2. The arguable exception, depending upon one's definitions of Yiddish theatre, was Jacob Adler's mixed English-Yiddish production of The Merchant of Venice (1903, 1905), at a time when downtown/uptown distinctions had not yet fully emerged. For a comparison of Adler and Schildkraut's interpretations of Shylock. see Berkowitz, Joel, “Three Yiddish Shylocks,” Theatre Survey 37, no. 1 (May 1996): 75–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. A more correct transliteration would be “Yankel Chapchovich,” but the Isaac Goldberg translation, which was used in the 1923 production, has him as “Yekel.” All subsequent character names and quotations from the play come from Asch, The God of Vengeance, trans. Goldberg, (Boston: The Stratford Company, 1918)Google Scholar. A more readily available and literal (though less stageworthy) translation is by Landis, Joseph, Three Great Jewish Plays (New York: Applause Theatre Publishers, 1986)Google Scholar. For those seeking a contemporary stageworthy text, I recommend Amy Levinson's unpublished translation, which we used at the University of Massachusetts in November 1996. The noted playwright Donald Margulies is also currently working on an adaptation (scheduled but dropped from the Long Wharf Theatre's 1996–97 season). The literal translation which Margulies is using, by the accomplished translator Joachim Neugroschel, appears in the Winter 1996 Pakn-Treger, the publication of the National Yiddish Book Center. Neugroschel's work is stageworthy in its own right.

4. Skloot, Robert, in his pithy and perceptive “Speaking to Our Dust: Directing Asch's God of Vengeance,” Yiddish 5, no. 1 (1982): 22–34Google Scholar, asserts that the play played to sell-out crowds through April. However, receipts in Weinberger's papers show a sharp drop in revenue. The point is important; some activists refused to support Weinberger, saying that he had profited from the scandal. The facts do not bear out this assumption. The receipts are in the Harry Weinberger Collection, Boxes 23–26, in the Manuscripts and Archives Section of Yale University's Sterling Library. All subsequent citations to Weinberger papers and correspondence are found in these boxes, unless otherwise specified.

5. See the first chapter of Curtin, Kaier, “We Can Always Call Them Bulgarians:” The Emergence of Lesbians and Gay Men on the American Stage (Boston: Alyson, 1987)Google Scholar.

6. Weinberger's assertion is supported by Laufe's, Abe sketchy The Wicked Stage: A History of Theatre Censorship and Harassment in the United States (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1978)Google Scholar. Folklore about the case has the entire cast spending a night in jail following the indictment, but I have no found independent confirmation of this story in the Weinberger papers. For an engaging if somewhat sketchy personal reminiscence of the controversy, see Schildkraut, Joseph, My Father and I (New York: Viking Press, 1959): 180–183Google Scholar.

7. This recent attention to God of Vengeance and the obscenity case includes not only our 1996 production at the University of Massachusetts but Solomon's, AlisaRe-Dressing the Canon: Essays on Theatre and Gender (New York: Routledge, 1997), 111–119Google Scholar, as well as Rebecca Taichman, Rebecca Rugg, and Brian W. Robinson's adaptation entitled The People vs. The God of Vengeance 1923, which debuted at Yale University in December, 1997 and is currently in development Recently, Joseph Chaikin has directed the play in Atlanta (Fall 1998), while Target Margin has done a staged reading in New York (December, 1998). Solomon succinctly demonstrates how Asch's play transgresses Jewish tradition so as to potentially “queer” the Yiddish canon. Taichman and her collaborators stage the courtroom as a site of patriarchal authority, as prosecutors and defense attorneys spar over differently imagined performances of the lesbian scenes. Taichman's powerful work, and our ongoing sharing of ideas, have helped to inspire my final revisions of this paper.

8. For more on this rancorous dispute, see Weinberger's correspondence with Roger Baldwin.

9. I address these questions of Jewish-American performance in my Staging the Jew: The Performance of an American Ethnicity: 1860–1920 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

10. McConachie, Bruce, “Cultural Systems and the Nation-State: Paradigms for Writing National Theatre History,” New England Theatre Review 8 (1997): 30Google Scholar.

11. In formulating this thesis, I am greatly indebted to Skloot, who has acknowledged this rift within the Jewish community. The issue is also thoughtfully highlighted in Szajkowski, Zosa, Jews, Wars, and Communism, (New York: Ktav Publishing, 1974) 2:143–147Google Scholar. However, both of these authors deal with the controversy only briefly, in the context of other concerns. Binyomin Weiner, in his lively introduction to Neugroschel's translation, also lays out the behind-the-scenes dynamics, particularly Silverman's role, in a compelling way. See “Judging Vengeance,” Pakn-Treger 23 (Winter 1996): 10–15Google Scholar.

