Ronetti Roman

His chief literary contribution was the 1900 play Manasse, which explores the intergenerational conflict between older, devout, tradition-bound Jews and their more secular, modern, assimilated descendants. While very successful with audiences, the play also drew fire from nationalist circles that took to the streets to block its staging on two separate occasions.

The scion of a Hasidic Jewish family, he was born in 1847 in Jezierzany, in the Austrian Empire's Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria; today, the place is called Ozeryany and is located in Ukraine's Ternopil Oblast. However, some sources suggest he was born in the Moldavian town of Herța in 1851. A Hebrew tutor in Moldavia in his adolescence, he worked as a teacher in Sadigura, in Austrian Bukovina; and as an accountant in Bacău. He then undertook studies at Hârlău and in Suceava, the latter also in Bukovina. In 1869, he entered the medical faculty of Berlin University, additionally auditing courses in philology and philosophy, but did not graduate. He then travelled to Italy and France. Settling in Romania for good in 1874, he worked as a German teacher at the V. A. Urechia Institute in the national capital Bucharest and as a German translator at the Foreign Ministry, the latter from 1878. Following his 1883 marriage to the Eleonora Herșcovici, the daughter of a leaseholder, he was a farmer and land manager at Roznov and Davideni in Neamț County, living on an estate in the latter village. His first published work consisted of Hebrew-language journalism that appeared in Hamagid between 1868 and 1872, where he signed Moise Roman (Romano) and R. Moran. He always avoided using his real surname and kept his first name a secret as well. Determined to become a Romanian writer, he submitted satiric pamphlets and articles on social issues to Revista literară și științifică (1876), Adevărul, Almanahul Dacia, Calendarul Răsăritul, Convorbiri Literare, Curentul nou, Egalitatea, Mântuirea, Opinia, Reforma, România Liberă, Timpul, Anuar pentru israeliți and Flacăra. He was friends with Mihail Kogălniceanu; while writing for the Conservative Party's Timpul, he also became close with Mihai Eminescu and Ion Luca Caragiale, and the three together attended meetings of Titu Maiorescu's Junimea for a time. His first fictional work was the satire Domnul Kanitverstan, which appeared in 1877; the later Satira jocului was in the same genre. He also wrote verses ("Telegraful", "Rusia"), of which the most polished was Radu, a lengthy romantic poem; and tales (Duhul urgiei). He made a name for himself as a consummate polemicist and pamphleteer. His 1898 essay Două măsuri, which appeared as a series of articles in Adevărul, lamented the erosion of traditional Jewish society and its values, a process he ascribed to modernization; dismissed Zionism as a utopian notion that could not halt Judaism's disappearance; and criticized Romanian government policy toward the Jews. Ronetti Roman's house was vandalized and destroyed during the 1907 Romanian Peasants' revolt. He continued to write for the local Opinia until just before his death of heart failure in Iași early the following year.

• Illustration — Title page of Manasse (1900) His play Manasse, published in 1900, expanded upon the ideas he set forth in Două măsuri. It opened to a rousing debut at the Iași National Theatre in March 1901; the Bucharest premiere took place at the Rașca Garden in May 1904. The play's Iași success was repeated at the Bucharest National Theatre in February 1905: Constantin Nottara played Manasse, and the show ran for 26 performances. The play was very popular with audiences, which included members of the Romanian royal family. Its title character is the elderly Manasse Cohen, a conservative defender of Jewish tradition who resides in the Moldavian shtetl of Fălticeni. His son Nissim Cohanovici, a Bucharest merchant, has only tenuous ties to the community. Nissim has two children, Lazăr and Lelia, who respect Manasse's faith but are also modern people who harbor socialist ideas and are integrated into the Romanian intellectual milieu. When Leila decides to marry a Christian lawyer, Manasse suffers greatly and eventually dies. The play sparked ample controversy: at first, this was located within the Jewish community itself, members of which went to see the premiere early in 1901 at the Zionist Club in Iași. While the Zionists were enthusiastic, other prominent Jews interpreted it as a work promoting assimilation at the expense of Jewish identity. However, the most visible opposition came from the broader Romanian society. Its central monologue on the Christian world's hostility to Jews proved particularly galling to nationalist and antisemitic circles. Alexandru Davila, head of the Bucharest National Theatre, ran into trouble in early 1906, when he decided to bring back the play. That March, Nicolae Iorga stirred up students in the city against the performance of foreign plays at the expense of domestic ones. Initially, their focus was targeted at a series of French plays scheduled to appear, but soon engulfed Manasse; the protesters considered that no authentically Romanian play could be written by a Jew. The show planned for March 12 was banned for being "non-Romanian". The following day, a student revolt spilled into the capital's streets, where battles took place while the political leadership was paralyzed. As a result, the play was shelved and certain intellectuals preferred to keep silent as to its artistic value. In 1909, theatre official Pompiliu Eliade proposed including it in the new season, but dropped the plan when students threatened to take to the streets. In the years following its publication, critical opinion was divided: Iorga used his Sămănătorul to decry the play, and was joined in the campaign by similarly oriented publications such as Făt-Frumos and its contributor A. C. Cuza. On the other hand, Eugen Lovinescu, writing in 1914, called it "the most powerful drama written in the Romanian language", while an emotional Mihail Dragomirescu asserted that the "Shakespearean drama Manasse will have to serve, alongside Caragiale, as a model for our future dramaturgy". The latter, following in the footsteps of a strongly positive review by Eliade, insisted the play be judged on its aesthetic merits, free from preconceptions. At the time he was writing in 1905, Convorbiri Literare did not tolerate an anti-Sămănătorist line, so he published in Epoca instead. His interventions resulted in a temporary suspension from contributing to Convorbiri Literare, and were eventually cited as a reason for not returning him to the magazine's leadership committee. On a more dramatic note, Ion Scurtu, with whom he was engaged in a Manasse-related polemic in 1908, challenged Dragomirescu to a duel and sent two witnesses; the latter declined to engage.