Yiddishkayt | yiddish literature

2/8 | Birthday of Chaver Paver

Today in Yiddishkayt… February 8 Birthday of Chaver Paver (Gershon Einbinder), Writer Chaver Paver, the penname of Yiddish writer Gershon Einbinder, was best known for his stories and plays for children. Born in Podolia February 8, 1901, Chaver Paver drew on the experiences and lives of Jewish immigrants in the U.S. His best-known children’s book Labzik: Stories of a Clever Puppy, was published in 1935. Chaver Paver lived in New York and later settled here in Los Angeles. Generations of children grew up with Chaver Paver’s stories, which tackled real life problems with humor and...

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. After a fire at his family’s mill, young Moyshe and his family moved to Kremenchug. At 16 he left home and lived in Warsaw and, for a short...

Today in Yiddishkayt… February 1 Birthday of Dr. Israel Zinberg, Historian Dr. Israel Zinberg, also known as Sergei Lazarevich or Yisroel “Srul” Tsinberg, was born on February 1, 1873 in a village near Lonovits, Volhyn (today Ланівці, Ukraine). He studied chemistry at the Karlsruhe Polytechnic Institute, received his doctorate at Basel University, and settled in Saint Petersburg in 1898. From 1899 to 1938, Zinberg worked as a chemist at Saint Petersburg’s Putilov (later Kirov) Steel Plant, where, from 1905, he was head of the laboratory. He published...

Today in Yiddishkayt… January 20 Yortsayt of Avrom Sutzkever, Poet and Partisan January 20 marks the second anniversary of the death of the great Yiddish poet Avrom Sutzkever, who died in Tel Aviv at the age of 96. He was born on July 15, 1913 in Smorgon (today Smarhoń, Belarus) about 60 miles from Vilna . He published his first work in the Jewish Scouts magazine and became a part of the writer and artist circle called יונג װילנע (Young Vilna). After the German invasion in the summer of 1941, Sutzkever and his wife Freydke used the guise of forced labor to help smuggle arms...

Today in Yiddishkayt… January 13 Yortsayt of Reb Mordkhele (Khayim Chemerinsky), Yiddish Writer & Philologist Khayim Chemerinsky was born in 1862 in Motele, a small town near Pinsk (today, Моталь, Belarus), the youngest child in a large family and the only son. Although the family was religious, they embraced contemporary changes in Jewish life. The daughters in the family were the first in the town to study Hebrew and Chemerinsky studied secular subjects in addition to religious ones and read modern Russian authors. After his marriage, he moved to Krivoy Rog (today in central...