy off-Broadway plays that drew audiences downtown, and then successfully transferred that same buzz to the “Big Stem.” Papp, a son of Yiddish-speaking parents who grew up in a Brooklyn slum, founded the New York Shakespeare Festival. A section of the museum includes costumes and posters from important productions that originated at The Public — including wildly popular revivals of “The Pirates of Penzance” and “The Threepenny Opera” — and a dress Meryl Streep wore in her Broadway debut, in “Trelawny of the ‘Wells.’” Two other musicals developed at The Public — “Hair” and “A Chorus Line” — get their own tribute rooms.
Al Hirschfeld’s barber chair
A room at the Museum of Broadway includes works by the famed caricaturist Al Hirschfeld. (NYJW)
The museum has an entire gallery dedicated to the work of artist Al Hirschfeld and his caricatures of Broadway stars and productions from 1923-2001. His pen-and-ink drawings were a visual shorthand for “Broadway,” and it would sometimes seem that the stars he drew would come to resemble his drawings, not the other way around. The museum includes his wonderfully kooky Barbra Streisand in “Funny Girl” and a bearish, brooding Zero Mostel as Tevye. On display is a barber chair similar to the one he used in his studio (the original had fallen apart by the 1990s).
A stage set from “The Producers”
An exhibit space at the Museum of Broadway evokes the scenery from the Mel Brooks musical “The Producers.” (NYJW)
You can sit behind a desk and pretend you are Broadway producer Max Bialystock, who was played by Nathan Lane in the phenomenally successful 2001 musical adaptation of Mel Brooks’ 1967 film about the worst musical ever staged for Broadway. The display is a reminder of the impact of the show, and not only on ticket prices: It proved the viability of adapting movies for Broadway, and earned a record-setting 12 Tony Awards. The museum calls the musical, with its tap-dancing Nazis and sweet and conniving Jewish protagonists, a “glittering homage to Broadway’s past” — a past that is unmistakably Jewish.
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The post 7 Jewish highlights from the new Museum of Broadway appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Massive fire breaks out at kosher supermarket in London’s Golders Green
(JTA) — A huge fire broke out Tuesday morning at the Kosher Kingdom supermarket in Golders Green, London’s heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Firefighters were still working to put out the blaze six hours later.
Metropolitan Police posted on X that officers were called to the scene on Golders Green Road around 7 a.m. by the London Fire Brigade. “Officers responded and are at the scene assisting firefighters with road closures and evacuations,” said police.
London Fire Brigade Assistant Commissioner Craig Carter provided an update on the scene at 12:30 p.m., saying that 15 engines and around 100 firefighters “have been tackling the fire at its height, which has affected a ground floor shop and a storage area to the rear, which has partially collapsed.”
He noted that the flats above were not affected but residents were evacuated as a precaution.
“Our specialist Fire Investigators, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Police Service, have worked at pace to establish that the circumstances of the fire are not believed to be suspicious and investigations on the cause and origin of the fire are ongoing,” Carter added.
The news that Kosher Kingdom did not appear to be deliberately targeted comes as a relief to Jewish residents, who have been on edge for months amid a string of attacks. The blaze broke out in the same area where four Hatzola ambulances were torched in March, two Jewish men were stabbed in April and a Jewish man said he was attacked for speaking Hebrew this month.
Rochel Cohen, who lives near the supermarket, is among those whose street has been cordoned off. Her first thought was the incident was another antisemitic attack, she told JTA in a phone interview.
Cohen said she looked out the window around 7 a.m. and saw “just huge plumes of black smoke and we heard all the sirens. And the police have roped off all our roads again.”
That “again,” Cohen said, was because it was the third time in two months that her family had witnessed “crime scenes in our neighborhood.”
“The ambulance fire was just on the next street from us and the stabbing situation was 100 meters down the road from us,” she said.
