Lives in the Yiddish Theatre
SHORT BIOGRAPHIES OF THOSE INVOLVED IN THE Yiddish THEATRE
aS DESCRIBED IN zALMEN zYLBERCWEIG'S "lEKSIKON FUN YIDISHN TEATER"

1931-1969
 

Morris (Moshe) Meyer

 

M. was born on 2 January 1878 in the village Darmeneshty (Dărmăneşti), Bakoy (Bacău) district, Rumania, into a Chasidic family. He received a religious education and also learned in a Rumanian school, then in a gymnasium in Bakoy, but due to economic conditions he quit his studies and became a worker in a [plates/sheet=blekher] factory in Bucharest. At the same time he educated himself again as an autodidact, and at the age of eighteen he went on to publish articles about workers and Jewish national matters, as well as skits in the Rumanian language. In 1898 he debuted with songs and skits in Yiddish, and in 1911 he edited in Bucharest a radical unionist weekly page "Dgl mkhnh yehuda", in which he was the first in the Yiddish journalism to develop Poaeli Zion's ideas.

In 1902 he came to England and here became a professional journalist, at first as a fellow worker, then as an editor of various periodical issues. Since 1913 he has been appointed as an editor of the daily London newspaper "Di tseyt" (and from 1914 also of the "Abend neyes").

M. also was involved in a wide-ranging social career and had manifested a special interest for Yiddish theatre: besides his many reviews under his own name and under the pseudonym Shtekheyzen and Kritikus, he also had translated the following plays: "Der bloyer foygl, oybershpil in five acts and ten scenes, translated from the original French by Morris Meyer, issued by

 

the English-Yiddish publisher, London, 1910" [191 pp., 16°], Moliere's "Di Kopetkes Les Precieuses Ridicules, a comedy translated by Morris Meyer, with a scene of [ferfeser] and [forvart] from a translation issued by "Idishen zhurnal", London" [48 pp., 16°] and the one-acters "Number 80" and "Begnadigung" by Herman Heyermans.

Furthermore, M. translated for Zigmunt Feinman Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice [Shylock] and adapted for him the play "Dos sheyne shfrhle" and (from Rumanian) "Journalism and Actors", as well as Gutzkov's "Uriel Akosta" for the Yiddish Folks Theatre in London (1912). All of the translations were performed.

In the "Morris Meyer's Jubilee Supplement" to "Di tseyt" (London, 2 January 1928), M. published his "Ur tsion, prologue to a drama in three acts".

M. also was literary [beyrat] for London's Yiddish Folks Theatre.


M. E.

  • Z. Reyzen -- "Lexicon of the Yiddish Literature", Vol. II, pp. 388-394.

  • "Morris meyers jubileum-beylage", to "Di tseyt", London, 2 January 1928.


 

 

 

 


 

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Adapted from the original Yiddish text found within the  "Lexicon of the Yiddish Theatre" by Zalmen Zylbercweig, Volume 2, page 1299.
 

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