Israil Bercovici

Israil (Israel) Bercovici (1921–1988) was a Jewish Romanian dramaturg, playwright, director, biographer, and memoirist, who served the State Jewish Theater of Romania between 1955 and 1982; he also wrote Yiddish-language poetry.

Biography

Bercovici was born into a poor working-class family in Botoşani, Romania, and received a traditional Jewish education. During World War II he served time at hard labor until the arrival of the Soviet Army in Romania.

After the war, he began his career in Yiddish-language newspapers and radio, notably the weekly IKUF-Bleter (1946–1953), and the Revista Cultului Mozaic din R.P.R. (Journal of Jewish Culture in the People's Republic of Romania, also known as Tsaytshrift). The Journal was launched in 1956 and had sections in Romanian, Yiddish and Hebrew. Bercovici edited the Yiddish section from 1970 to 1972.

As a literature student after the war at a secular secondary school in Bucharest, Bercovici published his first Yiddish-language poetry in IKUF-Bleter. Judging by theater reviews he wrote in the early 1950s, he appears to have been an ardent Communist, grateful for his liberation from the labor camp and for the opportunity to receive a secular education, advocating a socialist realist aesthetic for Yiddish-language theater.

His affiliation with the State Jewish Theater began in 1955, initially as "literarischer Sekretär". He continued to be very aware of developments in theater beyond the Yiddish language: he drove the theater toward being a contemporary theater, rather than a mere museum of inherited plays. Elvira Groezinger compares his goals to those of New York City's Arbeter Teater Farband (ARTEF, "Workers' Theatre Society"), goals well-aligned with those of the Communist regime.

Bercovici translated works from world literature: Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Frank V (1964), Karl Gutzkow's Uriel Acosta (1968), and Henrik Ibsen's The Master Builder (1972), and wrote his own Yiddish-language plays, including Der goldener fodem ("The Golden Thread", 1963), about Abraham Goldfaden (who in 1876 founded the world's first Yiddish-language theater, in Iaşi, Romania), and the musical revue A shnirl perl ("A Pearl Necklace", 1967). He also wrote books about Yiddish theater history.

Toward the end of Bercovici's career, in Romania, as elsewhere in Europe, Yiddish was a language in decline. The State Jewish Theater coped, in part, by installing headphones throughout the theater to allow simultaneous translation of the plays into Romanian; the system is still in use when the theater performs Yiddish-language plays today.

Bercovici's 3000-volume Yiddish-language library is now part of the Universitätsbibliothek Potsdam.

Israil Bercovici claims that the Danse Macabre originated among Sephardic Jews in 14th century Spain (Bercovici, 1992, p. 27).

Works for theater

The following list is drawn from Bercovici's own history of Yiddish theater in Romania ([Bercovici 1998]). The list may be incomplete; many of Bercovici's works were musical and folkloric revues and some were reworkings of Purim plays. The music for most of Bercovici's plays was composed by Haim Schwartzmann; "The Golden Thread" also uses music by Avram Goldfaden, whom the play is about. Schwartzmann and Eugen Koffler contributed music for A Pearl Necklace and Baraşeum '72; Mangheriada used music by Schwartzmann, Koffler, Dubi Seltzer, Henech Cohn, and Simha Schwartz; a 1976 production of "The Golden Thread" credits additional music by Adalbert Winkler.

The list contains Romanian-language titles and Yiddish-language titles with Romanian phonetic transcription. Some works had only a Romanian language title; when titles in both languages are given by Bercovici, the Romanian title precedes the Yiddish. Unless otherwise noted, the date given is that of first performance by the State Jewish Theater.

Poetry

Bercovici published three major books of Yiddish poetry:

In addition, Bercovici and Nana Cassian translated into Romanian the work of Yiddish-language poet Itzik Manger. A volume of these translations was published in 1983 as Balada evreului care a ajuns de la ceneşiu la albastru ("Jewish ballads that have gone from gray to blue").

References

Further reading

See also

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