Israel (also Yisroel or Yisrol) Rosenberg (c. 1850 – 1903 or 1904; Yiddish/Hebrew: ישראל ראָזענבערג) founded the first Yiddish theater troupe in Imperial Russia. Life Having been a "hole-and-corner lawyer" (without a diploma) and swindler in Odessa, Rosenberg was one of many merchants and middlemen who moved to Bucharest, Romania, at the start of the Russo-Turkish War in 1877. When he arrived, he joined the nascent professional Yiddish-language theater troupe of Abraham Goldfaden. Following disagreements with Goldfaden, Rosenberg and his countryman Jacob Spivakovsky assembled a new travelling troupe and travelled around the eastern part of Romania. The troupe was initially successful, but much of their Yiddish-speaking audience returned to Russia at the end of the war, and they eventually returned destitute to Odessa, where there was a ready audience of those who had already seen Yiddish theater in Romania during the war. In spring 1878, Rosenberg obtained some funding and formed a troupe including Spivakovsky; Broder singers "Schmul with the Hoarse Throat", "Boris Budgoy" (Boris Holtzerman), Laizer Duke, Aaron Schrage; Jacob Adler, at that time new to performing; Sophia (Sonya) Oberlander, who later married Adler; Masha Moskovich, whom Adler in his memoir describes as "a red-gold-haired beauty"; and various others, including singers from a local synagogue choir. Their first performance was at Akiva's restaurant, and consisted of two light vaudevilles and Goldfaden's very early play, The Recruits. The cast was all male, because the two women were unhappy with the venue; this issue was solved by renting the Remesleni Club, an 800-seat theater that had hosted many German-language performances, where they played Goldfaden's Grandmother and Granddaughter with another Broder singer, Weinstein, as the grandmother and Masha Moskovich as the granddaughter. After several more productions in Odessa, including Breindele Cossack starring Jacob Adler and Sonya Oberlander (then performing under the name Sonya Michelson), their run was cut short by the news that Goldfaden, whose plays they were using without permission, was coming to Odessa with his troupe, and had booked the Remesleni Club from under them. Goldfaden later said that he was coming there at the urging of his father, while Adler attributes it to Rosenberg and Spivakovsky's "enemies". Rosenberg hired Goldfaden's watchmaker brother Naphtal, renamed his troupe "the Goldfaden Company", and left Odessa to tour the hinterland, with Sonya's brother Alexander as an advance man. In Kherson, a granary was adapted into a theater by a wealthy retired soldier, Lipitz