Max Abramovich
(Mendl)
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A. was born circa 1859 in
Odessa, Ukraine. His father was the proprietor of a shoe
store, never working by himself because he had a deep
desire to wander, and he visited Turkey and other lands.
As a child of five A. sang
with a cantor, and when he grew a little older, he
traveled around with his father as a choir singer, and
he even took him to Turkey.
At the age of ten A. was
taken in as a singer into the wine cellars of Odessa
together with Morris Finkel, Arie Shrage, Jacob Katzman
and Aaron Tager.
When Israel Rosenberg
reprimanded Goldfaden and put together a troupe, he took
A. out of the wine cellar together with Katzman. Soon
thereafter A. came to Goldfaden, with whom he acted in
the beginning in women's roles.
As a musical person he
helped Goldfaden with the cantorial motif for "Shulamis"
and gave him the well-known motif for "Di kohanim (The
Priests)."
In 1881 he acted in Naftali
Goldfaden's troupe in Morocco, where he directed the
amateurs, because he possessed a great voice.
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Traveling around
across Bessarabia, he was introduced to Bina
Fuks, with whom he married, but [then] there came the
ban on Yiddish theatre, and he went back to
being a cellar singer and a choir singer for
cantors in Odessa, and he also traveled around
with his wife in concerts. Wandering as such,
they came to Czernowitz to the director Margules,
but due to concession difficulties, A. was
forced to act in Seret, Bukovina. Due to a
conflict he traveled to Romania, where he acted
together with the troupe of Finkel, Feinman,
Mogulesko, Kessler and Weinblatt. When Mogulesko
came in 1886 from America with a troupe, they
took him with them, and here he performed as a
comic. In 1888 Thomashefsky brought him to
Boston, and in 1895 he acted in the Roumanian
Opera House in New York. Here until 1905, A.
acted together with the major actors in New York
and across the province as a comic and second
lover. On 6 April 1905 he passed away in New
York and came to his eternal rest in Washington
Cemetery (Brooklyn, New York -- ed.)
M. E.
from Bina Abramowitz, Jacob Katzman.
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B. Gorin --
"History of the Yiddish Theatre," Vol. I, p.
205; Vol. II, p. 35.
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Bessie
Thomashefsky -- "Mayn lebens geshikhte," New
York, 1916, p. 157.
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Jacob P.
Adler -- Mayn lebensbashreybung, "Der
teater-zhurnal," New York, 3, 1901-2.
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