Shlomo Ettinger

Solomon Ettinger (1802 – 1856) was a 19th-century Yiddish- and Hebrew-language playwright, poet and writer of songs and fables whose emblematic play Serkele has remained a classic of the Yiddish theatre. His given name has appeared variously as Salomon or Shlomo or Shloyme and his family name has also been rendered as Ettingher.

Ettinger was born in Warsaw; after being orphaned at an early age, he was raised in Łęczna by a paternal uncle, Mendel Ettinger, a rabbi who was proficient in German, and open to allowing his nephew to explore aspects of the Enlightenment as part of his education.

At the age of 15, Solomon Ettinger entered into an arranged marriage with Golda, the daughter of magnate Judah Leib Wolf, of Zamość. The young couple moved to Zamość, and lived with Golda's parents. There Ettinger came under the influence of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment movement.

By 1795, Poland had been partitioned between Prussia, Russia and Austria. Zamość was in the Austrian partition, but the residents spoke primarily Polish and the Zamość had a large Jewish population.

Eventually, he traveled to the big town of the Austrian partition, the primarily Polish-Ukrainian city of Lviv, to study medicine at its renowned University. After years of learning, he graduated with a medical degree and returned to his native region, but was unable to practice as a physician. By 1832 the city of Zamość, where Ettinger now lived, had been incorporated into the Russian partition, the most intolerant of the three. Anti-Jewish pogroms were frequent and Ettinger's degree was declared invalid, because it came from an ostensibly foreign institution.

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