The history of Yiddish theatre in South Africa from the late nineteenth century to 1960

This dissertation sets out to investigate the history of Yiddish theatre in South Africa. Yiddish theatre first emerged in Jassy in Rumania in 1876. However with Czarist persecution and the great Jewish migration from Eastern Europe, the 1880s it had spread to Western Europe, the Americas, and South Africa. This dissertation attempts to answer the question as to why of all Eastern Europe's diasporas, Yiddish theatre at no stage put down permanent roots in South Africa. It aims to prove that the survival of Yiddish theatre was entirely dependent on the survival of the Yiddish language. Thus the fate of Yiddish theatre in South Africa was influenced by the early timing of the formative immigration, between 1890 and 1914, the common origins of the immigrants in Lithuania and White Russia, and their educational and cultural poverty. These factors were reinforced by the exclusive adherence of the Anglo-German Jewish establishment and the vast majority of the immigrants, to Zionism and the Hebrew revival. Yiddish was unequivocally rejected, so that it never featured in the construction of South African Jewish identity. Finally the Quota Act of 1930, reinforced by the Alien's Act of 1937, put a total halt to Eastern European Jewish immigration, the lifeblood of Yiddish theatre.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies

Year dc:date.issued

2003

Author dc:creator

• Belling, Veronica

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Shain, Milton

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10084

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/10084