Relocating Jewish Culture in <span class='italic'>The Yiddish King Lear</span> (1934)

doi:10.1017/9781108589727.010

Chapter 10 - Relocating Jewish Culture in The Yiddish King Lear (1934)

from Part IV - Lear on the Loose: Migrations and Appropriations of Lear

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2019

Jacek Fabiszak

Edited by

Victoria Bladen ,

Sarah Hatchuel and

Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin

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Victoria Bladen: Affiliation:
University of Queensland
Sarah Hatchuel: Affiliation:
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier
Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin: Affiliation:
Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier

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Summary

The Yiddish King Lear, directed by Harry Tomashefsky in 1934, is an 80-minute American movie in Yiddish with English subtitles. It is based on a play in Yiddish (Der Yudisher Kenig Lir) by Jacob Gordin, a Russian Jewish playwright and poet, written in 1892. Its cultural significance lies in the play’s reviving Jewish theatre and the film’s contributing to the development of Yiddish cinema. Gordin rewrote Shakespeare’s play most probably in order to put Jewish theatre onto more serious tracks, whereas Tomashefsky revived it as part ‘of the Federal Theatre Project’s Yiddish Unit, created under a plan to put unemployed Yiddish actors back to work at the height of the Great Depression’ (Joel Schechter). The chapter tries to answer a number of questions linked with adaptation strategies concerning both Gordin’s play and Tomashefsky’s film: how does Shakespeare’s text inform the fictional world of the Jewish quarter in Vilna? How are tradition and change reflected in the film? What place does the film occupy in cinema in Yiddish? What status does the film enjoy in adaptation theory? Finally, what kind of Shakespeare derivative does it constitute?

Keywords

Yiddish King Lear adaptation appropriation Poland Harry Tomashefsky Jacob Gordin

Type: Chapter
Information: Shakespeare on Screen: King Lear , pp. 157 - 170

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108589727.010 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

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