Broadway, and most theatres, love a heroic, epic-like story. Before Broadway was flashing marquees and $400 orchestra seats, it was a common form of entertainment enjoyed and made by middle and working-class immigrant families. And it was primarily shaped by Jewish people and their culture.
Jews have resided in the United States since the colonial era, but the real shift came later when the largest waves arrived from central and eastern Europe. Just between the 1880s and 1920s, around 2.8 million Jews fled from Europe to America. They weren’t changing careers; they were running from antisemitism, violent pogroms, and political instability that pushed them out of where generations had lived. The timing clashed with the Gilded Age: a period when American cities were booming in size and industry. If they wanted an opportunity, this was where they went. And most of them came to one place: New York.
By 1910, New York City’s Jewish population had passed one million, making it the largest urban Jewish population in the world, and it still is. Jews fleeing Europe stepped off ships into a chaotic, crowded city and turned to find cheap housing, factory jobs and a cultural support system. With similar ideals, many of them ended up in the same place, the Lower East Side. Yiddish was everywhere: in the markets, apartments and streets packed with people, pushcarts and vendors. It was crowded, loud and poor, but it was culturally alive. And one of the most important pieces of that culture, that would eventually bring us the Broadway and Times Square we know today, was Yiddish theatre. These theatres became gathering places for immigrant audiences that wanted stories that looked like and reflected their experiences. Yiddish theatre provided a stage for actors, playwrights and musicians to explore themes of family, faith, immigration and assimilation.
While Yiddish theatre was forming a cultural and emotional attachment to theatre, Tin Pan Alley, located a few blocks away, was forming the center of American pop music. On West 28th Street, songwriters and publishers made catchy melodies for shows, radio performances, and eventually Broadway productions, while American entertainment began to industrialize and consolidate into monopolies. In the 1890s, New York’s theatre scene was centered around Union Square, but as it got more popularized by people of different origins and classes, producers started moving north to what we now know as Times Square because the land was cheap and underdeveloped. Six theatre managers and book agents saw an opportunity and decided to consolidate their power. They called themselves, and became known as, the Theatrical Syndicate.
Together, these six men controlled most of the theatres in New York and across the country. If they could control the venues, they could control the shows. The syndicate gave touring companies ease and efficiency in booking profitable venues and routes through their theatres, but the touring companies would have to sacrifice their independence. If they wanted to perform in these venues, they couldn’t perform anywhere else. And if they lost money one year, they wouldn’t be invited back. It was a theatrical corporate empire. And people weren’t fans.
Competitors boycotted whenever they could, even though it was a risk. Some of the criticism turned openly antisemitic because five of the six members were Jewish, claiming that their obsession with money and poor taste would ruin the theatre, and the entertainment industry employed much of the Jewish population. But the Syndicate’s power didn’t last forever, and, ironically, the people who would break their monopoly came from the same immigrant background.
Sam, Lee and Jacob Shubert were born into a Lithuanian-Jewish family. They immigrated from the Russian Empire (now Lithuania), and—like many Jewish immigrants of the time—they came to America for opportunity and found it in theatre. Starting in upstate New York, the family (who became known as the Shubert Brothers) slowly began to build their own chain of theatres, and became the Theatrical Syndicate’s biggest competitor. By 1924, the Shubert Brothers owned 86 theatres across the country and were in control of hundreds. In another 20 years, they had control over 20 or New York City theatres, and by 1952, they had single-handedly produced over 600 shows and booked over 1.000 productions into their theatres. They had built a theatrical empire and taken over the throne of the Theatrical Syndicate.
In 1955, they owned so many theatres that the government had to step in. In 1955, the Supreme Court ruled that the Shubert organization violated antitrust laws and was functioning as a monopoly. As a result, the Shuberts had to sell twelve theatres and stop booking operations. But the structure of Broadway was already created and shaped, and the artists were ready. While theatre owners were building empires and businesses, performers, composers, designers and managers were transforming the stage itself.
The Golden Age of Broadway was a renowned period that brought a wave of stories and music and trailblazed the definition of a musical that we now know today. And, many of these performers, dancers, composers and designers were Jewish—finding ways to share their story and experiences with a world that refused to hear them. It’s claimed that Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II launched Broadway’s Golden Age with the groundbreaking musical “Oklahoma!” In 1942. It’s considered to be Broadway’s first blockbuster, which ran for 2,212 performances (unheard of at the time) and revolutionized how musicals worked, integrating song, dance, and music into the story rather than them being separate entertainment pieces.
Now, the timing of this creativity was certainly helpful. While the Great Depression led to a major decline and economic shifts in Broadway, the industry was revitalized during World War II and post-World War II America. Audiences were looking for escapism from the political and war climate, and could finally afford it. The outlook and desire for emotional relief shaped the style of musicals, making them known for extravagant orchestras, large dance numbers, and romantic stories that ended happily. But these large, lavish productions held hidden stories, journeys, and meanings, created by the ones writing and producing them—and many of them were Jewish.
