2/8 | Birthday of Chaver Paver
Today in Yiddishkayt… February 8 Birthday of Chaver Paver (Gershon Einbinder), Yiddish Writer Chaver Paver is the pen-name of the esteemed Yiddish writer Gershon Einbinder. Einbinder was born on February 8, 1901 in Bershad (today Бершадь, Ukraine). At the age of 19, he moved to Romania and eventually settled in the United States in 1924. He lived in New York and Los Angeles, where he died in 1964. Chaver Paver made his debut in Yiddish literature in the 1920s as a children’s writer. He wrote five volumes of children’s stories and several plays. However, 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 More2/1 | Birthday of Israel Zinberg
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...
Read More1/20 | Yortsayt of Avrom Sutzkever
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...
Read More1/13 | Yortsayt of Reb Mordkhele
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...
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