A century of Jewish culture, angst and triumph has just begun its run at the Museum of the City of New York.
The Museum is featuring an exhibition on the growth of Yiddish theater over the past 100 years.
Second Avenue on the Lower East Side, once called “Yiddish Broadway,” is the focus of the exhibit, called “Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway.”
More than 1.5 million first-and second-generation Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe streamed into the theater to forget their woes.
Eventually, the term “Second Avenue” stretched to embrace Yiddish theater in the posh Upper East Side of Manhattan, and in Brooklyn, where Jewish delis flourished to feed the masses.
Yiddish stars like Molly Picon, Stella Adler and Zero Mostel are all featured in the exhibit, as are the shows in which they performed.
Zero Mostel’s costume from “Fiddler on the Roof” is included in the exhibit, as are the set models by Tony Award-winning designer Boris Aronson.
The exhibit opened yesterday (Wed. March 9), and will run through July 31.