{"id":1525,"date":"2018-12-10T23:48:50","date_gmt":"2018-12-10T23:48:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/?p=1525"},"modified":"2026-05-14T19:36:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T19:36:38","slug":"day-and-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/yiddish-images\/day-and-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Day and Night"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-1526\" src=\"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-content\/uploads\/MNY77934-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-content\/uploads\/MNY77934-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-content\/uploads\/MNY77934-64x96.jpg 64w, https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-content\/uploads\/MNY77934.jpg 366w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>(1925)<\/p>\n<p>Source: Museum of the City of New York<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Translation:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Yiddish Theater Society will open:<\/p>\n<p>UNSER TEATER (Our Theater)<\/p>\n<p>2135 Boston Road at (on the corner of) 181th street<\/p>\n<p>Peretz Hirshbein, H. Leivik, Mendl Elkin, Dovid Pinski, Chaim Schnir<\/p>\n<p>Shall present:<\/p>\n<p>DAY AND NIGHT<\/p>\n<p>A Drama in Three Acts<\/p>\n<p>Written by S. Ansky<\/p>\n<p>Tuesday, December 9<\/p>\n<p>This poster advertises the premier of \u201cDay and Night\u201d at Unser Theater in the Bronx. This historical theater was located right across the street from the Bronx Zoo at 2135 Boston Road, in a building that was torn down in 1966. \u00a0\u201cDay and Night\u201d premiered in 1925, when the Bronx was a vital hub for the Jewish diaspora. During the first waves of Jewish immigration to New York, major destinations were the Lower East Side, Crown Heights, Brownsville and the South Bronx. The Bronx came into favor at the turn of the 20<sup>th<\/sup> century, when the Lower East Side got overcrowded, and Bronx\u2019s Grand Concourse thoroughfare was established. At one point, a quarter million Jews lived in the Bronx. There were live chicken markets and kosher butchers on every street. Located right at the south edge of Bronx Park, Unser Theater occupied prime real estate in the heart of the Jewish community. There was even a hit play devoted to this slice of Jewish life called <em>Yoshke Musikant<\/em>: \u201cThe Bronx Express,\u201d which offered a slice-of-life portrait of Bronx Jews as they negotiated assimilating to the American consumerist and capitalist way of life. The play was revived at Unser Theater in 1925, with an incredible set by the same designer who had worked on \u201cDay and Night\u201d \u2013 Boris Aronson. The set featured a subway car from the white Plains Road subway line, whose terminus was in Bronx Park.<\/p>\n<p>Boris Aronson was born in 1900 in Kiev as the son of the city\u2019s chief rabbi. Aronson first hit the theater scene while still in the old world in 1921 with a Cubo-Futurist set designed in collaboration with Alexandra Exter for \u201cRomeo and Juliet\u201d at the Avant-Garde Kamerny Theater in Moscow. Aronson emigrated to New York in 1923 and worked intensely in the Yiddish theater circuit while slowly but surely, he ascended to mainstream Broadway. He was a regular contributor to Unser Theater and even designed a vast mural for its interior. The mural was unfortunately destroyed when the theater was torn down in 1966. His aesthetic of constructivist design was remarkable, and really shines in productions like <em>Loy Sakhmoyd<\/em> (\u201cthe Tenth Commandment\u201d). Aronson eventually went mainstream but never jumped the shark. Even his designs for the Radio City Music Hall were breathtaking and bold. In 1964, he designed the set for Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway based on the color palette of Marc Chagall\u2019s paintings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDay and Night\u201d \u2013 the play promoted in this poster \u2013 was written by the playwright, folklorist, and social activist Shloyme Zanvi Rappoport, who wrote under the penname \u201cS. Ansky.\u201d He was born in Chasniki in today\u2019s Belarus. S. Ansky is best known for his play \u201cThe Dybbuk\u201d 1912-14. \u201cDay and Night\u201d was his last play, and the manuscript was never completed.<\/p>\n<p><u>Works Cited:<\/u><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Preparing the Miracle: From the Bronx to Broadway, Boris Aronson, and the Yiddish Theater at Vallois America&#8221; (exhibition catalog, 2015),\u00a0https:\/\/www.artforum.com\/uploads\/guide.003\/id14336\/press_release.pdf<\/p>\n<p>Arnold Aronson (ed.), <em>The Routledge Companion to Scenography<\/em>,\u00a0New York 2018<\/p>\n<p>Barnaby Haran,\u00a0<em>Watching the Red Dawn: The American Avant-Garde and the Soviet Union,\u00a0<\/em>Manchester 2016<\/p>\n<p>S. Ansky,\u00a0<em>The Dybbuk and Other Writings,\u00a0<\/em>New Haven 2002<\/p>\n<h1 class=\"gb-volume-title\" dir=\"ltr\"><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(1925) Source: Museum of the City of New York Translation: The Yiddish Theater Society will open: UNSER TEATER (Our Theater) 2135 Boston Road at (on the corner of) 181th street Peretz Hirshbein, H. Leivik, Mendl Elkin, Dovid Pinski, Chaim Schnir Shall present: DAY AND NIGHT A Drama in Three Acts Written by S. Ansky Tuesday, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[136],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yiddish-images","has-post-thumbnail"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9teox-oB","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1525\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jewishstudiescolumbia.com\/myny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}