Playbill of the "Jewish King Lear" (Dorot Jewish Division: NYPL)

Name:  JACOB MIKHAILOVICH GORDIN (1853-1909)

Born: RUSSIA

Occupation: PLAYWRIGHT

Jacob Adler summoned Jacob Gordin from Russia to New York City in the 1891 when New York was crying for a more realistic Yiddish theatre.  Gordin was strongly influenced by 19th century Russian literature.  Gordin had never even seen a Yiddish play before he arrived in New York where he was commissioned by Adler, who was loved Russian-speaking playwrights, to write a play.  The result was Siberia, produced in 1891 with Adler as the lead, which shocked an audience that was unprepared for “realism”, but left the actors and audience members sobbing together in the theatre.  Gordin soon became a central presence in Yiddish theatre, lasting him two decades until his death in 1909.  Gordin also wrote the Jewish King Lear, God, Man, and Devil, Two Worlds, The Wild Man, Pogrom, The Lurie Brothers from Lithuania, An Enemy of the People, Jewish Queen Lear, The Slaughter, The Oath,The Bastard, The Kreutzer Sonata, The Truth, Family Purity, The True Power Resurrection, The Stranger, The Worthless, The Foreigner, Homeless, David the Choir Singer