Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer, Author at Hadassah Magazine

He Was Larger Than Life Despite Disability

As the Jewish world continues to raise awareness about the need for supporting and accommodating people with disabilities, let's remember people like my Uncle Mace.

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Dec 6

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Dec 6, 1889: #onthisday in #jewesshistory, Celia Feinman Adler Forman, known known as the "First Lady of the Yiddish theater” was born in New York City. ⁠
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Born as Tzirele Adler to British actress Dina Shtettin, who left her Orthodox family to join the theater world, and Jacob P. Adler, the Yiddish theater star who founded a theatrical dynasty. Among her half-siblings were noted actors Jay Adler, Luther Adler and Stella Adler. ⁠
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In 1919, Adler, a Zionist, helped open the first Yiddish Art Theater and wrote the two-volume study, “The Yiddish Theater in America." When “the Dybbuk” came to the New York Yiddish Art Theater, Adler starred as Leah, the woman who is possessed by a dybbuk. ⁠
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In 1937, Celia starred in the Yiddish film “Where Is My Child?” ("Vu iz mayn kind?”). She also gave one of the earliest theatrical portrayals of a Holocaust survivor in her half-brother Luther Adler’s 1946 Broadway production of “A Flag is Born.” ⁠
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Three men were fortunate enough to wed the “dramatic soubrette”—so called by Carl Van Vechten. In 1915 Adler married actor Lazar Freed and later said “I do” to her manager, Jack Cone, in 1930. After her second husband’s death in 1959, she married New York businessman Nathan Forman. He died a week before Adler. ⁠
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Her last film was “Naked City” (1948) and the actress’ last Broadway show was the 1961 drama “Women in Horseradish.” In the aftermath of World War II, Adler gave performances to American troops in English and Yiddish. �⁠
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“Mrs. Forman was sustained by an enormous creative energy throughout her life and an unflagging devotion to Jewish drama, becoming its foremost female exponent,” Joan Cook wrote in a 1979 New York Times obituary. ⁠
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Celia died on January 31, 1979 after suffering a heart attack. A week before she died at the Hebrew Home, Adler performed a one-act monologue and was already preparing for her next act. She is buried in the Yiddish Theater Section of Mount Hebron Cemetery in NYC. ...

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