Prior to the fire department’s update, speculation spread on social media that the fire was electrical, potentially caused by faulty freezers. London has seen an unprecedented heatwave over the last several days, with temperatures soaring over 90 degrees.
Cohen said two of her family members previously worked at Kosher Kingdom. They believed from the outset that there was an electrical fire in the freezers “because it’s exactly from the roof footage that we saw where those freezers are located,” she said.
Nonetheless, another incident in the neighborhood has left her shaken. “It’s just a bit of a nightmare, really,” she said. “It’s all these incidents adding up, and it makes it quite scary, this climate of fear we’re currently in. It’s really oppressive.”
Cohen said she has been traveling to jury service the last several weeks about 10 miles from Golders Green in Wood Green, which has a higher than average crime rate.
“I actually felt safer there than I do walking the street here in Golders Green because I’m constantly turning around, checking what’s going on,” she said. “It’s not a nice feeling.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Massive fire breaks out at kosher supermarket in London’s Golders Green appeared first on The Forward.
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Reading a Pakistani author’s 30-year-old novel helped me understand my parents’ views on intermarriage
When I was a kid, I was haunted by the threat of my parents rejecting me if I married a non-Jew. Raised on Disney movies and song lyrics about soulmates, I spent almost every moment of high school anticipating the pain of falling in love with a non-Jew and having to choose between him and my family. If I chose him, the estrangement could bode poorly for married life. But if I married a Jewish man, I’d always worry that if he had not been Jewish, our love would not have overcome our religious differences, and therefore was not that strong to begin with.
The psychic burden began to lift only when I went to college at Hunter in New York City and made friends from other minority groups. I bonded with them over our parents’ desire that we marry someone from the same religion or ethnicity. I had always felt like my parents’ demand constituted bigotry against non-Jews, and I was surprised when my non-Jewish friends were more sympathetic to their stance than I was.
In college, I took a class on the history of modern India and learned about the Pakistani author Bapsi Sidhwa, but I didn’t read her until this year. Sidhwa, who died in 2024, grew up in Lahore’s Parsi community — a group of Zoroastrians who trace their roots to pre-Islamic Iran. Even though her books are mostly more than 30 years old, they still feel relevant, and they remind me of my own Iranian Jewish community.
Sidhwa’s 1993 coming-of-age novel An American Brat centers on Feroza, a Parsi girl from Lahore. Feroza’s parents send her to the U.S. to expand her horizons because they think the local culture is making her too conservative. But they wind up being disappointed when her horizons expand too much.
Feroza’s whole extended family goes into a tailspin when she sends word home that she wants to marry a Jewish man named David. She met him when she responded to an ad he placed in the college newspaper about selling his car. The two bond over their families’ shared emphases on religion and education. David’s family’s Shabbat candles recall the significance of fire within Zoroastrianism. But if Feroza marries a non-Zoroastrian, she will be excommunicated from the Parsi community. As Feroza’s mom Zareen prepares to fly to America to intervene, extended family members urge her to stand her ground no matter how nice David is and no matter how big a “tantrum” Feroza throws — but they also advise her not be too harsh either, so as not to push Feroza away.
The reader never learns what objections, if any, David’s Reform Jewish parents might have to his interfaith marriage; over Shabbat dinner, prior to the proposal, they are reserved but polite. Meanwhile, Zareen’s good-cop bad-cop routine is familiar, quaint and pathetic. She lists eligible Parsi bachelors (the Zoroastrian equivalent of ‘nice Jewish boys’) with promising careers and “worthy mothers.” She tries killing with kindness: “You’re too precious. We’re not going to throw you away on the first riffraff that comes your way.” She even tells Feroza cautionary tales about women who married “nons” (Zoroastrian equivalent of goyim) and wound up feeling disconnected from their heritage. These methods all fail, and the book comes to a sobering end when Zareen calls David’s bluff and demands the couple have a huge traditional wedding, scaring him off and exposing the limits of his supposedly liberal values.
