YOYSEF
(JOSEPH) LATEINER (December 25, 1853-February 23, 1935)
His true family name was
Finkelshteyn, born in Jassy (Iași), Romania. His father was a tailor, an immigrant from
Russia, and his mother was born in Romania.
He studied in religious primary schools and the yeshiva of Rabbi
Yekhiel-Mikhl in Jassy. He was to become
a rabbi, but he was early on entranced by the Jewish Enlightenment, studied
Tanakh with Mendelssohn’s commentary, read Enlightenment literature, turned his
attention toward secular education, and acquired a reputation as a
“heretic.” The writer and scholar Matisyahu-Simkhe
Rabiner became acquainted with the young follower of the Jewish Enlightenment
and taught him in his home Hebrew, German, and French. Under the influence of Avrom Goldfaden’s
theater, there was awakened in Lateiner an interest in the stage, and following
a specimen of Goldfaden’s operetta “Di bobe mitn eynikl” (The grandmother with
the grandchild), which was staged in Jassy in 1877, he wrote (around 1879) his
first theatrical piece, Di tsvey shmuel
shmelkes (The two Shmuel Shmelkes), a comedy in four acts, adapted from the
German play Nathan Schlemiel (Nathan the fool); Goldfaden later used Lateiner’s play for
his own well-known work, Di tsvey kuni
lemels (The two Kuni Lemels).[1] For this play, Lateiner received twelve
francs and tickets to the theater which he also turned into money—they sold for
nine francs. When the cofounder of the
Yiddish theater, Yisroel Grodner, parted ways with Goldfaden and put together
in Jassy his own troupe—with Mogulesco playing lead roles—Lateiner became the
prompter and wrote for the troupe the theatrical piece Lumpatsius vagabundus, which he translated from Romanian, and Di libe fun yerushlayim (Love from
Jerusalem), an adaptation of Mapu’s Ahavat
tsiyon (Love of Zion), which according to its contents was close to
Goldfaden’s Shulamis. In order that he not be a competitor, Goldfaden
brought him into his troupe, but because Goldfaden refused to stage his plays,
Lateiner left the troupe. After the
Russo-Turkish peace, when Goldfaden took his theater company to Odessa and
played with great success, the troupe of Lateiner and Mogulesco also left for
Odessa, and staged there, in addition to Di
tsvey shmuel shmelkes, also Yente di pipernoterin (Yente the monster) and Der dibek (The dybbuk). Because of the ban on Yiddish theater in
Tsarist Russia, these troupes set out wandering throughout the world, and with
one such wandering troupe, in 1883 Lateiner went through London and made his
way to the United States, settled in New York, stitched pants for a time in a
sweatshop, but soon became involved with the Yiddish theater and became the
first professional writer for the Yiddish theater in the New World. His first works in America were Ester un homen (Esther and Haman) and Yoysef un zayne brider (Joseph and his
brother) (1885). Shortly after this, in
1886, he wrote a play about life in America, entitled Di emigratsye nokh amerike (Emigration to America), but it had no
success. At that time there loomed a
competitor for Lateiner, the playwright from another troupe in New York, Moyshe
Hurvits. Yiddish theaters performed with
considerable material success, constantly requiring new plays to put on, and
Lateiner in his hunt with Hurvits for new material pieced together plays from
other languages. Many times he merely
changed the title of the work, gave the Gentile heroes Jewish names, and
inserted comical bits, songs, and couplets.
Lateiner wrote over eighty such plays.
“Lateiner did not have the talent,” wrote B. Gorin, “to portray
characters, and he was not blessed with an eye that could look into a person’s
heart…. He was no more than a craftsman
for the stage, and he understood how to craft a play.” Lists of Lateiner’s plays can be found in
Bernard Gorin’s Di geshikhte fun
yidishn teater (The history of the Yiddish theater), Zalmen Reyzen’s Leksikon, and mainly in volume 2 of Zalmen
Tilbertsvayg’s Lekskon fun yidishn teater,
where one may find a full listing of his writings from the beginning of his
career through 1930. A number of his
plays were adapted by actors, directors, and playwrights, and even more perversely,
because of Lateiner’s popularity, they placed his name on their theatrical
works. Many of his plays were staged for
years, aside from in the United States, in Yiddish theaters in various
countries of Europe, mostly by wandering troupes. The most popular of his plays were: Khinke pinke (Khinke Pinke), Dos yidishe harts (The Jewish heart), Sore sheyndl (Fair Sarah), Khurbn-yerushlayim (The ruins of
Jerusalem), Yoysef in egyptn (Joseph
in Egypt), Shlyomke un rikl (Slyomke
and Rikl), Aliles-dam (Blood libel), Ishe roe (Wicked woman), Dovids fidele (David’s fiddle), Al nahares bovl (By the rivers of
Babylon), Di seyder-nakht (The seder
night), and Der man untern tish (The
man under the table). These works were also
performed by dozens of drama circles in the towns of Poland between the two
world wars. In the last year of his life,
the once so famous Joseph Lateiner was ejected from the establishment of a
modern, artistic theatrical repertoire in Yiddish. His plays were performed only on a few
occasions. Virtually forgotten, he died
in poverty with his relatives in New York.
The Theatrical Alliance handled the arrangements for this funeral.
Sources:
Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 2 (with
a bibliography); Zalmen Zilbertsvayg, Leksikon fun yidishn teater (Handbook of the Yiddish
theater), vol. 2 (New York, 1934), with a bibliography; Bernard Gorin, Di geshikhte fun yidishn teater (The
history of the Yiddish theater), vol. 2 (New York, 1918), pp. 73ff; L. Kobrin, Erinerungen fun a yidishn dramaturg (Remembrances of a Jewish playwright), vol. 1 (New York,
1925); Y. Entin, in Tog (New York)
(June 18, 1932); N. B. Linder, in Tog
(February 24, 1935); P. Vyernik, in Morgn-zhurnal
(New York) (February 25, 1935); Dr. A. Mukdoni, in Morgn-zhurnal (March 1, 1935); Mukdoni, Yorbukh fun amopteyl fun
yivo (Annual from the American branch of YIVO), vol.
1 (New York, 1938); Mukdoni, In varshe un
in lodzh (In Warsaw and in Lodz), vol. 2 (Buenos Aires, 1955); Algemeyne entsiklopedye (General
encyclopedia), “Yidn 2” (Paris, 1940); Sh. Perlmuter, in Tog (February 28, 1935); Perlmuter, Yidishe dramaturgn un
teater-kompozitorn (Yiddish playwrights and theatrical composers) (New
York, 1952), pp. 61-65; Y. Mestl, 70 yor teater-repertuar (Seventy years
of theater repertoire) (New York, 1954); The
Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 7; The
Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. 6; S. Wininger, Grosse Jüdische National Biographie (Great Jewish national
biography), vol. 3 (Czernowitz, 1931).
Zaynvl Diamant
[1] According to Ben-Tsien Ayzenshtadt, Ḥakhame yisrael beamerika (Wise men of Israel in America) (New York, 1903), Lateiner’s
first play was called Der fanatizmus
(Fanaticism); according to B. Gariner, his first theatrical work was Yente di pipernoterin (Yente the
monster); but Lateiner himself submits in his autobiography that Di tsvey shmuel shmelkes was his first
stage work.
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