New Yiddish Rep to Present THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO CHAIM at Theater for the New City This Winter

New Yiddish Rep, New York’s daring producer of contemporary theater that has added several landmark productions to the Yiddish canon in recent years, is staging the first entirely original full-length American Yiddish drama to be produced for a general audience in seven decades.  Mikhl Yashinsky’s new drama, “The Gospel According to Chaim,” receives its world premiere at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue, in a production running from Thursday December 21 to Sunday January 7, 2024.  Directed by Dmitri Barcomi (a co-founder of the award winning international artist collective Section 175), “Di psure loyt khaim” will play a total of 21 performances with an opening set for Sunday December 24 at 7pm.
Tickets, which go on sale on Tuesday September 5 at 10am, will be $20 and $45, and will be available at www.newyiddishrep.org

Based on the shocking true story of a Yiddish writer who found Jesus and translated the New Testament into Yiddish, “The Gospel According to Chaim” introduces us to Chaim Einspruch (1892 – 1977) a Jewish immigrant from an observant Polish Jewish family, who set out to publish his book in Baltimore in the early years of WWII, only to be turned down by every Yiddish printer he approached.  Undeterred, Einspruch set about learning the art of printing, with the dream of releasing his masterpiece himself.  After much effort he printed an elegantly illustrated manuscript that no one wanted to see.

A page-turner of a story as much as it is a morality tale about spiritual freedom, apostasy and the conflict of Judaism and Christianity, “Di psure loyt khaim” is the 33-year-old Yashinsky’s full-length playwriting debut.

“This play is a moral highwire act,” says David Mandelbaum, New Yiddish Rep’s artistic director.  “Mikhl would appear to be well ahead of his years to be able to tackle this subject matter and to humanize a conflict of such Biblical proportions. Not since Sholem Asch’s ‘God of Vengeance’ have we seen a play centered so authentically in the morality it calls into question.”

Born in Detroit, and educated at Harvard, Yashinsky is a conspicuous presence in the burgeoning downtown Yiddish arts and social scene, that, in the past 10 years especially, has been attracting a new generation of iconoclastic Jews (and even Orthodox exiles) to a secular language and culture once considered moribund.

His first play, an erotic yeshiva drama “Vos flist durkhn oder” (“Blessing of the New Moon”), debuted as the only non-English language work at the Lower East Side Play Festival in the summer of 2022, and later staged as a reading by the New Yiddish Rep.  As an actor he has performed in the National Yiddish Theatre - Folksbiene’s acclaimed production of “Fiddler on the Roof” in Yiddish, as well as the title role in “The Sorceress.” As a director (in his native Detroit), he has staged work at the Detroit Opera.  His recent translation of the memoirs of Yiddish theatre pioneer Ester-Rokhl Kaminska, “The Mother of Yiddish Theatre,” is forthcoming from Bloomsbury. As a fellow of LABA Laboratory for Jewish Culture, he is currently at work on a new Yiddish musical set in the criminal underground, with klezmer band Mamaliga.

Einspruch’s original printed manuscript, “Der bris khadoshe — The New Covenant” (printed in Baltimore in 1941), is part of the permanent collection of the Yiddish Book Center, where Yashinsky discovered it in 2016 when he was a research fellow there.

Opines Yashinsky, “I hope the play provokes audiences to ponder murky questions of identity (what is it to be a Jew?), as well as inter-religious conflict.  Do certain major faiths converge enough that their beliefs may mix happily in one person, or are they entirely irreconcilable, to the point of provoking eternal strife?”

New Yiddish Rep -- which produced groundbreaking productions of “Waiting for Godot” in Yiddish (2013-14), “Death of a Salesman” in Yiddish (2015), “God of Vengeance” (2016-17), “Rhinoceros” in Yiddish (2016), and “Awake and Sing” in Yiddish (2017) -- is credited with being one of the main companies at the forefront of the surprising revival of Yiddish secular culture.  The company trains a company of both actors and non-actors (many of whom have chosen to permanently separate from their communities of origin).

Barcomi, the show’s director, is a cross-disciplinary theatre creator and director whose interests include working with unusual source materials, and integrating technology and live performance. Barcomi has directed work in New York at Lincoln Center, Target Margin, Ars Nova, HERE Arts, La MaMa, BRIC, and other hubs of experimental new work, as well as internationally at the Edinburgh Fringe and the Teatr Słowackiego in Kraków.  A member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, he is the artistic director of the newly opened pop-up Museum of Drag (MoDrag).

New Yiddish Rep’s “The Gospel According to Chaim” (“Di psure loyt khaim”) plays 21 performances (including five previews) in its world premiere engagement at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue (between 9th & 10th Streets), running Thur Dec 21 at 7:30pm, 2023 to Jan 7 at 5pm, 2024, with an opening on Christmas Eve, Sunday December 24 at 7pm.

Performances are Wed, Thu, Fri at 7:30pm, Sat at 3pm & 7:30pm, and Sun at 1pm, with added performances on Sun Dec 31 at 5pm and Sun Jan 7 at 5pm.  (Performances on Sun Dec 24 will be at 3pm and 7pm -- no show at 1pm.)

Tickets, which are $20 (students and seniors) and $45, will go on sale Tue Sept 5 at 10am via www.newyiddishrep.org

On every performance day, 2 hours before the first performance, a limited amount of $25 Rush Tickets will be released at box office (based on availability).