3/20 | Birthday of Moyshe Kulbak
Today in Yiddishkayt… March 20 Birthday of Moyshe Kulbak, Poet Moyshe Kulbak was born in Smorgon (today Смаргонь, Belarus), Vilna Province of the Russian Empire on March 20, 1896. The small town had a legendary status among the Jews of the area. The Radziwill family, which historically controlled the region, had set up a circus bear training academy in the town and created thriving leather and tanning industry as well as a tar manufacturing concern. The surreal mix of circus bears and local laborers making their living from the land would eventually be immortalized in Kulbak’s...
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...
Read More2/7 | Birthday of Moyshe Stavsky
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 7 Birthday of Moyshe Stavsky (Moshe Stavi), Yiddish and Hebrew Writer Moyshe Stavsky was born in the White Russian shtetl of Antopol (today Антопаль, Belarus). His father was a maskil who ran a grain concern and was a leader of the town’s Jewish community. Although young Moyshe loathed going, he attended the local kheder until he reached bar-mitzva age and attended primary school in Antopol. At 16 he left the shtetl and lived in Warsaw, Kremenchug, and for some time in Aleksandrowo on the border between Lithuania and East Prussia,...
Read More1/26 | Birthday of Ben Adir
Today in Yiddishkayt… January 26 Birthday of Ben Adir (Avrom Rosin), Radical Philosopher Avrom Rosin, who published under the pseudonym Ben-Adir, was born on January 26, 1878 in Krutcha (today, Круча, Belarus), in the Russian Empire. Rosin was a leading figure first in the Jewish Socialist Workers Party, later in the United Jewish Socialist Workers Party, and ultimately in the territorialist grouping known as the פֿרײַלאַנד-ליגע (Freeland League). He affiliated with illegal socialist circles in Minsk in the mid-1890s and studied in Paris at the beginning of the...
Read More1/24 | Birthday of Ayzik Meyer Dik
Today in Yiddishkayt… January 24 Birthday of Ayzik Meyer Dik, Yiddish Author Ayzik Meyer Dik (also known by his acronymic pseudonym Amad) was born in Vilna on January 24, 1814. He received a traditional Jewish education and married young, settling in the Litvish town of Zupran (today Жупраны, Belarus). When his first wife died childless, he married the daughter of a wealthy khosid from Nesvizh (today, Нясьвіж) who supported the couple despite Dik’s aversion to Hasidim. Dik considered both Hasidism and lack of Western education to be the most destructive influences on...
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