Jacob Gordin

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.

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.

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).

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.