Zoroastrians, like Jews, are a small group. In 2022, an Associated Press article estimated the worldwide Zoroastrian population, which at its peak numbered in the millions, was now around 125,000. Lahore’s Parsi community had all of 11 members as of a 2023 Facebook post.
Reading literature from other cultures, just like having friends from other cultures, can teach us about our own. As I read Zareen’s efforts to talk Feroza out of the engagement, it was somehow easier for me to understand than if they were Jewish like me. The author’s empathy makes Zareen’s mom an especially interesting character, like a Zoroastrian Tevye, torn between family pressures and the feminist values that inspired her to send Feroza to the U.S. in the first place.
Students at Hunter have a reputation for being super liberal, but they also have surprising points of departure from what most people would consider liberal. When I told classmates that I struggled with my parents’ insistence that I marry a Jew, I sensed bad energy in the room, as if they were judging me for disrespecting my parents in front of them. Some seemed to think it’s only natural for a person to marry someone who belongs to the same religion or ethnicity. Part of me was disturbed to see that this brand of separatism was so fashionable — but I also felt relieved, like they’d given me permission to appease my parents.
Feroza heals from her breakup with David partly by remembering that no matter the religion of the person she marries, her religion will always be part of her. As for myself, I don’t know what my future holds. But whatever does happen, it will be something that also happened to countless women before me — not only Jewish women but people of all different races and creeds. It is comforting to remember that as your life is playing out, there are people all over the world and across time living out much the same story as you are.
The post Reading a Pakistani author’s 30-year-old novel helped me understand my parents’ views on intermarriage appeared first on The Forward.
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Newly discovered details about Soviet Jewry between 1945 and 1953
די יאָרן צװישן 1945 און 1953, פֿון דעם סוף פֿון דער צװײטער װעלט־מלחמה ביז יאָסיף סטאַלינס טױט, זײַנען געװען די צײַט פֿון נסיונות פֿאַר סאָװעטישע ייִדן. דער דאָזיקער תּקופֿה איז געװידמעט דאָס בוך „דאָס לעבן נאָך דער מלחמה: האָפֿענונגען און שרעק“ פֿון דער היסטאָריקערין אַנאַ שטערנשיס פֿונעם טאָראָנטער אוניװערסיטעט. דאָס איז דער פֿערטער באַנד אין דער אַכט־בענדיקן געשיכטע פֿון ייִדן אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד אונטער דער רעדאַקציע פֿון די היסטאָריקער גענאַדי עסטרײַך און דוד ענגעל פֿון ניו־יאָרקער אוניװערסיטעט.
העכער װי צװײ מיט אַ האַלב מיליאָן ייִדן זײַנען דערמאָרדעט געװאָרן אױפֿן שטח פֿונעם סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד אין די גרענעצן פֿון 1941, וואָס נעמט אויך אַרײַן די געגנטן פֿון פּױלן, ליטע, לעטלאַנד, עסטלאַנד און רומעניע, װאָס זײַנען אַנעקסירט געװאָרן אין 1939 און 1940.
בערך צװײ מיט אַ האַלב מיליאָן ייִדן האָבן איבערגעלעבט דעם חורבן אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד. זײ האָבן זיך געפֿונען מחוץ די אָקופּירטע טעריטאָריעס אָדער געדינט אין דער רױטער אַרמײ. אַרום 100,000 ייִדן זײַנען געבליבן לעבן אױף די אָקופּירטע שטחים, דער עיקר אין די געטאָס פֿון טראַנסניסטריע אין דרום־אוקראַיִנע און מאָלדאָװע, װאָס זײַנען געװען אונטער דער רומענישער אָקופּאַציע.
