Newsday from New York, New York • 135

'ZpvP'X' Yiddish Rialtos Sad Farewell YIDDISH from Page 5 LETS WAIT FOR THE MOVIE? By Lee Hendelman and Steve Gurden Kidaday 8taff Reporters Who reads all those sports books? We asked 163 kids, ages 12 to 14, if they read the new Dave Winfield book, A Players Life. Then we asked them if they read any sports biographies at all. Here are the results: Did you read Dave Winfields book? Yes 6 No 157 Do you read any sports biographies! Yes 23 No 140 The results are not surprising. We did not expect kids to read this book because it is just another of a series of sports biographies. If the ballplayer is a big enough name, the best parts of the book are sometimes reprinted in daily newspapers.

If you look at these books closely enough, they seem to be thrown together by a player and his ghost writer (somebody who writes the book with him or for him). There seems to be a minimal amount of effort. Even though Dave Winfield is a big name athlete this book seems to lack any excitement. Another argument about these books is the cost. A new release in hardcover can cost as much as $20.

Waiting' for the softcover can save you a lot. For instance, Davey Johnsons book, Bats costs $18 when it came out as a new release, but we recently purchased it for $2.50. We think Winfields bpok is just another attempt by him and other athletes to make easy money. They never have anything new to say. We dont think most kids really care that much about what Dave did as a kid, and if you are a big fan of baseball, you have a pretty good idea of what his statistics are anyway.

stage was Avrom political fantasy The Tenth Commandment, opening on Dec. 18, 1926. It was a critical success, even in the non-Jewish press. As a critic for the secular magazine Theatre wrote in 1927, As recently as eight years ago, the Yiddish stage was still anathema to the Jewish intellectuals, and a joke to those cosmopolites who ventured the experience of a night in a Jewish theatre This theatre is a monument, in actual stone and steel, to the fact that idealism can be successful in every way; and this, more than any other factor, may influence the gradual disintegration of the slum theatres of the East Side. Schwartz, though, soon returned to his familiar role as a vagabond.

After an argument with his partner in the theater a few years later, he moved his company to another house, occasionally returning but never again making it a permanent home. Over the years, other Yiddish companies took over the stage, frequently changing its name to that of their biggest star: the Molly Picon, the Menasha Skulnik. In 1950, the Yiddish Art Theater company finally disbanded. Schwartz and his players occasionally appeared in small theaters in cities like Philadelphia and Baltimore, or in the outer boroughs of New York. But there was rarely a place for them on Second Avenue.

At 12th Street, Yiddish productions had given way to English plays. Bruce Adler, a younger actor who appeared in both Yiddish and Broadway shows, grew up on 12th across the street from the theater, and remembers hanging around the back alley to talk with such actors as Montgomery Clift, and Will Geer in a 1950s production of Chekhovs The Seagull. In 1974, when we did Hard to Be a Jew, I had the same dressing room that Paul Muni had when he was in the original show in Schwartz company, Adler said. I really loved that theater. The loss of a physical space -in which to perform will neatly hasten the long decline of Yiddish theater, said Adler, whose rendition of Rumania, Rumania in The Golden land stopped the show.

Currently, the only regular productions of Yiddish plays are those by the semi-professional Folksbiene company, in the Central Synagogue. Weve just priced ourselves into a place where these productions cant support themselves unless they can fill huge houses, he said. That was one of few theaters left where you could do something big on a small scale. Adler said the conversion is also a loss to Off-Broadway, which is always in need -of medium-sized houses. As the Entermedia Theater, the building was the original home of such musical hits as Grease, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream coat, and The Best little Whorehouse in Texas.

A block down the avenue, the Second Avenue Deli installed 30 stars in its cement sidewalk three years ago, memorializing the great Yiddish ao-tors who used to pass along the way. But for those actors who remain, the stars cannot compensate for the ap-' clause that could be heard on each block, on each night, not so long ago. We try to carry on as best we can, said Miriam Kreesyn, but what can we do in the face of such thingB? Ill toll you what you could da If you could put in a good word for that theater, it would be a mitxvah.You know what a v. 1 mitxvah stage downstairs, Maxwell said. The new owners, however, are considered unlikely toe follow their plans.

Ralph Donnelly, executive vice president of City Cinemas, would only that live theater was a possibility, I suppose. He said the building would be dark for a year during the change to a movie theater. Several who have played on the stage at 12th Street were under the impression that the theater was a landmark, protected against destruction or major change. In fact, although the city landmarks Commission considered protecting the building in 1985 and 1986, it never ruled on the case. A commission spokesman said a decision awaited the completion of a report on the case, one of scores in the backlog.

While the case is pending, the spokesman said, the owner would be requested but not required to submit all construction plans to the rnmniiarim for review. No plans have yet been submitted. But the actors and the scholars and those who remain from the audience dont need a municipal designation to define the Second Avenue Theater as a landmark. To them it was more than a playhouse; it was, in Nahma Sandrows winds, a temple. That theater was Maurice Schwartz cathedral, said Sandrow, author of Vagabond Stars, the definitive 1977 history of the Yiddish theater.

It was nationally known. And it was more than just a physical building; it really existed in peoples cultural consciousnesses. Schwartz, the Ukrainian-bom son of a grain merchant, had longed to create a serious art from a Yiddish theater built of sentiment and force. As Isaac Baahevis Singer has written of the time, It was true that every Yiddish play needed a heartrending recital of Kaddish and a wedding ceremony in order to keep the noisy audiences quiet for some time. Schwartz had higher aspirations, dreams of presenting Yiddish Shaws and Chekhovs, a repertory company with aspirations to match the best intellects of the immigrant Jewish community.

But not so elevated as to prevent entertainment. As he wrote in a 1918 manifesto published in the Jewish Forward, his goal was to play dramas, fine comedies, worthy and nice operettas. And if a melodrama must be played, it must have interest and logic. Finding- his audience turned out to be lew difficult than finding a theater that was willing to take a risk, 'but in 1918 be took over the Irving Place Theater at 14th Street, and began his Yiddish Art Theater, which critic Irving Howe has called the one enduring repertory company in Yiddish. And it was this company, after eight years of moving from stage to stage, that he finally established in a theater built to his specifications by an admirer, Louis Jaffee, at 12th Street and Second Avenue, in 1926.

At 500 seats, it wasnt too large; Schwarts believed that gestures and nuances got lost in houses. But it was big enough to turn a profit when frill, and it was attractive enough to convince audiences of his seriousness of purpose. The exterior was Moorish in design, with arched, detailed windows, while on the dome inside was a huge Star of David. The facilities were wonderful, recalled Rezsite. The stage, the dressing rooms everyone who played there- wanted to tome back.

The first production on the hew i Can You TopThi A FEW MORE RECORDS Christine Steinhauer, her break the old record of 24Part II NY newsqay, Tuesday, august ibbs 15, of Massapequa, did 300 sit-ups in 40 minutes. She wrote us that her athletic training has really helped her. She gets straight As in gym and is on the travel soccer team. Her sister, Deborah Steinhauer, witnessed andheld her legs. The pogo ball records are still coming in, Stephanie of Atlantic Beach, jumped 68 indies.

She told us that being on the gymnastics team helped 60 inches. Robert Med win, 13, and Steven Hasten, 13, of Massapequa, played Ping-Pong for five hours recently. They played 32 games with Robert winning 19 of them. They told us that they wore out three balls. Send stories about contests to Can You Top This, Kidsday, Newsday Long Island, N.Y.

11747. Send your name, age, address and phone number. A witness must sign your story, so we know you set a record. 1-1 fc-J ft -tl Ji i.