LERNER, JOSEPH JUDAH

LERNER, JOSEPH JUDAH (1849–1907), writer, dramatist, and scholar. Born in Berdichev (Ukraine) he contributed from an early age to the Hebrew, Russian, and Yiddish press. During the Russo-Turkish war he published Zapiski Grazhdanina, a Russian paper in Bucharest, emphasizing the Jewish contribution to that war. There he met Goldfaden's Yiddish theatrical troupe, and on his return to Odessa started a company of his own, intending to raise standards in both the language and content of Jewish plays. Earning his living as an unqualified lawyer, he often came into contact with the world of crime and, at times, became involved in precarious transactions to the extent that in 1873 he was temporarily compelled to seek asylum in Vienna. Among the plays he translated and adapted were Uriel Acosta (1885) by Gutzkow, and The Jewess (1889) by Scribe. With the ban on the Jewish theater in 1883, Lerner returned to his journalistic and literary career, and contributed to the major Russian newspapers. He became a convert to Christianity in the 1890s. His works include a novel about Jewish life in Russia, Yamim mi-Kedem (1868); a Jewish history in Yiddish, Di Yidishe Geshikhte; and a study in Russian of the Jews in New Russia, Yevrei v Novorossiskom Kraie, which was based on the archives of the former governor-general of New Russia.

bibliography:

E.R. Malachi, Massot u-Reshimot (1937), 71–75; Borovoy, in: Filologishe Shriftn, 3 (1929), 472–84; B. Gorin, Geshikhte fun Yidishn Teater, 1 (1929), 227–36; Z. Zylbercweig, Leksikon fun Yidishn Teater, 2 (1934), 1162–68.

[Yehuda Slutsky]