Dinah Shtettin (a.k.a. Dina Stettin and Dinah Feinman (דיינע פיינמאן); c. 1869-1946) was an English Yiddish theater actress.
Shtettin was the second wife of Jacob Adler, with whom she had a daughter, Celia Adler, in 1889.
Early life
Dinah was born in Poland to strict Orthodox Jewish parents. As a young child, her family moved to London. She began her theatrical career as a teenager in the chorus of Israel Grodner's London troupe in the mid-1880s, eventually winning small parts and joining the troupe when the Grodners went to Paris.
When she was about sixteen, she met Jacob Adler, then a widower, who took a liking to her. At this time, he was in a relationship with Jenny ("Jennya") Kaiser, whom he had become romantically involved with while his first wife, Sonya, was still alive. Adler and Kaiser had a son, Charles.
Dinah Shtettin's father disapproved of both Adler and the theater, but did not restrict his daughter's wishes. He stated, "Let it be a divorce tomorrow, but marriage it must be!" The couple married in 1887, after which Adler and his troupe travelled to the United States. After he returned to London for seven months, he once again journeyed to New York in 1889 and was shortly followed by Dinah. Their daughter Celia was born in New York later that year.
Shtettin divorced Adler when he eloped with Sara Heine two years later in 1891. Despite acrimony between them, Shtettin went on to perform with Adler's troupe on the American Yiddish stage. She also travelled back to London to act to great popularity; in 1909, a woman was crushed to death in the effort to get the best seats to see her at the London Pavilion.
Shtettin later married playwright and actor Siegmund Feinman and they raised Celia together. Celia took her stepfather's surname in childhood, but took her father's name in her career, becoming a leading actress on the Yiddish stage. Shtettin and Feinman had another daughter, actress Lillie Feinman, who married Yiddish actor Ludwig Satz. Siegmund Feinman died in 1909.
Stage career
Dinah Shtettin's New York debut was in the role of Fanya, the villain's daughter, in Jacob Gordin's Siberia (1892). Commercially unsuccessful at the time, this first play of Gordin's is now considered a landmark in the evolution of Yiddish theater.
References
External links
Adler Family Papers.; P-890; American Jewish Historical Society, Boston, MA and New York, NY.