Purim Eve, a One-Act Comedy

Born in Shat (Shaty) in the Russian Empire (today Šėta, Lithuania), Mordechai Manes Monassowitz was an educator and writer. He founded a school in Libau (today Liepāja, Latvia) and wrote poems, essays, and plays, especially didactic ones. He immigrated around 1919 to New York City, where he worked as an educator.

Born in Bulgaria, Nissim Natan Catalan was a translator and editor of theatrical dramas, a Hebrew teacher, and a journalist. His Ladino translation of Mordechai Monassowitz’s Neshef Purim (1902) was printed in Kazanlik, Bulgaria, in 1909. Catalan’s translation includes adaptations for his Ladino-speaking surroundings. In 1910, he published a Ladino translation of another play, El estado deplorable del profesor žudio en el Oriente en Sinema , in Edirne. Catalan later settled in Mexico, where he died. According to his great-grandson, he was also a rabbi.