yiddish theater was at the height of its popularity in the 1920s and even into the 1930s, when yiddish theater attendance had already started to decrease, the union claimed a robust membership and there was enough of an audience to maintain quite a few yiddish theaters throughout the country. a variety of factors, including the great depression, the continued acculturation of the american jewish population and the movement of jewish audiences towards broadway and motion pictures and the lack of new audiences that accompanied the end of immigration combined to erode the audience for the yiddish theater. theaters began to close, theatrical seasons were cut short and several of the biggest stars of the yiddish theater left for the non-yiddish stage or hollywood.