12. Weinberger (1886–1944) was also the attorney for Eugene O'Neill during his famous 1931 plagiarism case, as well as an occasional producer of O'Neill's plays. His feisty personality and fierce commitment to justice sometimes alienated even his allies. “I have never in life been picked on as an easy mark or a pushover, though I am only 5 feet 4 1/2 inches tall…” he wrote in 1942. “It must have appeared to people who knew me through the years that I would rather fight than eat” See “A Rebel's Interrupted Autobiography,” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 21 (October 1942): 113Google Scholar. His obituary is in New York Times, 6 March 1944.

13. Asch's stage directions are somewhat ambiguous as to whether a multi-level set is required, so as to depict the upstairs and downstairs simultaneously. In my opinion, a close reading of the stage directions and consideration of the play's structure and staging history make it clear that Asch did not intend such a set.

14. See Solomon for a closer reading of the way the play invokes and subverts aspects of Jewish tradition.

15. Recounted in Weiner, 14, based upon Asch's recollections in Di Goldene Keyt. For an overview of the play's composition and early history, see Siegel, Ben, The Controversial Sholem Asch: An Introduction to His Fiction (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1976): 35–39Google Scholar.

16. Davies, Mary Carolyn, “Yiddish Plays,” The Nation, 24 August 1918, 210Google Scholar.

17. Smertenko, Johan J., “Sholom Asch,” The Nation, 14 February 1923, 181Google Scholar.

18. I am not arguing that God of Vengeance is a conventional morality play. My reading of the text, as shaped by Levinson and Tichler in our production, was that it indeed created a space for a redemptive love affair between the two young women, in contrast to the brutality that surrounds them. I want to acknowledge the fine performances by Niae Knight (Rivkele) and Pamela Wroblewski (Manke).

19. In Opinions of Frank Crane and Other Prominent Men and Women, New York, 1923Google Scholar, in Sholem Asch papers, Beinecke Rare Book Depository, Yale University.

20. This script is located in the Sholem Asch papers, Box 9, Folder 99. The issue of who was responsible for staging the Apollo production is complicated; I hesitate to assign too much artistic agency to Weinberger. Certainly, the production had no single “director” in the contemporary sense. Contractual papers in the Weinberger Collection make clear that it was Schildkraut who, having played the piece for years, was legally responsible for the basic staging and business; it was his vehicle, and he was therefore expected to guide the other actors. However, correspondence between Weinberger and Kauser makes clear that the handling of key moments, especially the lesbian scenes, was done with the direct intervention of Weinberger (who takes responsibly for doing so, in response to Kauser's accusation that he had exploited the love scene unnecessarily). Asch seems to have stayed somewhat aloof from this particular production, though he was living in Staten Island through early 1923; his main documented intercession was over a monetary dispute with Weinberger.

21. Again, Taichman and her collaborators' adaptation hinges on this crucial distinction, to great theatrical effect.

22. Transcript, People v. Weinberger, 396.

23. Weinberger to Kenneth Macgowan, 12 January 1923.

24. John Haynes Holmes to Weinberger, 23 May 1923.

25. Cited in Szajkowski, 141.

26. Transcript, People v. Weinberger, 72.

27. Undated clipping in Asch file at Beinecke.

28. New York Times, 24 May 1923.

29. Transcript of Judge's Charge to Jury, People v. Weinberger.

30. New York Times, 24 May 1923.

31. “Statement of Harry Weinberger After Sentence,” undated (May, 1923?).

32. “Statement of Weinberger.”

33. Weinberger to David Belasco, 14 April 1923.

34. Weinberger to Arthur Brisbane, 29 March 1923.

35. Weinberger to Heywood Broun, 25 May 1923. For an account of Silverman's role as chief witness, as well as the press' handling of Silverman's role in it, see Weiner, 13–15.

36. L. T. Perls to Weinberger, 24 January 1923.

37. Gladstone to Weinberger, 2 March 1923.

38. Joseph Proskauer to Judge Crain, 20 March 1923.

39. The uptown/downtown dichotomy has been discussed in numerous sources. For an interesting account of attempts to link the communities, see Goren, Arthur, New York Jews and the Quest for Community: The Kehilah Experiment, 1908–1922 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

40. I do not want to facilely construct hegemony within the downtown Yiddish world. Most Jewish immigrant workers were not radical; most Yiddish theatre was not transgressive. In fact, similar conflicts over the morality of performances took place regularly within the Yiddish press, where, in a twist on the God of Vengeance controversy, Americanization was located as the source of licentiousness. See Warnke, Nina, “Immigrant Popular Culture as Contested Sphere: Yiddish Music Halls, the Yiddish Press, and the Processes of Americanization, 1900–1910,” Theatre Journal 48, no. 3 (October 1996): 321–335CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Whether Jewish audiences would have been more tolerant of a lesbian relationship onstage is a complex question. Certainly, traditional Jewish teaching tended to make invisible and/or pathologize relations between women, while placing them in a different category than male homosexuality. See Sarah, Elizabeth, “Judaism and Lesbianism: A Tale of Life on the Margins of the Text,” Jewish Explorations of Sexuality, ed. Magonet, Jonathan (Providence: Berghahn Books, 1995): 95–101Google Scholar.

