All About Jewish Theatre - Tel Aviv's Theater Museum Treasure

Tel Aviv's Theater Museum was `temporarily' housed in an apartment, until a more dignified location could be found. Meanwhile, fine works of art, by the best artists of the period, are locked away

The document states that actor Shlomo Michoels traveled on a mission to Minsk at the beginning of January, 1948. It also notes that the mission ended on the 13th of that month, at which time he left the city. But he departed from the city in a coffin. Apparently he had been assassinated by the authorities, whose representatives did not bother to mention the fact of the death of the actor, who had established the official Yiddish Theater in Moscow and was known for his anti-fascist activities during World War II. Michoels did not survive the Stalinist purges. Archival material concerning his activities was almost destroyed in a fire that broke out in the Jewish department of the Theater Museum in Moscow years later.

The actor's daughters finally gave the document to the Theater Museum in Tel Aviv. There, in a standard first-floor residential apartment at 3 Melchett Street, it still hangs on the wall. The museum itself, however, is closed to visitors.

The director of the museum, Solo Har, who 31 years ago "joined" the dream of its founder, actor Yehuda Gabbai, is tired of promises. Up until a year ago, Har, 76, would still open the door to the apartment-museum every day. And then he received notice from the Tel Aviv municipality the institution would soon be transferred to a new location.

The story sounded familiar to him: The museum was initially located "temporarily," in the apartment where Manya Bialik, the wife of Haim Nahman Bialik, lived until her death. Over the years, various proposals were made to move the museum to a more fitting and dignified location. In the meantime, the exhibits are hidden away behind a locked door. For example, 5,000 sketches for stage sets ("At the museum in London there are only 1,200," says Har proudly).

In the museum's archive, in black boxes, lie works by artists Reuven Rubinn, Marcel Janco, Nahum Gutman, Genia Berger, Emanuel Luftglass, Moshe Mokady, Naftali Bezem and many others. A treasure. About four years ago a number of works, most of them on loan from the Theater Museum, were shown in an exhibit entitled "Marcel Janco, Adventure in the Theater," at the Janco Dada Museum in Ein Hod.

"Employing a plastic artist as a stage designer was a prevalent practice in the first years of the theater in Eretz Israel," wrote the curator, Orna Ben Meir, in the catalog. "There were no professional stage designers in the country apart from Berger and Luftglass." The catalog also gives an extract from a review that appeared in the now-defunct newspaper Al Hamishmar in August, 1946: "Marcel Janco struck a convincing blow in this appearance of his to those who automatically object to modernism, out of habit, but even more than that, he taught a lesson to the automatic modernists, the modernists out of principle." This is more art criticism than theater criticism, and not without reason.

The importance of a large portion of the works that are lying in the archive of the Theater Museum could be minimized somewhat because they are listed as "sketches." But these are fine works of art, by the best artists of the period.

`Jews in the universe'

In Har's office, shelves covering an entire wall are devoted to about 1,200 plays, arranged in alphabetical order. Alongside classics like Shakespeare and S.Y. Agnon, there is also an early version of the play "Tyre and Jerusalem" by Mattityahu Shaham, adapted by Avraham Shlonsky. Also in the office are 145 personal files, each devoted to a different artist. In actor Bomba Tzur's file is his personal diary; in actor Rafael Klatchkin's, there are essays that he wrote.

In another corner of the room are kept letters written by Menachem Ussishkin, Alexander Penn and other people involved in theater. A letter dated November 3, 1926 opens with the following words: "To my great regret - I would not exaggerate were I to use the word `sorrow' - I will not be able to attend the performance at the Ohel (Theater) tomorrow evening. I must go to Jerusalem on important personal business." On another piece of paper, from May 7, 1928, is written: "Today I was summoned to Jerusalem by telegram for an important meeting at the university and to my great sorrow I will not be able to attend the opening of the artists' exhibition."

The first letter is signed by Ze'ev Jabotinsky. The second, by Haim Nahman Bialik. What can be learned from them, apart from the obvious fact that these two men were busy people? Between the lines there is the story of the establishment of the Ohel Theater, in the mid-1920s.

The main display space in the museum is devoted to the development of the Hebrew theater in this country. On the wall there is a poster for the premiere performance by the Ohel, on May 19, 1926, in the Herzliya Gymnasium auditorium. Also hanging are posters of the Matateh ("broom") Theater from 1928, offering tickets at 49, 30, 20 and 76 mil. The Kumkum Theater offers tickets at 49, 31, 21 and 76 mil. The difference is explained explicitly on the Kumkum poster: "One mil to be donated to the Jewish National Fund."

