2/22 | Birthday of August Bebel
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 22 Birthday of August Bebel, Political Leader Ferdinand August Bebel, known to all by his middle name, was born on February 22, 1840, in Deutz, Germany. As a young man, Bebel apprenticed as a carpenter and joiner and spent several years traveling around Europe looking for work. In 1860, he settled in Leipzig where he made horn buttons and participated in various labor organizations. Bebel began reading the pamphlets of Ferdinand Lassalle, which popularized the ideas of Karl Marx. In 1865, under the mentorship of Wilhelm Liebknecht, Bebel decided to...
Read More2/21 | Birthday of Maurycy Gottlieb
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 21 Birthday of Maurycy Gottlieb, Polish Jewish artist Maurycy Gottlieb was born on February 21, 1856 in Drohobycz, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (today: Дрогобич, Ukraine). Gottlieb’s artistic talent was strongly encouraged by his family. Of the 11 siblings, three other brothers became artists as well. Gottlieb studied at Vienna Fine Arts Academy, and later under Jan Matejko in Kraków. He spent several yeas in Norway before returning to Vienna to search for his Jewish roots and pursue his career as an artist. He was perhaps the first Polish...
Read More2/20 | Birthday of Meir Balaban
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 20 Birthday of Meir Balaban, Jewish Historian Meir Balaban (Majer Bałaban in Polish spelling) was born on February 20, 1877 in Lemberg, (later Lvov, Lwów, and today Львів, Ukraine). In 1900, Balaban began his studies in history at the city’s university. He studied under Ludwik Finkel, author of a classic bibliographic work on Polish history and editor of the leading journal Kwartalnik Historyczny (History Quarterly). It was in that journal that in 1903, Balaban published the first annotated bibliography of historical literature on Jews in...
Read More2/17 | Birthday of Ossip Dymov
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 17 Birthday of Ossip Dymov (Yosef Perelman), Yiddish Writer Yosef Perelman was born on February 17, 1878 in Białystok. In 1902, Perelman graduated from the Forestry Institute in Saint Petersburg where he earned a degree in land surveying. He took an interest in literature and began writing under the pseudonym Ossip Dymov, named after a character in Anton Chekhov’s classic short story “Grasshopper.” His literary career began as a columnist for a Saint Petersburg weekly called Театр и искусство (Theater and...
Read More2/15 | Birthday of Irena Sendler
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 15 Birthday of Irena Sendler, Polish Resistance Member & Savior of Children in Warsaw Ghetto Irena Sendler (Sendlerowa in Polish) was born Irena Krzyżanowska to a Polish Catholic family in Warsaw on February 15, 1910. Her father, a physician, died from typhus that he contracted during an epidemic in 1917. He was the only doctor in his town of Otwock (about 15 miles southeast of Warsaw) who would treat the poor, mostly Jewish community suffering with this disease. After his death, the Jewish community offered to pay for...
Read More2/11 | Birthday of Zalman Shneour
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 11 Birthday of Zalman Shneour, Hebrew and Yiddish poet and novelist Zalman Shneour was born on February 11, 1886 to a middle-class family in Shklov, Belorussia (today Шклоў, Belarus). Shneour was, from a very early age, an avid reader of Hebrew literature. As a teenager, Shneour left his home and went to Odessa, then the capital of Zionist and Hebrew literary activity, where he was warmly received by Chaim Nachman Bialik, who became a kind of father figure for Shneour. In 1902, Shneour left for Warsaw and found work in the editorial office of the...
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