Theatre
God of Vengeance
Got fun nekome
Sholem Asch · 1907
Synopsis
In a Jewish town in Poland, Yankl Tshaptshovitsh runs a brothel on the ground floor of his house; upstairs, with his wife Soreh, a former prostitute, he raises their daughter Rivkele in isolation from everything, without letting her go downstairs or form ties with anyone. To gain respectability and protect her purity, he has a Torah scroll written, which he installs in the girl's room, and seeks to marry her to a yeshiva student. But Rivkele falls in love with Manke, one of the girls from the floor below.
Context
Written in 1906, the play was premiered in German on 19 March 1907 at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, under the title Gott der Rache, with Rudolf Schildkraut in the role of Yankl, and remained on the bill until September. It was then performed in Russian in Saint Petersburg and translated into about ten languages. In New York, its English version, which came from the Provincetown Playhouse, moved to Broadway in February 1923; on 6 March, the company and the producer Harry Weinberger were indicted for obscenity, and the conviction was overturned on appeal.
Who it is for
A play in three acts, in Yiddish; the first love scene between two women in the Yiddish repertoire.
Prizes and reception
The author's most famous and most controversial play, the first Yiddish play performed throughout Europe.
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