Israel Rosenberg

Who is 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 in 1887. These merchants and middlemen would prove a crucial component of the audience for the nascent professional Yiddish-language theater, consisting at that time only of a single troupe, that of Abraham Goldfaden. Unlike the rest of the migrants, Rosenberg actually joined the troupe and became an actor.

Like many who worked with Goldfaden, he soon chafed under the latter's imperious style and with his countryman Jacob Spivakovsky, put together his own travelling troupe and set out for the eastern part of Romania. At first they did well, but with the end of the war much of their audience returned to Russia; after running through their money playing in the provinces, they turned up nearly broke in Odessa, where there was a pre-made audience of those who had already seen Yiddish theater in Romania during the recent war.