Nahma Sandrow, ed. God, Man, and Devil: Yiddish Plays in Translation. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1999. xii, 321 pp.; Robert Skloot, ed. The Theater of the Holocaust. Vol.II. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. viii, 407 pp.

Abstract

It has been a quarter century since the last collections of Yiddish plays were published in America: Joseph Landis' Great Jewish Plays and David Lifson's Epic and Folk Plays of the Yiddish Theater. As Sandrow informs us in the “Appendixes,” translations of a few individual plays are found in scholarly journals or mostly out-of-print books. For this reason alone, the beautiful new volume from Syracuse is a welcome arrival. Another reason is Sandrow's insightful introductions to the five plays featured: Jacob Gordin, God, Man, and Devil; Peretz Hirshbein, Green Fields; H. Levick, Shop; David Pinsky, The Treasure; and Osip Dimov, Bronx Express. Her remarks touch on the works' stage history detailing who played what role, and how the plays fared on various European and American stages.