David Pinski (Yiddish: דוד פּינסקי; April 5, 1872 – August 11, 1959) was a Yiddish language writer, probably best known as a playwright. At a time when Eastern Europe was only beginning to experience the Industrial Revolution, Pinski was the first to introduce to its stage a drama about urban Jewish workers; a dramatist of ideas, he was notable also for writing about human sexuality with a frankness previously unknown to Yiddish literature. He was also notable among early Yiddish playwrights in having stronger connections to German language literary traditions than Russian.

Early life

He was born in Mogilev, in the Russian Empire (present-day Belarus), and was raised in nearby Vitebsk. At first destined for a career as a rabbi, he had achieved an advanced level in Talmudic studies by the age of 10. At 19 he left home, originally intending to study medicine in Vienna, Austria, but a visit to I.L. Peretz in Warsaw (then also under Russian control, now the capital of Poland) convinced him to pursue a literary career instead. He briefly began studies in Vienna (where he also wrote his first significant short story, "Der Groisser Menshenfreint"—"The Great Philanthropist"), but soon returned to Warsaw, where he established a strong reputation as a writer and as an advocate of Labor Zionism, before moving to Berlin, Germany in 1896 and to New York City in 1899.

He pursued a doctorate at Columbia University; however, in 1904, having just completed his play Family Tsvi on the day set for his Ph.D. examination, he failed to show up for the exam, and never finished the degree.

During this same period, the one-act messianic tragedy Der Eybiker Yid (The Eternal Jew, 1906) is set at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple. A messiah is born on the same day as the destruction of the Temple, but borne away in a storm; a prophet must wander the Earth searching for him. In Moscow, in 1918 this was to be the first play ever performed by the Habima Theater, now the national theater of Israel. He revisited a similar theme in 1919 in Der Shtumer Meshiekh (The Mute Messiah); he would revisit messianic themes in further plays about Simon Bar-Kokhba, Shlomo Molcho, and Sabbatai Zevi.

His work took a new turn with the highly allegorical Di Bergshtayger (The Mountain Climbers, 1912); the "mountain" in question is life itself.

During the period between the World Wars, he wrote numerous plays, mostly on biblical subjects, but continuing to engage with many of his earlier themes. For example, King David and His Wives (1923) looks at the biblical David at various points in his life: a proud, naively idealistic, pious youth; a confident warrior; a somewhat jaded monarch; and finally an old man who, seeing his youthful glory reflected in the beautiful Abishag, chooses not to marry her, so he can continue to see that idealized reflection. During this period, Pinski also undertook a large and fanciful fiction project: to write a fictional portrait of each of King Solomon's thousand wives; between 1921 and 1936, he completed 105 of these stories.

During this period he also undertook the major novels Arnold Levenberg: Der Tserisener Mentsh (Arnold Levenberg: The Split Personality, begun 1919) and The House of Noah Edon which was published in English translation in 1929; the Yiddish original was published in 1938 by the Wydawnictvo ("Publishers") Ch. Brzozo, Warsaw. The former centers on an Uptown, aristocratic German Jew, who is portrayed as an overefined and decadent, crossing paths with, but never fully participating in, the important events and currents of his time. An English translation by Isaac Goldberg was published in 1928 by Simon and Schuster. The latter is a multi-generational saga of a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant family, an interpretation of assimilation modeled on Peretz's Four Generations—Four Testaments.

Emigration

In 1949 he emigrated to the new state of Israel where he wrote a play about Samson and one about King Saul. However, this was a period in which Yiddish theater barely existed anywhere (even less so than today), and these were not staged.

References

Sources

  • Liptzin, Sol, A History of Yiddish Literature, Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, , 84 et. seq., 136 et. seq.
  • Papers of David Pinski.; RG 204; YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, NY.
  • David Pinski (1872-1959) Papers.; P-649; American Jewish Historical Society, New York, NY.
  • Pinski visits Vilna and joins the debate between Yiddish and Hebrew supporters