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 More2/24 | 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 More2/15 | 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 More1/27 | International Holocaust Remembrance Day
Today in Yiddishkayt… January 27 Liberation of Auschwitz International Holocaust Remembrance Day In 2005 the UN General Assembly designated January 27—the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau—as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. On this annual day of commemoration, every member state of the UN has an obligation to honor the victims of the Nazi era and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides. This year’s theme is “Children and the Holocaust.” Auschwitz was the largest camp established by the Germans. Located 37 miles west of...
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...
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