lower classes. Writing of Sigmund Mogulesko's troupe in Romania in 1884, and probably referring to the plays of Moses Horowitz and Joseph Lateiner, Moses Gaster wrote that Yiddish theatre "represents scenes from our history known by only a tiny minority, refreshing, therefore, secular memory" and "shows us our defects, which we have like all men, but not with a tendency to strike at our own immorality with a tendency towards ill will, but only with an ironic spirit that does not wound us, as we are wounded by representations on other stages, where the Jew plays a degrading role." Goldfaden's plays ultimately formed a canon of Yiddish theater, and were performed continuously for over fifty years; in the theatre world they were reverently regarded as a kind of "Torah from Sinai", and the characters of the plays permeated Jewish cultural life over several generations. Yiddish theatre in Russia If Yiddish theatre was born in Romania, its youth occurred in Imperial Russia, largely in what is now Ukraine. Israel Rosenberg's troupe (which later had a series of managers, including Goldfaden's brother Tulya, and which at one point split in two, with one half led by actor Jacob Adler) gave Russia's first professional Yiddish theatre performance in Odessa in 1878. Goldfaden himself soon came to Odessa, pushing Rosenberg's troupe into the provinces, and Osip Mikhailovich Lerner and N.M. Sheikevitch also founded a Yiddish theatre at Odessa, which for several years became the capital of Yiddish theatre. Russia offered a more sophisticated audience than rural Romania: many Russian Jews were regular attendees of Russian-language theatre, and Odessa was a first-rate theatre city. In this context, serious melodramatic operettas, and even straight plays, took their place in the repertoire among the lighter vaudevilles and comedies that had thus far predominated. All three major troupes in Odessa did their own productions of Karl Gutzkow's play Uriel Acosta (with Goldfaden's production being an operetta). However, even this increased sophistication could not compare to later, more ambitious efforts of the Yiddish theater. Looking back on this period, although acknowledging certain of Goldfaden's plays from this era as "masterpieces", Jacob Adler saw this as a period of relative mediocrity compared to what came later. "For three years I... wandered in the cave of the Witch and the motley of Shmendrick and what did I really know of my trade?" he describes himself as thinking in 1883. "If someday