Jacob Michailovitch Gordin was a Russian-American playwright who was very influential in the Yiddish theater movement. Gordin was credited for introducing realism and naturalism to Yiddish theater. He was born in Myrhorod, Russian Empire and was homeschooled. While working on his writings, Gordin also worked as a farmer, a journalist, a shipyard worker in Odessa, and an actor. In July of 1891, Gordin migrated to New York and began working as a journalist for Russian-language newspapers. While in New York, he met Jewish actors Jacob Adler and Sigmund Mogulesko who encouraged Gordin to begin writing plays.
Most of Gordin’s plays focus on the Russian-Jewish experience. His first play, Siberia (1891), was based on the true story of a prisoner who escaped a Siberian prison. His other famous works include The Pogrom in Russia (1892) about the massacre of Jewish people in Russia; and The Jewish King Lear (1892), which was loosely based on Shakespeare’s King Lear and Russian writer Ivan Turgenev’s King Lear of the Steppes and marked a pivotal success for Yiddish theater.
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