Dinah Shtettin

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Dinah Shtettin (later Dinah Adler and Dinah Feinman; first name sometimes given as Dina, maiden name sometimes given as Stettin) was a prominent Yiddish theater actress. She was the second wife of Jacob Adler, with whom she had a daughter, Celia; they divorced, and she married Siegmund Feinman. Contrary to the custom of the time, she and Adler remained friends even after their divorce.

The daughter of Polish Jews, Shtettin had a strict Orthodox Jewish upbringing in London. She began her theatrical career in the chorus of Israel Grodner's London troupe in the mid-1880s, eventually getting small parts, and joining Adler's troupe when the Grodners went to Paris. Adler, then a widower, quickly took a liking to her. At this time, he was already involved with Jenny ("Jennya") Kaiser, whom he had become romantically involved with while his first wife, Sonya, was still alive, and by whom he had had a son. Her father approved neither of theater nor of Adler, but did little to restrict his daughter's wishes. He cynically stated, "Let it be a divorce tomorrow, but marriage it must be!" They were married in 1887, and he left with the troupe to travel to the United States. After a seven month return to London, he once again journeyed to New York in 1889, and was shortly followed by Dinah.

Her New York debut was in the role of Fanya, the villain's daughter, in Jacob Gordin's Siberia (1892). Commercially unsuccessful at the time, this first play of Gordin's is now considered a landmark in the evolution of Yiddish Theater.

[edit] References

• Adler, Jacob, A Life on the Stage: A Memoir, translated and with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld, Knopf, New York, 1999, ISBN 0-679-41351-0. 261, 302-303.