Jacob Gordin

Based -- loosely -- on Leo Tolstoy, this film starred feted stage star Nance O'Neil but is rather better remembered as Theda Bara's follow-up to the sensational A Fool There Was (1914).

Directed by Abraham Izaak Kaminski.

Setting off from Vilna to spend his last days in the Holy Land, an arrogant old man spurns the youngest of his three daughters and leaves his fortune in the wrong hands.

The last Yiddish feature made in Poland before WWII, this 1939 film is based on a 1907 play by the prolific playwright Jacob Gordin. Living in poverty in Kazimierz Dolny, the Rywkin family sees the father emigrate to the U.S. in search of a better life, where, after years of hard work and loneliness, he meets Bessie, a nightclub singer who helps him reunite with his family from Poland.

Based on a play by Jacob Gordin, God, Man and Devil centers on a wager between God and Satan that has dire consequences. Beware, the film cautions, when money sounds sweeter than music.

Mirele Efros, "the Jewish Queen Lear," was the masterpiece of Ukrainian-born Jacob Gordin, an enormously influential Yiddish playwright whose works sought to describe and promulgate the ethos of mentshlekhkeyt: the practice of honesty, decency, and devotion toward family and community. This sophisticated version of his stage classic faithfully recreates Jewish life in turn-of-the-century Grodno, Poland.

Directed by Nahum Lipowski.

Directed by Andrzej Marek.

Directed by Abraham Izaak Kaminski.

There was Hersh Dubrown - a quiet, god-fearing, poor and virtuous scribe of holy books. And behold, his house became a battlefield between Good and Evil. The good was based on Hersz Dubrown's pure soul - and Satan reached for this soul. He lost her and corrupted her with money. . . Satan first appeared as a lottery ticket seller. He persuaded Hersz to buy a lottery ticket, let him win and get rich. And Hersz for winning the lottery - tempted by Satan - sets up a factory and produces mechanically. . . tallit. Satan, in the form of the merchant Uriel Mazyk, ruins the homeworkers who make tallits by hand. But Satan cannot defeat Hersh Dubrown. When he was up to his ears in sins, he punishes himself - he commits suicide.

A Yiddish silent film drama that was created by the Siła-kino film company. It was released in cinemas in December 1911 under the Polish title Macocha.

Directed by Abraham Izaak Kaminski (Avrom Yitskhok Kaminsky)

Adaptation of the Jacob Gordin play.