The Bucharest Yiddish Studio Theater (Yiddish: ''Bukareshter Idishe Teater-Studie'', ''BITS'') was a short-lived, experimental

Yiddish theater 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 rev ...

founded in

Bucharest Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

in 1930, under the leadership of Jacob Sternberg. Their first production, in January 1930, was I.L. Peretz's ''A Night in the Old Town'', also known as ''A Night in the Old Marketplace'' — that is to say, in the

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""T ...

ish

ghetto A ghetto, often called ''the'' ghetto, is a part of a city in which members of a minority group live, especially as a result of political, social, legal, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished t ...

. ''Dimineaţa'' said of this play that it "does not have a subject in the conventional sense of the word" but is instead "the dream of a cold night", moving smoothly between the world of the living and that of the dead. The play was a hit and a critical success.

Tudor Arghezi Tudor Arghezi (; 21 May 1880 – 14 July 1967) was a Romanian writer, best known for his unique contribution to poetry and children's literature. Born Ion N. Theodorescu in Bucharest, he explained that his pen name was related to ''Argesis'', th ...

, who did not speak

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

, praised Sternberg highly for the production, and for the structure of the performance, whose blend of "order and disorder" he described as "inexplicable, like

Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classic ...

's music". Arghezi also remarked of ''A Night in the Old Town'', "you are either open to this, or you are not". Many were not. Barbu Lăzăreanu, a prominent Jewish intellectual and

ethnologist Ethnology (from the grc-gre, ἔθνος, meaning 'nation') is an academic field that compares and analyzes the characteristics of different peoples and the relationships between them (compare cultural, social, or sociocultural anthropology) ...

, said that BITS "altered the Peretz's work into an orgy of ''orori osifere'' oughly, 'graveyard horrors'and monosyllabism that creates an unstoppable impression of the lugubrious and hyper-transcendental." Their subsequent production of

Sholom Aleichem ) , birth_date = , birth_place = Pereiaslav, Russian Empire , death_date = , death_place = New York City, U.S. , occupation = Writer , nationality = , period = , genre = Novels, sh ...

's ''Der Farkishefter Shnayder'' (''The Bewitched Tailor'') was described by the ' as "a unified and enchanting spectacle of prose, poetry, and song" incorporating new songs "full of hope", but also music from the synagogue and popular song, "but on all this it embroiders a sad mirth, realist-simple and demented-symbolist comedy, which ends with optimistic rhymes — the moral of the comedy — sung by the comedians themselves."

References

* Bercovici, Israil, ''O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România'' ("One hundred years of Yiddish/Jewish theater in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest (1998), 147–151. . The ''Dimineaţa'', Arghezi, Lăzăreanu, and ''Literarish Bleter'' citations are his; the ''Dimineaţa'' article dates from January 31, 1930. {{coord missing, Bucharest Arts organizations established in 1930 Jewish theatres Jews and Judaism in Bucharest Yiddish Studio Theater Yiddish culture in Romania Yiddish Studio Theater