Jane Rose (dramatist)

Jane Rose (Yiddish: דזשעין ראוז; née Tsukerman) (c. 1880–July 14, 1927) was a Yiddish dramatist and theater activist.

She was born to a well-off family. At the age of 16, she emigrated to the United States, where she found work in a shop in New York and quickly learned the English language. Thanks to her brother, a dentist and activist in Jewish socialist and anarchist circles, she became a passionate socialist. She gained familiarity with Yiddish literature. She married her compatriot, Abel Rose, who was a member of the most important Yiddish drama circles.^[1]

She became active in the Progresiv dramatik klub (Progressive Drama Club). Around 1910, she began to write in Yiddish and English, mostly in dramatic form. She published her English one-act plays in the Sunday editions of the socialist newspaper The Call. Her Yiddish one-acters were published in the anarchist newspaper Fraye Arbeter Shtime.^[1]

From 1912 on, she lived in Cleveland. There, she turned her house into a center for Yiddish literature and drama. She also helped to found a Yiddish drama society, in which she directed and also acted. In 1919, she became seriously ill and was paralyzed and bed-ridden until she died on July 14, 1927.^[1]

In 1918, Rose's seven one-act plays were published in a collected volume, with a foreword by Joel Entin (1875–1959).^[2]

• Jane Rose in Leksikon fun der Nayer Yidisher Literatur