Israel Rosenberg

Israel (also Yisroel or Yisrol) Rosenberg (c. 1850 – 1903 or 1904; Yiddish/Hebrew: ישראל ראָזענבערג) founded the first Yiddish theater troupe in Imperial Russia.

A personable "hole-and-corner lawyer" (that is, one without a diploma) and swindler in Odessa, Rosenberg was part of the migration of merchants and middlemen to Bucharest, Romania at the start of the Russo-Turkish War in 1887. These merchants and middlemen would prove a crucial component of the audience for the nascent professional Yiddish-language theater, consisting at that time only of a single troupe, that of Abraham Goldfaden. Unlike the rest of the migrants, Rosenberg actually joined the troupe and became an actor.

Like many who worked with Goldfaden, he soon chafed under the latter's imperious style and with his countryman Jacob Spivakovsky, put together his own travelling troupe and set out for the eastern part of Romania. At first they did well, but with the end of the war much of their audience returned to Russia; after running through their money playing in the provinces, they turned up nearly broke in Odessa, where there was a pre-made audience of those who had already seen Yiddish theater in Romania during the recent war.

There, in spring 1878, Rosenberg obtained some small backing and formed a troupe including Spivakovsky; Broder singers "Schmul with the Hoarse Throat", "Boris Budgoy" (Boris Holtzerman), Laizer Duke, Aaron Schrage; Jacob Adler, at that time new to performing; Sophia (Sonya) Oberlander, who later married Adler; and Masha Moskovich, whom Adler in his memoir describes as "a red-gold-haired beauty"; and various others, including singers from a local synagogue choir. Their first performance was at Akiva's restaurant, and consisted of two light vaudevilles and Goldfaden's very early play "The Recruits". The cast was all male, because the two women considered this an insufficiently respectable venue; that was soon remedied by renting the Remesleni Club, an 800-seat theater that had hosted many German-language performances. There they played Goldfaden's "Grandmother and Granddaughter" with yet another Broder singer, named Weinstein, clean-shaven for the first time in his adult life, as the grandmother and Masha Moskovich as the granddaughter.

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