Document Type

Honors Project

Publication Date

6-9-2026

Abstract

In the first decades of the twentieth century, the main form of entertainment for the Jewish immigrant community was shund (trash) theater: popular and commercial theater. Although many immigrants enjoyed this kind of entertainment, playwrights, artists, and intellectuals critiqued its place in immigrants’ lives, especially since shund revealed the process of assimilation and was considered low-brow art. In 1918, Maurice Schwartz opened the Yiddish Art Theatre to create high-brow art for Jewish audiences. In my essay, I focus on the company’s history between 1918 and 1934, on the theater’s move from downtown to Midtown and back to the Lower East Side. Maurice Schwartz and his producer’s decision to relocate the Yiddish Art Theatre to Midtown reflected the migratory patterns of Jewish artists in New York in the 20s; in 1926, however, the company made a turn back to the Lower East Side. I argue that Schwartz created a new physical space in the Lower East Side for Jews to enact their Jewishness, since the neighborhood was originally a home base for the immigrant community. Moreover, this new playhouse furthered his goal for the theater: to produce high-brow literary plays, demonstrating the value of Jewish theater to the wider American community while simultaneously cultivating the Jewish side of a nascent Jewish American identity. Despite the antisemitism of the 1920s and the downturn in the number of Yiddish speakers, urban American Jews flocked to the Yiddish Art Theatre to explore and embrace their Jewishness. Instead of completely assimilating, these immigrants inhabited a dramatic theater that defined who they were and what they believed.

Level of Honors

magna cum laude

Department

History

Advisor

Brigid Vance

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