B. Gorin

Bernard Chaimovich Gorin (; April 13, 1868 – April 13, 1925) was a Russian-born Jewish-American Yiddish playwright, journalist, and translator.

Life

Gorin was born on April 13, 1868, in Lida, Vilna Governorate, the son of an observant and well-to-do family.

Gorin received a traditional Jewish education in Lida and in the Mir Yeshiva. He moved to Vilna when he was sixteen to get a secular education. He moved to Warsaw when he was twenty-one and began his literary activities. While living in Warsaw, he contributed stories to the ''Yiddishe Bibliothek'' (which was edited by I. L. Peretz and Jacob Dinezon) and to Ben-Avigdor's Hebrew juvenile periodical ''Sifre Agorah''. He returned to Vilna when he was twenty-five and published a series of ''Kleine Erzehlungen'' that contained several of his own creations. When he was a young man in Vilna, he attended a Yiddish teacher's institute but lost his interest in it after befriending Isaac Mayer Dick. His first story, "Zikhroynes fun Kheyder" ("Memoirs From the Ḥeder"), was published in Mordecai Spector's ''Hoyzfraynd'' in 1889.

Gorin experienced failures in Vilna, mainly through interference from censors that delayed his publication in every possible way. He left for Berlin to attend lectures in the university there. He immigrated to America shortly afterwards, and in 1895 he became editor of a Philadelphia Yiddish newspaper. He then went to New York City, where he published the "Jewish American Popular Library," a collection of short stories. Most of his sketches were published in the ''Arbeiterzeitung'' and ''Dos Abend Blatt''. He initially wrote only short sketches in the style of the Russian writer Shchedrin, but he soon followed the example of other American writers and focused on writing reviews, popularizing science, and translating foreign authors. He began translating ''David Copperfield'' while in Russia, and in America came to translate works from Chekhov, Daudet, Maupassant, Sienkiewicz, Korolenko, Dostoyevsky, Bourget, Garshin, Potapenko, and many German and English novelists.

Gorin edited the ''Jüdisch-Amerikanische Volksbibliothek'', the ''Neuer Geist'' in 1898, and the ''Theater Journal'' from 1901 to 1903. He also translated works from Zola, Hawthorne, Prévost, and various Russian authors. He wrote a number of stories about Yiddish New York and the Russian Jewish conditions in the city. One of his most notable stories was "Yom Kippur," which was about a Russian Jewish woman who immigrates to America and becomes influenced to forsake her religious practices until she eats on Yom Kippur.

Gorin began writing for ''The Forward'' in 1904. He joined the staff of the ''Jewish Morning Journal'' two years later and stayed with that paper for the rest of his life. He also wrote drama for the monthly ''Zukunft''. He was associated with the Yiddish theater and wrote several plays, including ''Der Vilner Balebesl'' in 1898, ''Baruch Spinoza'' in 1902, ''Lebedike Keiten'' in 1910, ''A Baron oif a Tog'' in 1912, and ''In Yeden Hous'' in 1912 (although it was produced in 1924). He also produced and dramatized the works of other Yiddish playwrights. In 1918 and 1923, he published the two-volume ''Geshichte fun Yiddishen Theater'', a source book for the history of Yiddish drama with 2,000 Yiddish plays by title, author, and year of publication.

Gorin died on April 13, 1925. He was buried in the Workmen's Circle section of Mount Carmel Cemetery. In 1927, his widow Elizabeth published three volumes of his collected writings with a full biography.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gorin, B.
1868 births
1925 deaths
People from Lida
Writers from Vilnius
Jewish writers from the Russian Empire
Emigrants from the Russian Empire to the United States
Translators to Yiddish
Yiddish-language journalists
Yiddish-language playwrights
19th-century American Jews
20th-century American Jews
Jewish American journalists
Jewish American dramatists and playwrights
American male journalists
Editors of Pennsylvania newspapers
Journalists from New York City
Editors of New York City newspapers
19th-century American newspaper editors
20th-century American newspaper editors
19th-century American translators
20th-century American translators
19th-century American dramatists and playwrights
20th-century American dramatists and playwrights
American male dramatists and playwrights
Burials in New York (state)