Yiddishkayt | yiddish poets

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...

What happened in Yiddishkayt on this day in history? Who was born today? Whose yortsayt is observed? Learn about major figures in European Jewish culture.

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...

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 10 Birthday of Jakub Zonszajn, Yiddish Poet and Playwright Jakub (Yankev) Zonszajn was born in Łuków January 10, 1914 to a rather impoverished family. He received a traditional education in the town before heading off to Warsaw where he frequented the famed Jewish Literary Union at Tłomackie 13. He made his literary debut with the publication of some of his poems soon after. During the Second World War, Zonszajn remained in the Soviet Union. When he returned to Poland, he settled in Wrocław, where he became immersed in the small but influential crowd of...