The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1920-10-24
rama's Rejuvenation May Be in the Yiddish Theatre
This Language, Young in Literature, May
Serve as an Incubator of New Talent
in Playwright and Actor
By WILLIS STEEL.

it dialect? Is 1t of German or Of Hebrew
origin?
Yiddish is an old, middle high German dia-
lect of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
Luther could understand the tongue. but it
is distinctively Hebrew in its construction
and not German. In it is mixture of
Hebrew and Slavic words and words from
other languages, like Spanish and Portu-
guese and from other countries where Jews
lived centuries ago more or less on suffer-
ance. Upon it is strong impress Of the
Bible.
After Luther's time the Jew in Russia and
Germany stopped speaking Yiddish. but it
continued to be used as an every day tongue
throughout the Slavic countries. Its birth
is legendary and 1t fingered in the daily
speech of Jews living there, as legends are
handed down from father to son. 1t was
not written language.
But 1t Is a written language nowadays,
with fair vocabulary that is constantly
growing, dictionary and grammar. 1t has
already literature that is fifty years old.
That was about the age of our English as
we know 1t when Shakespeare wrote 1t.
The Yfddsh writer's, employing q fresh new
language, whose every word is a concept,
whose symbols have not yet hardened into
conventional, well nigh meaningless forms,
are in the class Of Shakespeare. All they
need to write as freshly as he did is his
talent. Their audience. like the Elizabethan
audiences, is not afraid Of new combinations
of speech, in fact, it likes to make them
for itself exactly as did the staggering sea-
men in Hakluyt's Voyages"
The so-called father of Yiddish was Men
dele Mocher Storm (Mandel the Bookseller)
whose real name was Scholem Jacob Abram-
owitz. He lived and died in Odessa and wrote
stories depicting the sufferings of the Jew
ish people. "The Mare" and "Fichte the
l,nr Ina fx-flin h. 1Ft~x
used the dialogue form he produced no
plays. Scholem Aleichem, who died in New
York recently, a humorist who has been
called the Jewish Mark Twain, figures as
the second writer In the short list of Yid-
dish writers. His piece Hard To Be a
Jew" Is the current bill at the Irving place
Theatre.
These two and J. L. Peretz. who died in
Warsaw at 81 and who is honored by the .
Jews as the father of Jewish letters. are
called the classics of Yiddish literature.
David Pinski is the modern representative
of this literature. His play 1.-THE Treasure"
was brought out lately in this city by the
Theatre Guild.
Pinski's Career
Pinsld was the sixth writer to use Yiddsh
a literary medium. He was born in
Mohileff on the Dneper, where the last
Car signed his abdication. He went to
school in Moscow and later studied in Berlin
On Christmas Day, 1899, he arrived in this
country. Already in the old country he had
some reputation as a playwright, but here
contrary to his hope, the managers of Yid-
dish theatres gave no hospitality to his plays
So he entered Columbia University as a
candidate for Phi. d., intending to become
an instructor in German. The day set for
his final examination found him so engrossed
in the third act OF his tragedy. "The zwei