Free Stardust Lost: The Triumph, Tragedy, and Meshugas of the Yiddish Theater in America by Stefan Kanfer

discounted, the other half remained! And one sign we had that erased every doubt: Of all the actors that had gone to America, none had returned.”
    It was said that a Yiddish troupe was doing business in New York. With what results, no one seemed to know. Letters were sparse, rumors constant. And, Jacob asked his actors, if they did agree to go to the States, how would they find the money? A Yiddish proverb came to mind:
Got vet helfn. Vi helf nor God biz Got vet helfn—God will provide. If only He would provide until He provides.
First Jacob scrounged around London, pleading for a handout; when nothing came of that he announced a farewell performance with high-priced tickets. There was no advance sale. Only one court of appeal was left: Rabbi Adler.
    “On that occasion,” Jacob noted, “the old man was surprisingly cordial.” The reason for the warm response was not hard to discern. “From my first words the Rabbi grasped the all-important fact: I was taking myself and my theater out of London.” To get rid of this interloping Yiddishist, the rabbi was willing to dole out £Â30. The gift amounted to about $150 in American money—not a very generous donation, but enough to take Jacob Adler across the Atlantic, in the company of his son, Abraham (the new Mrs. Adler would stay in London until Jacobestablished a theater and a home), four performers, and a musical director.
    Jacob had heard “confused, uncertain rumors” about Chicago, but they were enough to give him heart. He went down to the waterfront and bought space in steerage at $35 per person. Following the purchase, he wrote letters to a handful of Yiddish actors whose addresses he had in New York City. Early in 1888, along with hundreds of others—Jews, Italians, Slovaks—the little company walked up the gangplank and made ready for a three-week voyage.
    The conditions don't have to be imagined; there are plenty of accounts by passengers who made the trip during that period. “Crowds everywhere,” wrote one, “ill-smelling bunks, uninviting washrooms— this is steerage. The odors of scattered orange peelings, tobacco, garlic and disinfectants meeting but not blending. On many ships even drinking water is grudgingly given. We literally had to steal water for the steerage from the second cabin and that of course at night. The bread was absolutely unbearable, and was thrown into the water by the irate emigrants.”
    Another remembered moving from his tiny shelf-bed “with the greatest of caution because I didn't want to be hit with the contents of the stomach being steadily disgorged by my upper neighbor. When I got up and walked by the women's quarters I heard more screaming. Other men were up to help the sick. In a little while our whole stateroom was filled with sick and ‘nurses.’ There was a running to the sailors for water and to the doctor for help and medicine. Instead of water and medicine we received a bawling out for having disturbed their sleep.”
    Jacob and his colleagues came through the trip thinner and grimmer. Their spirits did not rise until they entered New York Harbor. Ellis Island was only an architect's plan at that time; Adler and company cleared customs in Castle Garden, a drab, hexagonal building in Battery Park, the southernmost part of Manhattan. They sat on the grass outside, waiting for someone, anyone to come down and greet them with a simple
sholem aleichem.
Not one person appeared. “The loneliness! God, what loneliness!” Adler lamented. “They probably feared that with our coming their poor little fishpond on the Bowery would grow even more crowded and muddy.” That settled it. He and his colleagues would not spend a single night here. The hell with New York. There was just enough money to take them to Chicago. They caught the train that night.

iii
    IN THE GREAT EAGLE'S Ptolemaic worldview, everything centered on Jacob Adler. If people from New York's Yiddish Theater failed to meet the boat, it could only be