Unlike the Greeks and Romans, in ancient times the Jews did not have an original theatrical art. The enthusiasm of part of the Jewish society for the theater caused a sharp protest from the rabbis, who viewed it as idolatry. However, this did not prevent the gradual formation of the Jewish national theater, which was based both on its own sources of folklore and on borrowings from other peoples. In this process, at the first stage, only European Jewry was involved, who lived in countries that preserved and continued the traditions of the stage art of antiquity.
The origins of Jewish theater originate from folk spectacles, often associated with biblical stories, primarily Purim spiel (performances during the Jewish holiday of Purim). Theaters existed as traveling troupes for a long time. One of the most important prerequisites for the emergence of the Jewish professional theater was the emergence of drama in the Yiddish language, which appeared thanks to the activities of maskilim (champions of secular knowledge, which they sought to spread among Jews with the help of Jewish literature; supporters of the Haskalah enlightenment movement).
In the second half of the 18th century the broderzingers (translated from Yiddish – “singers from Brody”) appeared in Jewish communities, which got their name from the city of Brody in Galicia, which was at that time an important point of international transit trade and one of the centers of Haskalah The central place in the repertoire of Broder singers was the performance of songs, which was accompanied by dramatic acting, showing their plot with the use of make-up and dressing. With the decline of Brody's commercial importance in the 1870s, the broderzingers began to look for money in the cities of Romania, Austria-Hungary and the Russian border of settlement, thereby spreading their performing style far beyond the borders of Galicia, which found followers. Performers of this type, who were called folk singers, appeared in various places in Eastern Europe, in particular in the south of the Russian Empire – in Odesa and Chisinau. Many broderzingers became the first actors of the professional Jewish theater.
The creation of A.Goldfaden's professional troupe, which played its first performance in October 1876 in the city of Iasi (now Romania), is considered to be the beginning of the history of the Jewish theater. A.Goldfaden's activities combined all theatrical professions: actor, director, theater artist, entrepreneur and playwright. His plays were a great success with the public and were readily performed by Jewish troupes. Around the same time, a performance of a traveling troupe took place in Berdychev– “Jewish concert under the direction of A.Fishzon”. Due to the strengthening of restrictions in the Russian Empire since the 1880s, many Jewish actors emigrated or toured abroad, mainly in Galicia. In 1889, the stationary Jewish theater of Y.Gimpel was opened in Lviv, which existed until the beginning of World War II. After the events of 1905, bans on using the “languages of the local peoples” and regarding the Jewish theater were lifted, which led to the appearance of several new troupes. In 1908, a Jewish theater was opened in Odessa, the founder of which was P.Hirshbein. One of the best was the troupe of the Jewish Theater in Warsaw, where outstanding actresses E.-R. and I.Kaminski. Jewish theatrical art received official status in Ukraine only after the February Revolution of 1917.