A SHAYNA MAIDEL : A Play

New York, NY: New American Library, 1988. Book Club (BCE/BOMC) Edition . Hardcover. Near Fine/Very Good. Text/BRAND NEW & Bright. Light gray boards w/red spine lettering/Fine. DJ/VG; sound w/edge rubs & closed tears. Outstanding 2-Act play of a Jewish family, unfied after years apart by the Holocaust First performed 1985. 94 pgs with b/w photos. One of Barbara Lebow's (1936 -) earliest plays and among the most frequently performed. "A shayna maidel" is a popular Yiddish term meaning "a pretty girl"; note, however, "shayna" also describes that which is dear, good, radiant and kind. Penned with a review from Lily Baxter to ensure the "flair, intonation & quality" of Yiddish terms use in the dialogue were properly employed. Author hopes audience/reader to sense the "endearment, adoration and hope, the precious nature of a child, of feeling for the future" exhibited by all characters, of whom. only Rose speaks in perfect American diction. Two characters are long parted sisters, one raised in America since the age of four, and the other having only known Poland, to be united after World War II, in 1946 New York. First produced in 1985. A saga of the Weiss family. Polish Jews of the Holocaust. It begins in a Polish shtetl in 1876 with the birth of the patriarch Mordechai Weiss; significant for he was a baby that never cried, foreshadowing resiliency A memory play set in 3 periods --- the birth of Mordechai, the reunion his two long separated daughters (Rose White and Lusia Weiss Pechenik), and Lusia's flashbacks of her life in Poland both before and after Auschwitz. Lusia arrives in America aided by humanitarian societies, the father, Mordechai, decides Luisa is to lodge with younger sister Rose --- who has changed her name from Rayzel Weiss to Rose White, and is no longer kosher --- while Luisa agonizes over the husband left behind in Europe. A family of strangers.