Yiddish theatre consists of plays written and performed primarily by Jews in Yiddish, the language of the Central European Ashkenazi Jewish community. The range of Yiddish theatre is broad: operetta, musical comedy, and satiric or nostalgic revues; melodrama; naturalist drama; expressionist and modernist plays. At its height, its geographical scope was comparably broad: from the late 19th century until just before World War II, professional Yiddish theatre could be found throughout the heavily Jewish areas of Eastern and East Central Europe, but also in Berlin, London, Paris, Buenos Aires and New York City.
Molly Picon (center) in Bublitchki, 1938
Report on Jewish Theatre - New York Times 29 Nov 1868 Sunday Page 5
Thalia Theatre poster (Josef Kroger, New York, 1897)
Poster for Jewmuzdramcomedy (Jewish theatre). Moscow, Russia, 1920
Uriel da Costa was a Portuguese Sephardi philosopher who was born a New Christian but returned to Judaism, whereupon he questioned the Catholic and rabbinic orthodoxies of his time. This led him into conflict with both Christian and rabbinic institutions: his books were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum and he was excommunicated by several Jewish authorities. His iconoclastic life culminated in suicide in c. 1640.
Uriel da Costa's excommunication (1888) by Meijer de Haan took 8 years of work, created a huge backlash, and disappeared shortly after and still not extant.
Exemplar Humanae Vitae, by Uriel Acosta.
Imagined portrait of da Costa instructing the young Baruch Spinoza, by Samuel Hirszenberg (1901)