Composers:

Ellstein, Shmulowitz, Warshavsky, Gebirtig, et al.

Music Tutorial 
and Sing-along

Freylakh 
musical morning 
of mame-loshen

East London Theatre Archive

Back to his People (Tsurik tsu zayn Folk): This topical drama by Leon Kobrin deals with the modern Jewish problem of intermarriage. The play focuses on the story of American millionaire banker, Arthur Black, formerly known as Moshe Alter Shvartz from Lodz. After he becomes a successful businessman, he marries Maria, a Christian woman very involved with her faith and they have two children: Grace, an idealist who involves herself in charity work, helping out at the Settlement House on the Lower East Side and Willie, an antisemite engaged to a WASPy rich girl named Katherine. Maria told her children that their father was a count in Poland and they know nothing of his Jewishness.

Twenty five years into his marriage, Arthur Black reading of the destruction of his people during the Holocaust, is drawn for the first time to his religion and culture. He starts by refusing to go to his wife's church and donating money to the Jewish Relief Fund. He discovers his brother, Dr. Zelig Shvartz, is not dead but a famous leader of the Zionist movement. Black is reunited with his brother and decides to devote his life to the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine. His daughter, in love with a talented Jewish painter also from Lodz follows her father and uncle to Palestine.

The mother is left behind, deeply saddened but reluctantly accepting of the situation. Willie loses Katherine because of his Jewish ancestry and never forgives his father. 

Leon Kobrin's hit play Back to his People is fast paced with a compelling plot and believeable dialogue, its weakness is its simplistic resolution. One production of the play starred Samuel Goldenburg as banker Arthur Black with Seymour Rexite playing his son, Willie.

by Caraid O'Brien