WOOG, MAYER

WOOG, MAYER (1833–1896), Yiddish playwright. Born in Hegenheim, Woog was the most representative writer of 19th-century Alsatian Yiddish theater. His comedies of village manners present a Jewish world in tension between tradition and modernity as well as in its relations with the gentile environment.   The plays are characterized by their quadrilingualism (Yiddish-Alsatian, Alsatian, German, and French) and their written form (Gothic script). Their primary themes are marriage (Der Gaasejopper macht Chasene, "The Goat-Seller Marries," 1877), medicine (Bas Jechido, "The Only Daughter," 1884), and market conversation (Schmues-Berjendes, "Gossip," 1880, and Deforim Beteilim leeri Keilim, "Chatter," 1888). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: A. Starck, in: Domaine Yiddish. YOD 31–32 (1990), 145–57; A. Wackenheim, in: La littérature dialectale alsacienne, 1 (1993), 203–55. (Astrid Starck (2nd ed.)