From Lodz to Tel Aviv: The Satirical World of Dzigan and Schumacher, the Most Famous Yiddish Comedy Duo of the 20th Century

From the late 1920s to the outbreak of WWII, the comedy duo of Szymon Dzigan and Yisroel Shumacher enjoyed unparalleled popularity in Poland’s world of Yiddish entertainment. Household names and highly paid superstars, their satirical monologues and political skits represented an unprecedented development in the nature of Jewish entertainment—modernist humor. Key to their material was language—the Yiddish of their native Lodz and their characters, a Chaucerian parade of world-weary and world-wise Jews. After the Holocaust and their emigration to Israel, they trained their satirical observations on the contemporary political situation in that country—a genre yet to exist in Hebrew entertainment. This talk seeks to account for the pathbreaking work of these beloved comic geniuses.

Join Professor John Efron for a free lecture at The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life in Berkeley.