41. Silverman, for example, was one of the creators of that prototypical instrument of Reform worship, the Union Prayer Book. He also founded a Reform, English-language religious brotherhood to appeal to young immigrants on New York's Lower East Side, while strenuously resisting community efforts to create similar Orthodox outreach societies. See Gurock, Jeffery S., “Consensus Building and Conflict over Creating the Young People's Synagogue of the Lower East Side,” The Americanization of the Jews, eds. Seltzer, Robert M. and Cohen, Norman J. (New York: New York University press, 1995): 232–234Google Scholar. There is a useful entry on Silverman in Dictionary of American Biography (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935)Google Scholar.

42. Siegel, 40.

43. Weinberger to Rudolf Schildkraut, 10 February 1923.

44. Asch to Weinberger, 19 February 1923.

45. For more on emerging Jewish audiences, see my Staging the Jew, 70–71, 87–89.

46. Gladstone to Weinberger, 2 March 1923.

47. Throughout his correspondence, for example, Weinberger compares Asch's play to such canonical pieces as Oedipus Rex and The Scarlet Letter.

48. See Weinberger's correspondence to Menken, where he considers the impact of the Jewish judge who would hear the appeal.

49. Silverman was conspicuously public in denouncing the Klan, even publishing an article alongside W.E.B. DuBois. See “The Ku Klux Klan: A Paradox,” North American Review 223, no. 2 (June-August 1926): 282–329Google Scholar.

50. There are a number of histories of the period's antisemitism; my overview here comes largely from Dinnerstein, Leonard, Antisemitism in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994): 78–104Google Scholar.

51. New York Times, 22 March 1923.

52. These surveys are cited in Lee, Albert, Henry Ford and the Jew (New York: Stein and Day, 1980): 3Google Scholar.

53. Gladstone to Weinberger, 2 March 1923.

54. See my Staging the Jew, 93–101.

55. “Jewish Control of the American Theatre,” Jewish Activities in the United States: Volume II of “The International Jew” (Dearborn, MI, c. 1921): 92–94Google Scholar.

56. On the performance of racialism, see my Staging the Jew, 122–133.

57. In the United States, as the Progressive era reconstructed the Victorian notion of prostitution into a moral problem rather than a necessary evil, a broad coalition of interests agitated successfully for the closing down of many urban vice districts which had previously been tolerated, even encouraged, through various forms of police corruption and consent. As to the question of to what extent “white slavery” actually existed, the consensus until recently has been that it was largely the construction of the moment. Recent feminist scholarship, however, has argued that coercion and abduction into prostitution did in fact exist (and continues to exist), accounting at one time for perhaps close to 10% of all prostitution. For excellent consideration of all these issues, see Rosen, Ruth, The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America, 1900–1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982): xi, 30, 47 133–135Google Scholar.

58. Bristow, Edward J., Prostitution and Prejudice: The Jewish Fight Against White Slaver, 1870–1939 (New York: Schocken Book, 1983): 4Google Scholar. Bristow is the definitive work on Jewish associations with and response to white slavery, and I am indebted to him throughout this article. On Jewish associations with Russian prostitution, see Bernstein's, Laura excellent Sonia's Daughters: Prostitutes and Their Regulation in Imperial Russia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995): 163–164Google Scholar. The classic scripting of the Jew as predator upon both gentile purse and flesh is of course Shylock.

59. Rosen, 114.

60. Cited in Bristow, 84.

61. See Bernstein, 164, and Bristow, 101–110, on the relationship between the image and the reality of Jewish involvement in prostitution.

62. See Bristow, 58–63, for a specific account of the riots and their causes.

63. On associations between prostitution and lesbianism in Russia, see Bernstein, 172–175. On The Pit, see Engelstein, Laura, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992): 290, 293, 308Google Scholar.

64. Engelstein, 307.

65. “Preface,” Aspects of Jewish Power in the United States: Volume IV of the International Jew (Dearborn, Michigan, 1922?): 4Google Scholar.

66. Dinnerstein, 103.