2/24 | Birthday of Shmuel Yankev Imber
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 24 Birthday of Shmuel Yankev Imber, Yiddish & Polish Poet Shmuel Yankev Imber was born on February 24, 1889 in Sassów (today: Сасів, Ukraine) into a literary family, his great-uncle wrote the poem “תּקװתנו” (“Our Hope”), which later evolved into the Israeli national anthem. Imber grew up near Tarnopol in Eastern Galicia and began writing Yiddish poems at a young age. His first poems were published in 1905. In 1909, his first collection of poems was published under the title װאָס איך זינג און...
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...
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