Pomul Verde, 1876: The Night Yiddish Theatre Was Born in Iași

In the summer of 1876, in an Iași beer garden called Pomul Verde — “the Green Tree” — Avraham Goldfaden’s small troupe stepped onto an improvised stage. Iași has since been called the cradle of professional Yiddish theatre, and the story of that evening is told in more than one version.

A Yiddish Poet from Ukraine

Avraham Goldfaden was born in 1840 in Starokonstantinov, Ukraine, and died in 1908 in New York. He came to Iași as a poet and songwriter in Yiddish. According to the Jewish History Museum in Bucharest (Muzeon), bookseller Isaac Librescu and his wife persuaded him to perform before an audience.

One Evening in a Garden

According to Muzeon and the Iași newspaper BZI, the performance took place on Thursday, 19 August 1876, in Șimen Mark’s garden on the main street. The programme included a satirical song, a dialogue and short plays. The troupe was small; its players included Israel Grodner and Sokher Goldstein.

Yad Vashem’s Pinkas HaKehillot tells a different version: the first plays were staged at Sukkot 5637 (autumn 1876) in a restaurant garden, and a proper stage was built at the Green Tree garden only in September 1877. Some scholars regard a later indoor show in Botoșani as the first “real” performance. On one point every source agrees: the year was 1876 and the place was Iași.

A Review by Eminescu

The day after the performance, Romania’s national poet Mihai Eminescu reviewed it in the newspaper Curierul de Iași, according to Muzeon and BZI. From here Goldfaden and his actors moved on to Bucharest and across Europe. In Iași, Yiddish theatres continued, including those of Lateiner and Horowitz at the Tivoli garden.

From State Theatre to Museum

After the Second World War, the State Jewish Theatre of Iași operated from 1949 to 1963, when its building was demolished. Since July 2021 the House of Museums (Casa Muzeelor) at Strada Vasile Alecsandri 6 has housed the Museum of the Jewish Theatre in Romania, in eleven rooms. It tells the story of Goldfaden, the Iași State Jewish Theatre and the Barașeum theatre in Bucharest.

The same building houses the Museum of the Iași Pogrom; the two can be seen in a single visit.

Visiting

House of Museums: Strada Vasile Alecsandri 6, Iași. The city also has a bust of Goldfaden and, according to Muzeon, an obelisk marking the garden site; the exact location of the historic garden was not verified in a source we opened. Travellers continuing to Bucharest can visit the State Jewish Theatre, which still operates there.