Solomon Ettinger

One of the most influential Yiddish writers of the early nineteenth century, Solomon (Shloyme) Ettinger was a physician, playwright, and poet, born in Warsaw. A descendant of a prominent rabbinical family, but orphaned at a young age, Ettinger moved between Warsaw, Odessa, Zamosc, and Lemberg in search of economic stability. Wherever he was based, he was active in maskilic circles and devoted to the use of Yiddish to spread the message of Enlightenment to the Jewish masses. While he never saw any of his work published in his lifetime due to Russian censorship, Ettinger distributed his plays, stories, fables, and poems in manuscript form. Although his letters bespeak a life of disappointment and financial hardship, Ettinger was known as “merry Solomon” by his compatriots, an image which has endured in biography and scholarship on the rise of modern Yiddish culture.