Mirele Efros

Lulla Rosenfeld, in her commentary to Jacob Adler's memoir, describes the central character as part of a tradition running at least from Solomon Ettinger's Serkele (1825) to Clifford Odets' Awake and Sing (1935).

[3] The Liptzin production had David Kessler as Mirele's son and Dinah Feinman (the former wife of Jacob Adler) as her daughter-in-law Shaindl.

[7] The title character, Mirele, is a fifty-year-old widow when the play begins who, over the last several decades, salvaged her late husband's failing business.

Honest, hardworking, and astute, but also autocratic, her authority is challenged by her daughter-in-law Shaindl, who insists that it is time that her husband, Mirele's son, inherit the business.

Ten years later Shaindl, her marriage and the business both going poorly, attempts to heal the breach in time for her son's bar mitzvah.