דער חורבן האָט שטאַרק געענדערט דעם קולטורעל־סאָציאַלן פּראָפֿיל פֿון סאָװעטישן ייִדנטום, שרײַבט שטערנשיס. די ייִנגערע, מער אַסימילירטע, געבילדעטע און מאָבילע מענטשן האָבן געהאַט בעסערע אױסזיכטן אױף אױסצומײַדן דעם טױט. די פּראָסטע שטעטלדיקע בעל־מלאכות, פּױערים און עלטערע ייִדן האָבן אָפֿט מאָל ניט געהאַט קײן מעגלעכקײטן צו אַנטלױפֿן פֿון די דײַטשן.
נאָך דער מלחמה האָבן אַ סך ייִדן ניט געװאָלט זיך אומקערן איז די שטעטלעך פֿון אוקראַיִנע און בעלאַרוס, װאָס האָבן זײ דערמאָנט אָן זײערע דערמאָרדעטע קרובֿים און שכנים. האָבן זיי זיך געפּרוּװט באַזעצן אין גרױסע שטעט, אַזעלכע װי קיִעװ, מינסק, מאָסקװע אָדער לענינגראַד.
כּדי צו האָבן אַ װױנרעכט אין אַ גרױסער שטאָט האָט מען געמוזט האָבן אַן אַרבעט און אַ דירה. דער מצבֿ אין קיִעװ איז געװען באַזונדערס שװער. די שטאָט איז געװען אין חורבֿות, און די געבליבענע װױנונגען זײַנען בעת דער דײַטשישער אָקופּאַציע פֿאַרנומען געװאָרן דורך אָרטיקע אוקראַיִנער.
זײ האָבן פֿײַנט געהאַט ייִדן, װאָס האָבן זיך אומגעקערט פֿון דער עװאַקואַציע אין סיביר אָדער צענטראַל־אַזיע און האָבן איצט געװאָלט צוריק באַקומען זײערע דירות מיט האָב־און־גוטס. דאָס האָט געשאַפֿן שפּאַנונג צװישן ייִדן און אוקראַיִנער און אַרויסגערופֿן אַנטיסעמיטישע געפֿילן.
דאָס רובֿ היסטאָרישע פֿאָרשונגען װעגן סאָװעטישע ייִדן פֿאָקוסירן זיך אױף דער פּאָליטיק און קולטור. שטערנשיס ברענגט אַרײַן נײַע היסטאָרישע מקורים, װאָס עד־היום זײַנען לרובֿ פֿאַרבליבן מחוץ דעם אַקאַדעמישן אינטערעס.
אין משך פֿון העכער װי 20 יאָר פֿאָרש-אַרבעט האָט זי אָנגעזאַמלט הונדערטער בעל־פּהיִקע גבֿית־עדותן װעגן דעם אַמאָליקן ייִדישן לעבן אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד. זײ לאָזן הערן שטימען פֿון מענער און פֿרױען פֿון פֿאַרשײדענע סאָציאַלע שיכטן, פֿון פּראָסטע אַרבעטער ביז הױך־אָנגעשטעלטע פֿיגורן.
עס איז כּדאַי דאָ אָפּצומערקן, אַז אײן װיכטיקער אַספּעקט פֿון דער סאָװעטישער ייִדישער דערפֿאַרונג פֿאַרבלײַבט נאָך אַלץ ניט דערפֿאָרשט. אַ היפּשע צאָל ייִדן זײַנען געװען פֿאַרטאָן אין דער אַזױ־גערופֿענער „שאָטן־װירטשאַפֿט“. זײ האָבן געפֿירט קלײנע געשעפֿטן, װאָס זײַנען פֿאָרמעל געװען מלוכישע אָבער פֿאַקטיש זײַנען זײ געװען פּריװאַטע.
פּריװאַטע אונטערנעמונגען זײַנען געװען פֿאַרװערט אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד, אָבער אין דער צײַט פֿון עקאָנאָמישע צרות האָט די מלוכה געקוקט אױף זײ דורך די פֿינגער. אַזאַ מין אַרבעט האָט געלאָזט פֿרומע ייִדן אָפּהיטן שבת און יום־טובֿים. דװקא זײ זײַנען געװען די הױפּט־שטיצער פֿון שילן און פּריװאַטע מנינים.
