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174 The concept of the “New Man” is fundamental to the European revolutionary culture that evolved during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. This term was first used during the French Revolution ; it was adapted and developed in later revolutionary movements such as German neo-romanticism, Soviet communism, or even Italian fascism. David Ohana, in his study of modern European nihilistic movements, claims that all these revolutionary movements, though different in their ideologies and political aims, shared the nihilistic negation of the near past and formed orders of revolutionary “New Men.” The New Man is imagined as someone who has undergone a rigorous process of self-transformation, shedding the degenerated nature of the despised old social order and internalizing the characteristics and values of the revolution. Thus the New Man becomes the embodiment of the revolution and the model for the envisioned utopia.1 The revolutionary fervor and idealism of the New Man concept also found its way into the Eastern European Jewish world, where it was positively valued by those who embraced modernity. According to Rina Peled, the Jewish “New Man” had two major models: the enlightened and assimilated Jew of the nineteenth century and the Zionist “New Jew” who emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century and in the first half of the twentieth.2 The cultural incarnation of the New Man was to be found in various artistic fields and took on special significance in the theatre. Theatre movements such as futurism, Soviet constructivism, and German expressionism focused on this theme. Some of the more important plays in German expressionist 10 The Shaping of the Ostjude Alexander Granach and Shimon Finkel in Berlin sh e l ly z e r- z ion t h e s h a p i ng o f t h e os t j u de 175 theatre, such as Die Wandlung (Transformation, 1919) by Ernst Toller, portray self-transformation from the constricted world of the urban bourgeoisie into a New Man who rejects his class and ethnic particularity and instead embraces humanity. This pattern was elaborated not only in dramatic texts but in new performance styles as well. Ecstatic acting, abstract staging, and even expressionist choreography signaled the act of transformation. Variations on the idea of the New Man were also significant in the nascent Hebrew theatre, which from its inception at the start of the twentieth century was committed to the revolutionary Zionist ideal and thus to the formation of the Jewish New Man. The Hebrew theatre was searching for its own revolutionary language not only through the use of the newly revived Hebrew language (the language of the Zionist revolution) but also through the forging of actors with a body language that would acclaim and celebrate the emergence of the transformed Jew. The formation and self-transformation of the Eastern European Jew into theNewManiswellexemplifiedbytwoyoungmenwhosoughtradicalchange both for themselves and for their immediate worlds through the medium of theatre: Alexander Granach and Shimon Finkel. These two aspiring actors underwent a radical process of self-transformation during their apprenticeship years in Berlin, preparing them to portray—and be—representatives of the New Man ideal on stage. But the stages they chose were in the end very different. Alexander Granach was born in 1890 in East Galicia and immigrated to Berlin at the age of sixteen. He became a prominent actor on the German expressionist stage during the Weimar Republic. Fifteen years later Shimon Finkel left his hometown in eastern Poland at the age of seventeen and likewise moved to Berlin, where he became involved with the newly emerging Hebrew theatre. He joined the renowned Habima group in 1927 and became one of its stars during the 1930s. The two men turned in different cultural directions : Granach to German Jewish culture and German theatre and Finkel to Zionist culture in Palestine and to Hebrew theatre. Yet during their apprenticeship years in Berlin both underwent wrenching reshapings through the painful shedding of their provincial background and in determined acts of self-transformation forged new identities as serious theatre actors, in two different revolutionary theatres. In this chapter I examine the course they followed from the towns of Eastern Europe into modern avant-garde theatre and discuss the similar phases of their spiritual and physical self-transformation . This account serves as an illustration of the key role that theatre played not only as a forum for expressing the new aesthetic and ideological trends of [18.117.216.229] Project...

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