Illness as Metaphor

Aflffirica iJeview Marowitz continuedfrom previous page abandonment of their elders's faith. To "integrate" was not a harmless process mat made them proud US citizens, but a renunciation of the rites, customs, and beliefs which had defined them in their countries of origin. There was no nationwide television circuitry to help foreigners "Americanize" themselves. Although there was radio, it required a good grasp of English to exert its influence—which is why music played a greater part than anything conveyed in the new tongue. Kanfer's Stardust Lost is not only a masterpiece -of research and anecdotage, but a sweeping panoramic view of how the nascent Yiddish theatre interacted with contingent events such as the First and Second World Wars, the legislative changes that affected the stop-and-go waves of immigration, the pogroms in Russia, the Nazi genocides, the Communist purges, and the ultimate dissolution ofYiddish as a native language. It also traces the subtle and unstoppable ways in which Jewish wit (and wits) gradually infiltrated American show business and how relics of the Yiddish theatre were subtly reincarnated in the works of Jewish-American playwrights such as Clifford Odets, Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayevsky, and Tony Kushner. Kafner vividly sketches out his central characters —Boris Thomashevsky, JacobAdler, David Kessler , Bertha Kalisch—and then flashes back to them as the Yiddish theatre prospers, declines, renews, is hobbled, and ultimately vanishes. Along the way he provides transient but vivid portraits of key figures such as Molly Picon, Menasha Skulnick, Leo Fuchs, Moishe Oysher, Paul Muni, Zero Mostel, etc. The impregnable fortitude of Maurice Schwartz, the founder of the Yiddish Art Theatre, is particularly telling. Considered an insufferable, ham by my own generation, Schwartz emerges as a staunch Defender of the Faith and devoted entrepreneur right up to the final demise of the Yiddish theatre. His legacy is that even today, there are Schwartzian -styled idealists who believe, through resuscitation of the Yiddish language and excavation of the more durable works of the genre, a healthy Yiddishkeit can be reincarnated. I doubt it but admire the zealousness of the effort. The years ofthe Yiddish theatre in America are a fascinating saga because, despite all odds and within the relatively short space of half a century, it persevered and ultimately prospered. Its briefchronicle is studded with colorful, outsize personalities. No one was as swellheaded as Jacob Adler (nor as talented); no one as resilient as Boris Thomashevsky (nor as dogmatic). The charismatic actor David Kessler was purveying a method-styled naturalism before Lee Strasberg was ever born; the talent of outsize artists such as Jacob Ben-Ami, Joseph Buloff, and Muni Weisenfreund (Paul Muni) make actors like Al Pacino and Robert de Niro look like also-rans. There is no wealth of dramatic literature to boast of, but writers as dissimilar as Franz Kafka, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Sholem Aleichem, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth all have Yiddish theatre in their progeny and, as Kanfer makes abundantly clear, if one were to excise the talented Jews from show business, we would be back to the days of the medicine shows. The questing, rambunctious, larger-than-life creation that was the Yiddish theatre deserves a faithful chronicler who is not blind to the absurdity beyond the grandeur, and Kanfer, the biographer of Lucille Ball, Groucho Marx, and the variegated mishugas of the Catskill variety shows, is the right man for the job. Stardust Lost is like a gigantic tapestry where, in every comer ofevery inch, some fascinating character emerges to participate in a quest which is simultaneously holy and outrageous. Charles Marowitz is a writer and stage director whose latest book is How to Stage a Play, Make a Fortune, Win a Tony, and Become a Theatrical Icon (Amadeus Press/Limelight Editions, 2005). Illness as Metaphor Rochelle Ratner This Disease Barry Silesky University of Tampa Press http://utpress.ut.edu 88 pages; cloth, $20.00; paper, $12.00 I needed this book. Its title roped me in, to be sure. And the thought that it could be "useful." For years I've been teaching in senior centers, hospitals, and most recently an online workshop for people with MS. I'm always looking for poems they...