Gordin, Jacob Mikhailovich [key], 1853–1909, American writer of Yiddish plays, b. Russia. He was for some years a teacher and a newspaper writer in St. Petersburg, Odessa, and elsewhere. In 1880 he founded the Bible Brotherhood, a reform movement of Judaism. After the movement was suppressed, he left Russia in 1891 for the United States. In New York City he found the Yiddish stage in need of good plays, and for the rest of his life he wrote (more than 70), translated, and adapted plays in the vernacular. Among the best of these were Siberia; God, Man, and the Devil; The Jewish King Lear; The Jewish Sappho; and The Kreutzer Sonata (an English translation was produced in 1907). His collected plays were published (1910) in Yiddish in New York.
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