Our Common Language

Born in Vitebsk (today in Belarus), Leon Kobrin first wrote in Russian, but after immigrating to Philadelphia in 1892, he developed an interest in Yiddish. He worked in a variety of trades—selling newspapers, weaving, bread baking, and shirt making—even as he took up Yiddish writing. He published his first story, “A merder oys libe” (A Murder Driven by Love), in 1894, and thereafter wrote hundreds of short stories, some novels, dozens of translations (including works by Zola, de Maupassant, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Gorky, and Tolstoy), and nearly thirty plays. Kobrin is often hailed for helping to elevate Yiddish theater beyond vaudeville to “art theater” and, with Zalman Libin, as the discoverer of the tenement in Yiddish literature. Kobrin’s Children of Nature (1912) was performed at the Moscow Art Theatre in Russian, in Hebrew by Habima, and in Yiddish in America. Kobrin was a staff writer for Der tog for twenty-five years and also contributed to Tsukunft, Forverts, and other Yiddish periodicals. Many of his translations were cowritten with his wife, Pauline.