initially in his uncle's house, where a cousin who was a good pianist helped him set some of his poems to music. In Odessa, Goldfaden renewed his acquaintance with fellow Yiddish-language writer Yitzkhok Yoel Linetzky, whom he knew from Zhytomyr and met Hebrew-language poet Eliahu Mordechai Werbel (whose daughter Paulina would become Goldfaden's wife) and published poems in the newspaper Kol-Mevaser. He also wrote his first two plays, Die Tzwei Sheines (The Two Neighbours) and Die Murneh Sosfeh (Aunt Susie), included with some verses in a modestly successful 1869 book Die Yidene (The Jewish Woman), which went through three editions in three years. At this time, he and Paulina were living mainly on his meagre teacher's salary of 18 rubles a year, supplemented by his giving private lessons and taking a job as a cashier in a hat shop. In 1875, Goldfaden headed for Munich, intending to study medicine. This did not work out, and he headed for Lvov/Lemberg in Habsburg-ruled Galicia, where he again met up with Linetsky, now editor of a weekly paper, Isrulik or Der Alter Yisrulik (which was well reputed, but was soon shut by the government). A year later, he moved on to Chernivtsi in Habsburg Bukovina, where he edited the Yiddish-language daily Dos Bukoviner Israelitishe Folksblatt. The limits of the economic sense of this enterprise can be gauged from his inability to pay a registration fee of 3000 ducats. He tried unsuccessfully to operate the paper under a different name, but soon moved on to Iaşi in Moldavia on the invitation of Isaac Librescu (1850–1930), a young wealthy communitary activist interested in theatre. Iaşi Arriving in Iaşi (Jassy) in 1876, Goldfaden was fortunate to be better known as a good poet — many of whose poems had been set to music and had become popular songs — than as a less-than-successful businessman. Nevertheless, when he sought funds from Isaac Librescu for another newspaper, Librescu was uninterested in that proposition. Librescu's wife remarked that Yiddish-language journalism was just a way to starve and suggested that there would be a lot more of a market for Yiddish-language theatre. Librescu offered Goldfaden 100 francs for a public recital of his songs in the garden of Shimen Mark, Grădina Pomul Verde ("the Green Fruit-Tree Garden"). Instead of a simple recital, Goldfaden expanded the program into something of a vaudeville performance; either this or an indoor performance he and