Gorin, Bernard

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GORIN, BERNARD

GORIN, BERNARD (pseudonym of Isaac Goido ; 1868–1925), Yiddish playwright, translator, editor, and drama critic. Born in Lida (Lithuania), Gorin published his first story, "Zikhroynes fun Kheyder" ("Memoirs From the Ḥeder," 1889), in Mordecai Spektor's Hoyzfraynd, followed by "Shakhne un Shrage" ("Shakhne and Shrage," 1890), in I.L. Peretz's Yidishe Bibliotek. He edited a Yiddish series entitled Kleyne Ertseylungen, which included works by I.L. Peretz and David Pinsky (1893) and translated Dickens's David Copperfield (1894), leaving that same year for New York, where he became active in the literary and theatrical world, contributing to both the Yiddish and English language press. In 1908 he began reviewing plays for the Morgn-Zhurnal. In addition to writing original plays, Gorin adapted numerous foreign language works for the Yiddish stage. He is best known as a historian of the Yiddish theater, his most important work being Di Geshikhte fun Yidishn Teater ("History of the Yiddish Theater," 2 vols., 1918) which lists 2,000 plays produced on the Yiddish stage. In 1927 Gorin's stories were collected and published in three volumes.

bibliography:

Rejzen, Leksikon, 1 (1928), 531–7; Schulman, Geshikhte fun der Yidisher Literatur in Amerike (1943), 110–6; lnyl, s.v.add. bibliography: Sh. Niger, Dertseylers un Romanistn (1946), 154–56.

[Elias Schulman /

Marc Miller (2nd ed.)]

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