In 1917, a group of Jewish actors left Vilna (now Vilnius) for Warsaw, where they began performing Yiddish plays, calling themselves the “Vilna Troupe.” The group later splintered, creating a de-facto franchise that became both popular and influential on the Yiddish stage in Europe, the U.S., and elsewhere during the 1920s, and introducing highbrow sensibilities without alienating audiences. Reviewing a recent book on the subject by Debra Caplan, Mayhill Fowler writes:

In the early 20th century, . . . the Jewish intellectual elite began to clamor for the creation of Yiddish high culture, and, in particular, Yiddish-language theater that would offer a high-quality product far from the melodramatic shund [low-brow, “trashy” fare] so popular with audiences. Despite the failure of famous Yiddish writers like I.L. Peretz to write engaging plays, theater companies like those of Avrom Kaminski and Peretz Hirschbein remained committed to figuring out how to bridge quality and entertainment. . . .

A “chance wartime encounter between refugees and starving locals” in Vilna, [as Caplan puts it], brought together amateur teenagers to play at acting. They had read about the celebrated Moscow Art Theater in magazines and wanted to work on Yiddish theater [while imitating its new, hyper-realistic style], and they founded the Farayn fun Yidishe Dramatishe Artistn (Union of Jewish Dramatists). In 1915 Vilna fell under German occupation, and the Germans, unlike the Russians, allowed the youngsters to perform in Yiddish. Thus war created the conditions for this breakthrough in Yiddish theater. The group became the “Vilna Troupe” later, only after they had left Vilna for Warsaw in 1917 and then dispersed across the globe.

Its first dispersion was the result of a romantic scandal as the troupe split into two when the lovers Alexander Asro and Sonia Alomis split with [the director] Mordechai Mazo. This rupture did not end the Vilna Troupe, though; it only improved its reputation, because a “Vilna Troupe” could now be in multiple places at once. . . . These troupes performed a European repertory including Leo Tolstoy’s The Power of Darkness and [the turn-of-the-century Russian playwright] Evgenii Chirikov’s The Jews, as well as Yiddish plays by Sholem Asch, Peretz Hirschbein, and Jacob Gordin. . . .

The Vilna Troupe brought the American playwright Eugene O’Neill to Polish theater with Mazo’s 1928 production of Desire Under the Elms. The troupe’s director, Avrom Taytlboym, had been in New York with Maurice Schwartz’s Yiddish Art Theater, and there discovered the American playwright, then a star and staple on Broadway. Within a year, Polish-language theaters in Warsaw were producing their own productions of O’Neill. Thus, [argues Caplan], the Vilna Troupe “served as a major conduit” for bringing new texts and authors from West to East.

While President Trump has begun his term with a flurry of executive orders, their implementation is another matter. David Wurmser surveys the bureaucratic hurdles facing new presidents, and sets forth what he thinks should be the most important concerns for the White House regarding the Middle East:

The cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas may be necessary in order to retrieve whatever live hostages Israel is able to repatriate. Retrieving those hostages has been an Israeli war aim from day one.

But it is a vital American interest . . . to allow Israel to restart the war in Gaza and complete the destruction of Hamas, and also to allow Israel to enforce unilaterally UN Security Council Resolutions 1701 and 1559, which are embedded in the Lebanon cease-fire. If Hamas emerges with a story of victory in any form, not only will Israel face another October 7 soon, and not only will anti-Semitism explode exponentially globally, but cities and towns all over the West will suffer from a newly energized and encouraged global jihadist effort.

After the last hostage Israel can hope to still retrieve has been liberated, Israel will have to finish the war in a way that results in an unambiguous, incontrovertible, complete victory.