Yiddishkayt | yiddish in america

2/17 | 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...

Today in Yiddishkayt… January 2 Birthday of Zypora Spaisman, Mainstay of the Yiddish Theater Born Zypora Tanenbaum on January 2, 1916 in Lublin, she acted on the stage in Polish and Yiddish from the time she was 10. She trained as a midwife and, after the Nazi invasion, fled eastward and from there to a labor camp in the Urals. Spaisman delivered more than 1,000 babies while in the camp and on weekends would organize Yiddish theatrical performances in the barracks. Spaisman came to the United States in 1954 and joined with the Folksbiene then under the leadership of Morris Adler, who gave...

Today in Yiddishkayt… December 28 Birthday of Morris Rosenfeld, Poet The Yiddish poet of the American sweatshops, Morris Rosenfeld was born on December 28, 1862 in the settlement of Boksze, a rural village situated on a glacial lake today located in the very northeastern corner of Poland on the Lithuanian border. Rosenfeld traveled briefly to America in 1882, returned to Russia before immigrating to London, where he worked in the needle-trades. In 1886, he decided to try his fortune again in the United States, settling in New York where he found work in the sweatshops as a presser. Two...

Today in Yiddishkayt… December 24 Birthday of Joseph Opatoshu, Yiddish Writer Born Yoysef-Meyer Opatovsky on Christmas Eve, 1886 near Mława, Poland, to a family of lumber merchants, he immigrated to the U.S. in 1907. While he worked in a shoe factory and other odd jobs, he dedicated himself to writing. He contributed stories and sketches to the New York-daily Der Tog from its start in 1914 until his death 50 years later. His first novel to receive wide notice was Romance of a Horse Thief (1912) about Jewish thieves who smuggled horses between Poland and Germany—romanticizing...

Today in Yiddishkayt… December 20 Birthday of Mani Leyb, Yiddish poet Mani Leyb Brahinsky was born on this day, December 20, 1883 in Nizhyn, a shtetl in Kiev Gubernya (today Ніжин, Ukraine). From his earliest attempts at verse to his strikingly fresh poetry while leader of the American poetry group, di Yunge, the Young Ones. Brahinsky would drop his surname for his writing career, beginning as a translator of Russian and Ukrainian poetry for the Forward. Brahinsky a kamashnshteper—a shoe and boot-maker—was active in the revolutionary movement in Russia before emigrating to...