King Lear of the Remittances: Eldercare on the American Yiddish Stage

• In Event: Eldercare and Its Impossibilities

Abstract

Shakespeare’s King Lear and its adaptations by Turgenev (King Lear of the Steppes, 1870) and Zola (Land, 1887) depict eldercare work by resident children, but the Tolstoyan Yiddish playwright Jacob Gordin’s dramas, The Jewish King Lear (1892) and Mirele Efros: The Jewish Queen Lear (1898), explore care work when parents and children live apart. Rumor had that on Monday mornings after his plays were performed, banks on New York’s Lower East Side were full of immigrant children sending money to their parents overseas. This paper situates Gordin’s work in the context of such remittances; it posits that he offered audiences ways to fantasize about providing adequate care to parents and children in spite of geographical and other barriers.

Author

• Gabriella Safran, Stanford U