S AnskyS. Ansky was born Shloyme-Zanvl ben Aaron Hacohen Rappoport in Belarus, then part of the Russian Empire. Initially, Ansky wrote in Russian, but from 1904 on, he became known mainly as a Yiddish author. He turned his back on his Orthodox Jewish upbrining, and became active in the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the early 1900s. (He was elected to the Russian Constituent Assembly as a deputy in 1917.) Although Ansky is most widely known for the play The Dybbuk, he published an impressive number of works of literature, politics, and ethnography. Read More Read Less