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THE GOLD DIGGERS1,
by Sholom Aleichem
(Yiddish: Di goldgreber)
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"The Gold Diggers" is a
comedy in four acts by Sholom
Aleichem, which opened at the
Yiddish Art Theatre, 12th Street and
Second Avenue on 18 November 1927. It
was adapted for the stage by I. D.
Berkowitz, and was directed by
Maurice Schwartz, with music by
Herman Zaretzky.
“The
present play is a dramatization of a
famous story by Sholom Aleichem (pen
name of the late Sholom Rabinowitz),
wherein that prince of Jewish
humorists paints a marvelously
lifelike picture of Jewish life in
pre-war Russia. It is the story of a
whole community gone mad over an old
wives’ tale and finally restored to
its senses by the shrewdness, nerve,
and horse sense of an American Jew
who opportunely comes to visit his
native town. From this comedy of
errors, superstition and greed, with
its tragic overtones, the genius of
Sholom Aleichem extracts the last
drop of humor mingled with pathos.
The stage version is the work of
Sholom Aleichem’s gifted son-in-law,
I. D. Berkowitz, himself a writer of
note."1 |
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photo:
Maurice Schwartz, as Levi Mosgovoyer. |
Here is the
synopsis for the play. The name of the actor or
actress who played a particular part is
indicated in parentheses:
SYNOPSIS
ACT ONE
Itzik (Benny
Mazbin), the small son of Iddel Torba (Jechiel
Goldsmiith), a tight-fisted money changer and
widower, finds a gold coin in the Jewish
cemetery. This revives all old local legend that
Napoleon, while en route to Moscow with his
army, buried thirteen barrels filled with gold
coins in the old Jewish cemetery. The prospect
of riches sets the whole community agog. Some of
the people invade the cemetery in quest of the
treasure; others besiege Iddel's house and
vainly plead with him to permit his boy to
reveal the exact spot where the gold coin was
found; while still others, the most vocal of
all, entrench themselves at the home of the
town's leading Jew, Levi Mosgovoyer (Maurice
Schwartz), who is away on a visit to the steward
Wloclawski (Abraham Teitelbaum). Levi, who knows
nothing of the find which has turned the
community topsy-turvy during his absence,
returns to find his house invaded. He explains
that he went to the steward in an effort to save
the old cemetery, where his forebears and other
notables are buried; for Wloclawski had told him
that unless the Jewish community paid the
overdue rent for the cemetery, amounting to
thirteen hundred gulden, the nobleman's estate,
which owned the site, would sell it to the
Government, which wanted the land in order to
lay railroad tracks across it. But the mob
leaders, who scent a plot, do not believe. Levi
and take matters in their own hands. They fetch
Iddel, who has been an unsuccessful suitor for
the hand of Levi's only child, the fair Esther
(Berta Gerstin); and Iddel, prompted by the wily
marriage broker Sholom Shadchan (Jacob
Goldstein), declares his readiness to come to
terms with the community about the treasure
provided Levi would give him his daughter in
marriage. Levi scorns the proposal. Wloclawski
arrives and claims a share in the treasure on
the grounds that it was found on land belonging
to the nobleman's estate. He is followed by
Holoveshka (Wolf Goldfaden), a renegade Jew and
the town's lone policeman, who demands a share
on the ground that all treasures found belong to
the Government. Both claims are reluctantly
granted. A woman forces her way into the house
and claims the found gold coin as her own, but
is treated as a lunatic and thrown out. The
weight of all present is now brought to bear
upon Levi to get him to consent to the match
between his daughter and Iddel. In the hope that
the treasure would make it possible to save the
cemetery, and seeing in it the hand of God, Levi
yields to their pleas, and the betrothal takes
place right there and then. At this point the
door is flung open and there enters Benny Ben
(Lazar Freed), Levi's young and wealthy nephew
from America, come to visit his native town and
also to find a suitable bride, as he stated in a
letter received that very day. At the sight of
her handsome and dashing cousin, Esther falls
into a faint.
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ACT TWO
Though this is
only his second day in town, Benny is already
smitten with Esther, as she is with hi, to the
great annoyance of Iddel Torba, Esther's
betrothed. Also, Benny's lavish
gifts to all and sundry give rise to a rumor
that he found a treasure in America, which he is
too amused to deny.
While he and his
uncle Levi are engaged in a conversation about
America, Elka (Anna Appel), the woman who was
thrown out as a lunatic the day before, enters
and insists on telling her story which the mob
did not permit her to tell yesterday.
She is the window
of a goldsmith who used to buy and melt gold
coins, and who upon his death bequeathed to her
one of them, which together with her other money
she kept in her stocking. The other day she
visited her husband's grave -- this being the
time of the year when people do so -- and had
the cantor chant the memorial prayer over her
departed spouse.
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photo: Wolf Goldfaden, as Holoveska. |
In stooping to
draw some money from her "bank" in order to pay
the cantor, she dropped the gold coin, though
she did not discover her loss until the
following day; and it is the finding of this
coin which has given rise to all the wild rumors
about the hidden gold in the cemetery. She now
implores Levi to help her recover the gold coin,
which represents her whole fortune. Levi accuses
her of acting as the tool of Iddel Torba, who
would like to throw the community off the scent
and so come into sole possession of the hidden
gold; but Benny sees in it the true explanation
of the madness which has seized the whole town.
Accordingly he decides upon a drastic method
with which to cure the people of their delusion,
-- as well as to break Esther's engagement to
Iddel -- and engages Holoveshka and Sholom
Shadchan as his accomplices. Of course, he takes
Esther into the secret.
ACT THREE
Saturday night.
Laborers are making excavations near the
adjoining tombs of Levi's father and the old
rabbi, that being the spot which Iddel says was
revealed to him in a dream. The townspeople
watch these operations impatiently, while the
suspicious steward bobs up every now and then.
By a clever ruse Sholom Shadchan and Benny (the
latter hidden behind the cemetery fence) lure
the people away from the spot. Presently Sholom
Shadchan returns, accompanied only by Levi.
Suddenly a voice from his father's tomb informs
Levi that the secret of the treasure is in the
possession of his nephew, who is a saint in
disguise, and that he should go home and to bed
and wait till his nephew rises the next day,
when the latter will reveal the secret to him.
Trembling all over, Levi hastens home, whereupon
Sholom Shadchan fetches Iddel. The latter is
startled to hear a voice from the old rabbi's
tomb enjoin him to break his engagement with
Esther and to marry his true match, Elka who is
a saint in disguise, and who holds the real key
to the treasure. When the voice grows still,
Sholom summons all the people and repeats to
them what the voice from the old rabbi's tomb
has said, whereupon the multitude seize Elka and
carry the bewildered woman in triumph. They
march off to the house of the local rabbi to
inform him of the startling developments.
ACT FOUR
After Iddel Torba
publicly breaks his engagement with Esther,
Benny makes known his ruse. The people, and most
of all his uncle, are indignant at thus having
been made fools of, and when Esther comes to his
defense Levi orders her and his nephew out of
the house. Unabashed, Benny proceeds to treat
the multitude to a bit of American horse sense;
in America, he says, we find treasures not by
embarking upon a wild- goose chase, but by
engaging in commerce and industry. He mollifies
them further by producing a telegram from the
local nobleman, wherein the latter assures him
he never had intention of selling the site of
the old cemetery which his ancestors had given
to the Jews, and from which it appears that all
this talk of selling the old cemetery was
nothing but a scheme on the part of the
rapacious steward to extort money from the
Jewish community. Finally, Benny wins them over
completely by announcing a gift of thirteen
hundred gulden to the community.
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