He used to translate theatre songs from English to Yiddish and back, and in 1895 he eventually wrote his first play, Der farfaser (The Author).
[5][6] However in another place the Lexicon tells the story slightly differently: "In the same year of 1897, he also wrote his melodrama, "The Jewish Hamlet," which in the same evening was staged in Philadelphia (with Max Rosenthal[c] as "Avigdorl"), and in New York in the Windsor Theatre, where S[olotorefsky] performed as an actor.
"[4] In 1914 it was reprinted in Warsaw without author's knowledge under the title דער ישיבה בחור (אדער, דער יידישער האמלעט) (Der Yeshiva Bocher, oder der Yiddisher Hamlet, Yeshiva Student, or A Jewish Hamlet).
[4] At these times the Yiddish theatre often transformed the plots of Shakespeare, making the characters and the circumstances Jewish, sometimes with humorous comment "fartaytsht un farbessert" ("translated and improved").
[8] The Jewish Virtual Library says "a wicked uncle smears rabbinic candidate’s reputation by calling him a nihilist and the young man dies of a broken heart.