ספּעציעל אינטערעסאַנט אין שטערנשיסעס בוך זײַנען די באַריכטן װעגן פֿאַרשײדענע פֿאָלק־אַקטיװיטעטן װאָס ייִדן האָבן אָרגאַניזירט אָן קײן שום שטיצה מצד דער מלוכה. מען האָט געזאַמלט געלט צו בױען דענקמעלער אױף די ערטער פֿון מאַסנמאָרד און צו אָרגאַניזירן הזכּרה־צערעמאָניעס.
די ערשטע פּאָר יאָר נאָך דער צווייטער וועלט־מלחמה זײַנען געװען אַ צײַט פֿון גרױסע האָפֿענונגען. נאָכן נצחון איבער דײַטשלאַנד האָט מען געהאָפֿט, אַז די סאָװעטישע מאַכט װעט אָנערקענען די יסורים פֿון ייִדן און װעט זײ העלפֿן װידער אױפֿבױען דאָס ייִדישע לעבן.
די סאַמע אַקטיװסטע קהילות זײַנען געװען אין װילנע און טשערנאָװיץ, די ייִדישע צענטערס, װאָס זײַנען געװאָרן סאָװעטיש ערשט אין 1939 און 1940. אין װילנע האָט מען געשאַפֿן דעם ערשטן חורבן־מוזײ אין דער װעלט און טשערנאָװיץ איז געװאָרן אַ נײַע הײם פֿאַרן קיִעװער ייִדישן טעאַטער.
אָבער דער אױפֿלעב האָט געדױערט בלױז אַ פּאָר יאָר. אַ סך כּלל־טוער (צװישן זײ — דער דיכטער אַבֿרהם סוצקעװער), װאָס פֿאַר דער מלחמה זײַנען געװען פּױלישע אָדער רומענישע בירגער, האָבן באַקומען דערלױבעניש צו פֿאַרלאָזן דעם סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד אין 1945־1946.
אַרום 1947 האָבן זיך באַװיזן סימנים פֿון ענדערונגען אין דער פּאָליטיק לגבי ייִדן. אײניקע היסטאָריקער פֿאַרבינדן זײ מיטן אָנהײב פֿון דער קאַלטער מלחמה צװישן דעם סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד און די פֿאַראײניקטע שטאַטן און מיטן אױפֿקום פֿון מדינת־ישׂראל.
שטערנשיס איז מסכּים, אַז דאָס זײַנען געװען װיכטיקע סיבות. אָבער זי האַלט, אַז אַ היפּשע ראָלע האָבן אױך געשפּילט אַנטיסעמיטישע שטימונגען אין דער סאָװעטישער באַפֿעלקערונג. אַנטיסעמיטיזם איז געװען ספּעציעל שטאַרק אין די געגנטן, װאָס זײַנען געװען אונטער דער דײַטשישער אָקופּאַציע. די נאַציסטישע פּראָפּאַגאַנדע האָט געהאַט אַ שטאַרקע השפּעה אױפֿן פּראָסטן פֿאָלק.
אַנטיסעמיטיזם איז געװען פּאָפּולער אױך אין די „הױכע פֿענצטער“ פֿון דער קאָמוניסטישער פּאַרטײ. נאָך דער מלחמה האָט די רעגירונג געהאַט אַ סך שװערע סאָציאַלע און עקאָנאָמישע פּראָבלעמען און האָט זיך גענײטיקט אין דער שטיצע פֿון די מאַסן.
אַן אימאַזש פֿון אַ שׂונא װאָלט געהאָלפֿן אָפּצוציִען דעם אױפֿמערק פֿון די דאָזיקע פּראָבלעמען, פֿאַרסך־הכּלט שטערנשיס. דערצו נאָך האָבן אַ סך ייִדן אַרױסגעװיזן התלהבֿות לגבי מדינת־ישׂראל, און דאָס האָט אַרויסגערופֿט חשד בײַ סטאַלינען.
