AVROM-ALTER (ABRAHAM) FISHZON

AVROM-ALTER (ABRAHAM) FISHZON (1843/1848-January 15, 1922)

            He was born in Berdichev, Ukraine.  He received a fiercely religious education, and he evinced a great love from childhood for song and theater.  He became acquainted with Avrom Goldfaden and A. B. Gotlober, and this led to his fleeing home at age seventeen for Zhitomir.  He wrote songs and miniatures of the wedding entertainment variety for Jewish folksingers in the wine cellars.  He became popular under the name “Alter Badkhn” (Alter, the wedding entertainer) and was an actor and author of comedies and dramas.  He earned a great deal of money and persuaded the Tsarist authorities to give its permission to conduct theater in Yiddish (and not in highly Germanized Yiddish).  From about 1874 until 1917, he directed a Yiddish theatrical troupe in Russia, Galicia, and elsewhere.  He himself played in both the old Goldfaden repertoire and in “Milye repertoire,” and he especially excelled as a comedic actor.  His songs were sung among the wide Yiddish-speaking masses.  The first songs were published in the Goldfaden-Linietski weekly newspaper Yisroelik (Yisroelik) in Lemberg (1875-1876).  Some of them are included in the collections: Der nayer zinger (The new singer), ten songs (Warsaw, 1884), 24 pp., published in a number of editions, the last in Vilna in 1909; Der nayer meshugener (The new madman), a collection of Yiddish folksongs (Warsaw, 1885), 24 pp.; Naye tsvantsik yidishe folkslider (Twenty new Yiddish folksongs), written with the harmony of musical accompaniment, “text and song by the well-known artist A. Fishzon” (Warsaw, 1903), 76 pp.  He also wrote: Dos lid fun emes (The song of truth), written in thanks for the defense in the Beilis trial (Odessa, 1913), 8 pp.  His memoirs concerning the Yiddish theater, entitled “Ksovim fun a yidishn aktyor” (Writings of a Yiddish actor), were published in Russian in Teatr i iskusstvo (Theater and art) and in Sibir-palestina (Siberia-Palestine), a weekly out of Harbin, as well as in Shoyel Hokhberg’s Unzer lebn (Our life) in Odessa—and serially republished in Yidish teater (Yiddish theater) (Warsaw) 5-6 (1922)—and they have enormous value for research into the history of the Yiddish stage.  After his death his memoirs were published in installments under the title “30 yor idish teater” (Thirty years of Yiddish theater) in Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal) (New York) (1924-1926).  During the civil war in Russia, he departed for Siberia with the intention of traveling to the United States.  He turned up in Shanghai and later in Harbin where he died.

Fishzon’s funeral in Harbin (January 1922)

Sources: Zalmen Reyzen, Leksikon, vol. 3, with a bibliography; Froym Oyerbakh, in Di tsayt (New York) (February 25, 1922); Y. D. Berkovitsh, in Forverts (New York) (Augist 23, 1931).

Khayim Leyb Fuks