TUR BROTHERS

TUR BROTHERS, pseudonym of Leonid Davydovich Tubelski (1905–1961) and Peter Lvovich Ryzhey (1908– ), Soviet Russian playwrights. Both were originally newspapermen, and some of their plays were written in collaboration with Lev Romanovich Sheinin (1906–1967), a lawyer by training. Most have swiftly moving plots, and many deal with political intrigue and the struggle against criminal elements. A number of their plays have Jewish protagonists. Noteworthy among these is Komu psodchinyayetsya vremya ("To Whom Time Bows," 1946), written by all three authors, which portrays a Jewish watchmaker in Nazi-occupied Russia. This central character, an anti-Nazi resistance fighter, is deeply attached to Jewish tradition and is shown observing the Passover festival. An earlier play by the same authors (Neravny brak, "The Misalliance," 1940), was set in what had been a Jewish shtetl in the Pale of Settlement. A visiting American millionaire does not recognize the town which his father has described to him: gone are the traditional Jewish occupations, even the matchmaker has become a bookkeeper in a collective farm, and no Soviet Jewish girl is interested in marrying an American Jewish capitalist. (Maurice Friedberg)