בײַ ס׳רובֿ ייִדן איז דער דאָזיקער קלאַפּ געקומען אומדערװאַרט. מער פֿון אַלעמען האָבן געליטן די ייִדישע כּלל־ און קולטור־טוער פֿונעם ייִדישן אַנטיפֿאַשיסטישן קאָמיטעט.
דער אַקטיאָר שלמה מיכאָעלס איז דערמאָרדעט געװאָרן אין אַן אינסצענירטן אױטאָ־אומגליק אין יאַנואַר פֿון 1948. די דיכטער איציק פֿעפֿער, דוד האָפֿשטײן, פּרץ מאַרקיש, לײב קװיטקאָ און דער שרײַבער דוד בערגעלסאָן זײַנען באַשולדיקט געװאָרן אין שפּיאָנאַזש, פֿאַרמישפּט געוואָרן צום טױט און דערשאָסן געוואָרן דעם 12טן אױגוסט 1952
אַרום אײן טױזנט ייִדן זײַנען אַרעסטירט געװאָרן פֿאַר „ייִדישן נאַציאָנאַליזם“ און געשיקט געוואָרן אין די תּפֿיסה־לאַגערן. טױזנטער מענטשן האָבן פֿאַרלױרן זײער אַרבעט־שטעלעס. אַלע ייִדישע אַנשטאַלטן זײַנען פֿאַרמאַכט געװאָרן.
די אַנטיסעמיטישע כװאַליע האָט דערגרײכט דעם שפּיץ אָנהײב 1953. אַ גרופּע חשובֿע דאָקטױרים, ס’רובֿ ייִדן, זײַנען באַשולדיקט געװאָרן אין אָפּסמען אָנפֿירער פֿון דער קאָמוניסטישער פּאַרטײ. אײנצײַטיק זײַנען אַרומגעגאַנגען קלאַנגען, אַז סטאַלין איז אױסן צו דעפּאָרטירן ייִדן קײן סיביר.
אַזאַ אַקציע װאָלט ניט געװען קײן יוצא־דופֿן אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד. צו יענער צײַט האָט סטאַלין שױן געהאַט דעפּאָרטירט עטלעכע עטנישע עדות: די טאָטערן פֿון קרים, די טשעטשענצעס און די אינגושן פֿון קאַװקאַז און נאָך אַנדערע. אָבער היסטאָריקער האָבן ניט געפֿונען קײן דאָקומענטאַלע ראַיות פֿון אַ פּלאַן צו דעפּאָרטירן ייִדן.
אַזױ אָדער אַנדערש זײַנען ייִדן געראַטעװעט געװאָרן פֿון סטאַלינס לעצטער גזירה װײַל ער איז געשטאָרבן דעם 5טן מאַרץ 1953, גלײַך נאָך פּורים. בהדרגה האָט מען אָפּגעשטעלט די אַנטיסעמיטישע פּראָפּאַגאַנדע און באַפֿרײַט די פֿאַרמישפּטע פֿונעם גולאַג. אָבער מען האָט פֿאָרט נישט אָנגעהױבן דרוקן ייִדישע ביכער אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד ביז 1959.
שטערנשיס האָט אָנגעשריבן אַ דראַמאַטישע געשיכטע פֿולגעפּאַקט מיט פּרטים, װאָס לאָזן דעם לײענער זיך אױסמאָלן דאָס טאָג־טעגלעכע לעבן פֿון ייִדן אין סאָװעטן־פֿאַרבאַנד. דערצו נאָך באַקומט דער לײענער אַ גוטן פֿאַרשטאַנד פֿון די ברײטערע פּאָליטישע, עקאָנאָמישע און סאָציאַלע טענדענצן, װאָס האָבן באַװירקט סײַ ייִדן סײַ די גאַנצע סאָװעטישע באַפֿעלקערונג.
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