Messiahs of 1933: how playwright Moishe Nadir and Artef led America out of the Great Depression to a future of full employment, justice and Yiddish satire for all -- Nadir's Rivington Street: the Lower East Side arises -- Prayer boxes as precious as diamonds: how Soviet Yiddish satire fared in America -- The federal theatre project in Yiddish: "the sorely perplexed society" takes the stage -- The messiah of 1936: It can't happen here in Yiddish -- Pinski's prelude to a golden age: the tailor becomes a storekeeper chapter -- Menasha Skulnik becomes a bridegroom: popular Yiddish theatre reconsidered -- Prosperity's crisis on stage: the Yiddish puppetry of Maud and Cutler -- Leo Fuchs, Yiddish vaudevillian in "trouble" -- Yetta Zwerling's comic dybbuk -- Menachem Mendel's false profits: Sholom Aleichem and the Communists -- The "anti-milkhome zamlung" of 1937: the Yiddish anti-war catalogue reconsidered -- Conclusion: still waiting for the messiah
