Shmendrik, oder di komishe Chaseneh (Yiddish: שמענדריק, אָדער, די קאָמישע חתונה, English: Schmendrik or The Comical Wedding) is an 1877 comedy by Abraham Goldfaden, one of the earliest and most enduring pieces in Yiddish theater.
The play is loosely based on an earlier Romanian play, Vlăduțu mamei (Mama's Little Vlad), transferred to a setting in a family of Hasidic Jews, a milieu that was a standard butt of Jewish humor among the "enlightened" Jews of the Haskalah.
According to Jacob Adler, the play was such a sensation that a year after it was first performed in Bucharest, when Israel Rosenberg set about presenting it as the second play of his newly formed Yiddish theater troupe in Odessa, the word Shmendrik had already passed into the Yiddish language, both as a term of affection and derision, but also as slang for a sneeze, for money, and for the police.
[1] Shmendrik is an idiotic and clueless mama's boy, a hopelessly poor student at a religious school, whose mother is completely blind to his faults.
The main plot is set in motion when his mother arranges a marriage for him; the girl in question is not only appropriately appalled by Shmendrik, but is already in love with someone else.