The Pulpit and the Stage: Rabbi Joseph Silverman and the Actors' Church Alliance

The interrelations between pulpit and stage constitute a curious lacuna in the historiography of the modern Jewish theater. Though surveys of Jewish theater customarily open with a citation of the biblical caution to avoid "the seat of the scornful" (Ps. 1 :1 ) and stern Talmudic injunctions against theater attendance, the absence of a historical examination of rabbinic views of the stage, especially in the modern era, has endowed the ancient rebukes with an essentialist and ahistorical quality.¹ This aura of immutability has discouraged further investigation by contemporary scholars of Jewish theater, who are mostly secular and not well versed in traditional Jewish sources. Moreover, their knowledge of theater history is grounded in the European and mostly Anglo-American narrative, one that encompasses the traditional hostility of Christian Puritanism toward the stage, culminating after 1642 with the closing of English public theaters by an act of Parliament and the designation of actors as rogues and vagabonds. Consequently, there is no study devoted to the intricate and shifting interconnectedness between these two spheres of Jewish culture. Needless to say, scant attention, if any, has been given to the question of a possible distinction in rabbinic thought regarding Jewish participation in and patronage of Gentile theatrical activities in contrast to the authentically Jewish venues offered by the modern Yiddish and Hebrew stages. Overall, the hum and buzz of implication is that the two disciplines stand apart, separated by a fundamental schism and mutual animosity.

In assuming that clerical antagonism to the stage is largely made of the same cloth, scholars have not examined the disparate concerns of Jewish and Christian clergy in their opposition to the stage. For example, until the early twentieth century, replication of religious ceremonies, including the marriage service, on the English-language stage was considered religiously offensive, and was prohibited by the Lord Chamberlain's office, the official censor of the British stage. It was also frowned upon in the American theater, which mostly preserved English dramatic protocol.² The modern Yiddish stage, on the other hand, has been infused since its inception with religious rituals, and an objection to the staging of ceremonies such as the lighting of the Sabbath candles or the performance of cantorial music, and especially of the ever-popular wedding scene, would be incomprehensible to its practitioners and spectators. This clash in sensibilities came to the fore in 1899 , with the New York premiere of Israel Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto. The production, which included the enactment of religious rites and prayers, incensed Clement Scott, formerly London's leading theater critic, and now the highly respected guest drama critic at the New York Herald. Scott was particularly enraged by a scene in which the old father blessed his daughter, mentioning "Almighty God," an utterance he considered the ultimate stage blasphemy.³

However, when Abraham Cahan, then writing for the English-language press, took the sacrilege issue to two leading Lower East Side authorities, Rabbis Chaim Yaakov Widerewitz and Shmuel Wine, they completely dismissed it, and, unlike Protestant clergy and some Jewish Reform colleagues, regarded it as a matter of little consequence. Widerewitz told Cahan that there were graver sins in the world than singing the Kaddish in a theater, and explained that because the explicit name of God did not appear in the Kaddish, and was not pronounced in the other prayers, there was no offense in their performance on stage. Wine, equally tolerant, said that the issue was one of the overall spirit of the drama, and if no scorn were intended he saw no problem with the performance of religious rites on the stage.⁴

Judaism's liberal attitude toward the stage had already been pronounced twenty years earlier by English rabbi Morris Joseph. In 1879 , Joseph preached at the Old Hebrew Congregation of Liverpool on "the duty of using, though with gratitude and moderation, the opportunities...