[6] Its run was cut short on March 8, when the entire cast, producer Harry Weinberger, and one of the owners of the theater were indicted for violating the New York Penal Code, and later convicted on charges of obscenity.
Over the next few years Asch’s “brothel play” was also translated into Polish, Hebrew, English, Italian, French, Dutch, Czech, Swedish, and Norwegian.
In 1912, the Moscow branch of the cinema firm Pathé Frères released a silent film of Got fun nekome with Russian titles.
[10] According to film historian Jay Hoberman, it featured two Yiddish actors, Israel Arko and Misha Fishzon, at the head of a mainly non-Jewish cast.
The play first premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre in 2015,[12] followed by an off-Broadway run in 2016[13] and Broadway debut in 2017[14] for which it was nominated for three and won two Tony Awards.
[15] The play centers around Yankl Tchaptchovitch (Yekel Shepshovitch), a Jewish brothel owner who strives to maintain a façade of piety and respectability.
When Rivkele's involvement with Manke is discovered, Yankl's plans for her future are shattered, and he descends into a desperate attempt to salvage his and his family's honor.
[19] In his adolescence, after moving from the cheder to the beth midrash, Sholem became aware of major social changes in popular Jewish thinking.
At his friend's house, Sholem would explore these new ideas by secretly reading many secular books, which led him to believe himself too worldly to become a Rabbi.
[19] In 1923, Scholem Asch wrote an open letter defending the play following the cast's arrest for obscenity which elaborated on the origins and early success of God of Vengeance.
They said that for a man like “Yekel Shepshovitch,” keeper of a brothel, to idealize his daughter, to accept no compromise with her respectability, and for girls like Basha and Raizel, filles de joie, to dream about their dead mother, their home, and to revel in the spring rain, was unnatural.
"[20] The New York production sparked a major press war between local Yiddish papers, led by the Orthodox Tageplatt and even the secular Forverts.