During this Golden Age, Jewish composers and lyricists dominated the scene. The shows often (and sometimes inadvertently) explored themes of immigration, identity, and belonging. Even when the themes were not explicitly Jewish, they reflected the experiences of the people writing them. Irving Berlin, the writer of “God Bless America” and “White Christmas” (ironically), came to America as a child with his family after fleeing Russian pogroms. He never learned to read music formally, but wrote songs and musicals that are still repeated today. Richard Rodgers, whose parents also fled persecution in Russia, worked with Oscar Hammerstein and wrote musicals like “Oklahoma!”, “The King and I”, and “The Sound of Music”, often focusing on tolerance and justice—themes that closely reflect Rodger’s immigrant experience and persecution in Russia.
West Side Story, a profound and well-loved musical, reimagined Romeo and Juliet through New York’s ethnic tensions and blended classical, jazz, and Latin music. It was composed by Leonard Bernstein and had lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, both prominent Jews in the Theatre Scene. Leonard Bernstein was proudly Jewish, with parents who immigrated to America to escape persecution from Russian pogroms. Despite being advised to do so, he never changed his name to sound “less Jewish”, unlike many of his peers and fellow Jews who fled Europe. He utilized his Jewish roots and culture in his composing, and often included the shofar blast! Stephen Sondheim, writer of “West Side Story”, “Sweeney Todd”, “Into the Woods”, “Gypsy”, and more, was also Jewish. His family had arrived in America about a century earlier, but for similar reasons: to escape laws, persecution, and reach freedom. The two used their music and words to subtly show the world what the Jewish people had and continued to go through in Europe and the world.
One of the most recognized and outwardly Jewish musicals was, and continues to be, “Fiddler on the Roof”, which opened in 1964. While a majority of musicals on Broadway had hidden themes of what it was like to be Jewish, mainly because it was thought that audiences would not attend openly Jewish stories, Fiddler directly tells the story of a Jewish village that faced displacement and persecution in imperial Russia. The musical was based on Yiddish stories by Sholem Aleichem (a Jewish author and playwright who fled Russian persecution), and resonated beyond Jewish audiences with themes of balancing tradition and modernity, family, and survival. The story itself was incredibly specific, but it connected with audiences in a time of cultural and social change. Its writers—Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick—production team, and director were all Jewish, which led to investors and critics fearing that the production would be “too Jewish” to be on Broadway.
In the early twentieth century, many of these Jewish writers, composers, and producers were trying to assimilate into society while being able to share their stories. While they were revolutionary in their work, they were also hesitant with their identity, considering their own history and the world around them. The musicals written often featured upper-class white characters, representing the version of success they, and every other immigrant, hoped to achieve. But as the children of these artists (like the writers of Fiddler on the Roof) became integrated into American society, the perspective shifted.
In the 1930’s, Jewish Americans made up a significant portion of Broadway’s audience, not just the people on and backstage. The musicals the Jewish community made and supported reflected their journey of upward mobility, and the Broadway musical became a template for the American Dream and how to achieve it. This template, however, didn’t stay limited to Jewish stories and struggles. Other marginalized groups began to use the same framework to show the world their own stories and hardships. Shows like Hair, Rent, The Color Purple, and The Book of Mormon displayed the experiences of other communities—racial minorities, queer people, other immigrants—in the mainstream theatre world, and Broadway became a place where audiences could empathize with and truly see people whose identities might have been pushed to the sidelines, and the influence hasn’t disappeared.
Jewish creators shaped, and continue to shape, modern theatre. Composers like Jason Robert Brown wrote shows like Parade and The Last Five Years. Benji Pasek, a Jewish composer and lyricist, wrote Dear Evan Hansen, which explores themes of anxiety and identity, with Justin Paul, and the two have worked on other movie-musicals like La La Land and The Greatest Showman—all shows that resonate with audiences all over the world, and have some phenomenal soundtracks. Steven Schwartz, composer of Wicked, was Jewish and composed a musical that uses flying monkeys to display the dangers of propaganda, systemic oppression, and the nature of good and evil. Sound familiar? Other musicals, like Ragtime, take the original themes and values of Jewish Broadway works and intersect them with multiple American stories—immigrants, African Americans, and wealthy elites all colliding in their search for the American Dream. Though every group’s story is different, everyone strives for the same thing: a life of joy and freedom.
These shows and the community that surrounds them look a lot like, and reflect the journey of the country that created them. It brings us back to the Lower East Side in the 1920’s, full of crowded tenements, pushcarts, and Yiddish signs hanging over small theatres. The crowded streets weren’t just full of immigrants trying to survive, but storytellers. People who were pushed out of their homes, mocked for their accents and language, and told they didn’t—and shouldn’t—belong anywhere, and they found a place to turn their experiences into music and humor, laugh at what hurt, mourn at what was lost, and imagine and create a future safer than the one they left behind. They worked to move their stories from small Yiddish theatres to the biggest theatres in Times Square, giving themselves a space to process loss, identity, and hope in front of one another and an audience, and in doing so, they built a blueprint for others, allowing them to show the world their own experiences and celebrating the differences displayed in a production. So Broadway may be known for its flashing lights and layered melodies, but underneath the costumes is something universally human: people sharing stories, culture and identity.
