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The Witch of Botosani
 
 
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The Witch of Botosani or simply The Witch or The Sorceress (original Yiddish title Di Kishefmakhern) was an 1878, or possibly 1877, play by Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden

Abraham Goldfaden ; was an Ukraine-born Jewish poet, playwright. stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays....
. Like most of Goldfaden's major works, it was an operetta
Operetta

Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre....
.

The play was based on popular superstition; Goldfaden would later remark, "I wrote Di kishefmakhern (The Witch
The Witch of Botosani

The Witch of Botosani or simply The Witch or The Sorceress was an 1878, or possibly 1877, play by Abraham Goldfaden. Like most of Goldfaden's major works, it was an operetta....
) in Romania
Romania

Romania is a country located in Southeastern Europe Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian Mountains, bordering on the Black Sea....
, where the populace – Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
s as much as Romanians – believe strongly in witches." [Bercovici, 1998] The title role, a female character, was written to be played by a man; it was first played by Israel Grodner
Israel Grodner

Israel Grodner was one of the founding performers in Yiddish theater. A Lithuanian Jew who moved at the age of 16 to Berdichev, Ukraine, the Broder singer and actor was in Iasi, Romania in 1876 when Abraham Goldfaden recruited him as the first actor for what became the first professional Yiddish theater troupe....
.






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The Witch of Botosani or simply The Witch or The Sorceress (original Yiddish title Di Kishefmakhern) was an 1878, or possibly 1877, play by Abraham Goldfaden
Abraham Goldfaden

Abraham Goldfaden ; was an Ukraine-born Jewish poet, playwright. stage director and actor in the languages Yiddish and Hebrew, author of some 40 plays....
. Like most of Goldfaden's major works, it was an operetta
Operetta

Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre....
.

The play was based on popular superstition; Goldfaden would later remark, "I wrote Di kishefmakhern (The Witch
The Witch of Botosani

The Witch of Botosani or simply The Witch or The Sorceress was an 1878, or possibly 1877, play by Abraham Goldfaden. Like most of Goldfaden's major works, it was an operetta....
) in Romania
Romania

Romania is a country located in Southeastern Europe Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian Mountains, bordering on the Black Sea....
, where the populace – Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
s as much as Romanians – believe strongly in witches." [Bercovici, 1998] The title role, a female character, was written to be played by a man; it was first played by Israel Grodner
Israel Grodner

Israel Grodner was one of the founding performers in Yiddish theater. A Lithuanian Jew who moved at the age of 16 to Berdichev, Ukraine, the Broder singer and actor was in Iasi, Romania in 1876 when Abraham Goldfaden recruited him as the first actor for what became the first professional Yiddish theater troupe....
. The play survived into a far different era of Yiddish theater: Maurice Schwartz
Maurice Schwartz

Maurice Schwartz was a star actor of the Yiddish theater in the United States and later Israel.Schwartz was born in Ukraine and moved to the United States in 1902....
 played it at New York City
New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
's Yiddish Art Theater in 1925. [Adler, 1999, 107 (commentary)]

Jacob Adler
Jacob Adler

Jacob Adler may refer to:* Jacob Pavlovich Adler , Russo/Ukrainian-American actor; star of New York Yiddish theater; progenitor of show-business family...
 made his 1878 stage debut in the role of the lover Marcus, in a production in Kherson
Kherson

Kherson is a city in southern Ukraine. It is the Capital city of the Kherson Oblast , and is designated as its own separate raion within the oblast....
, Ukraine
Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east; Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and Sea of Azov to the south....
, in which Israel Rosenberg
Israel Rosenberg

Israel Rosenberg founded the first Yiddish theater troupe in Imperial Russia.A personable "hole-and-corner lawyer" and swindler in Odessa, Rosenberg was part of the migration of merchants and middlemen to Bucharest, Romania at the start of the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78 in 1887....
 played the title role. [Adler, 1999, 107]