{{italic title}} {{More footnotes needed|date=August 2021}} '''''Doctor Almasaro, or The Jews of Palermo''''' ([[Yiddish]]: '''''Doctor Almasaro, oder Die Yiden in Palermo''''') is a historical, dramatic play in rhymed couplets by [[Abraham Goldfaden]], written some time between 1880 and 1883. The title character's name is also variously rendered as Doctor Almasado, Doctor Almaraso, and Doctor Almasada.
[[Jacob Pavlovich Adler|Jacob Adler]] describes it as being written in "pure, simple Yiddish", avoiding the tendency of many Yiddish historical plays of its time to "[[German language|Germanize]]" the Yiddish, especially for [[Gentile]] characters, a practice comparable to using many words of [[Latin]] origin in one's English. Adler criticizes it for its lack of "strong monologues", "powerful situations", and "dramatic conflict", but describes it as coming, like ''[[Shulamith (play)|Shulamith]]'' and ''[[Bar Kokhba (play)|Bar Kokhba]]'' from "Goldfaden's best period", and writes that "under the calm of [the title character's] demeanor lay a grand power, a power he has sworn never to use unless all else failed," and characterizes this role as a model for "what I call the 'Grand Jew', that has given my life in the theater its greatest meaning."
==References== * [http://www.4-wall.com/authors/authors_g/goldfaden_abraham.htm], retrieved February 23, 2005, gives the 1880 date. * [[Israil Bercovici|Bercovici, Israil]], ''O sută de ani de teatru evreiesc în România'' ("One hundred years of Yiddish/Jewish theater in Romania"), 2nd Romanian-language edition, revised and augmented by Constantin Măciucă. Editura Integral (an imprint of Editurile Universala), Bucharest (1998). {{ISBN|973-98272-2-5}}. Says the play dates from 1883, which would make it one of the last plays Goldfaden wrote in Russia before Yiddish theater was banned there. * [[Jacob Pavlovich Adler|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}}. 272–274.
[[Category:Yiddish plays]] [[Category:1880s plays]] [[Category:Abraham Goldfaden]]