A 1929 poster from the Dramatic Group, the members of which belonged to the Hebrew Socialist Movement in the Land of Israel, Tel Aviv branch, offers tickets to the play "Blood of the Maccabees." Here giving of the "donation" gives way to a far blunter phrase: "Contribution of 1 mil to the JNF - obligatory," it says.

Har enjoys talking about the posters, sketching the world of theater as it was in its beginnings, and proudly pointing out the baton used by Mordecai Golinkin, the founder of the Land of Israel Opera in 1925. An inner room of the museum is devoted to Jewish theater elsewhere in the world.

"A special corner is dedicated to the theater during the Holocaust period," says Har. This is a small corner in which there is, among other things, a picture of a theater group established by Haim Perlmutter at the Bergen-Belsen camp, and next to it a membership card in Katzet Teater (the Camps Theater). The other walls of the room are covered in posters of the Jewish Theater in Shanghai, from 1919, or the Lyrik Theater in London, which in 1917 put on the play "Mishmash," and the Theatre Populaire Juif in France.

Caring for heritage

Solo Har did not come from the field of theater. He immigrated to Israel from Romania in 1965, after completing a degree in philosophy in Bucharest. Thus far he has published 21 books of poetry in Israel. At the beginning of the 1970s, the deputy mayor of Tel Aviv, Yitzhak Artzi, asked him to join the museum management, alongside its founder, Yehuda Gabbai.

In 1919 Gabbai attended a performance of the Odessa Hebrew Habimah. He kept the program and the poster. Years later, when he immigrated to Israel, he also brought along these two documents. Thereafter he collected every bit of information connected to the Hebrew and Jewish theater, in this country and abroad. In 1973 he decided to donate the archival material to a museum, in order to ensure its future. Gabbai passed away in 1994, and since then Har has been running the place on his own.

On the wall in the entrance hang pictures, which come from a collection of more than 40,000 photos and 2,000 posters. Side by side are actors from the Jewish State Theater in Birobidzhan, in central Asia, "in their tour of the autonomous Jewish province" in 1923, and the actors of the Ohel, "on their tour of the collective farms in the Jezreel Valley."

In another picture there is Herzl Street in Tel Aviv during the 1920s. "The members of the Hoffeniko Family gave a concert in their home every weekend," says Har. "The picture shows the first electrical street lamp on Herzl Street, and markings of the places where one day trees would be planted."

There are other museums of theater history in Israel, and each of them is connected to a university. The Theater Museum, which was established under the auspices of the Tel Aviv municipality, was later transferred to the supervision and management of the Land of Israel Museum. The operating budget for this small museum is a few thousand shekels a year, which covers the electricity, water and property tax, says Har. He also receives another few hundred shekels as a monthly salary.

In recent years it has been repeatedly hinted to Har that the museum will be shut down. "As far as I'm concerned, they can transfer the museum to the new Cameri Theater building, to Beit Ariella or to any other suitable place," he says. "The main thing is that it take care of the heritage that could get lost."

It would seem that the initiatives to transfer the museum to a new space should be reconsidered. There is, in fact, a great deal of charm in an authentic museum like this, located in the heart of a residential neighborhood, on the first floor. But it also seems that the Theater Museum needs to undergo a process of restructuring and preservation. Instead of moving it, thought should be given to alternative sources of funding. Even selling a small part of the works of art from the collection in order to set up an economic infrastructure that would put this institution on its feet; opening the museum and charging a nominal admission fee. And who knows? Maybe the time has come for the JNF to give back its share and direct some of its funds to rescuing this important project.

In the corridor leading into the museum, some of Gabbai's theatrical paraphernalia has been placed in a transparent installation - a small makeup kit, two rings lying carelessly, a wig and a mirror. Next to them hangs a sketch by Gabbai's life partner, Genia Berger, for a show at the Ohel Theater.

Har says that he is always amazed by the ignorance of the groups of students from theater departments that have visited the place. "Never mind a visitor off the street," he says, "but people who want to be the future generation of actors don't know who Avigdor Meiri was? This is pretty annoying."

Do the visitors to the place know who Yehuda Gabbai was? He prefers not to ask.