Yiddishkayt | yiddish writers

2/7 | 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. 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… January 24 Birthday of Ayzik Meyer Dik, Yiddish Author Ayzik Meyer Dik (also known by his acronymic pseudonym Amad) was born in Vilna on January 24, 1814. He received a traditional Jewish education and married young, settling in the Litvish town of Zupran (today Жупраны, Belarus). When his first wife died childless, he married the daughter of a wealthy khosid from Nesvizh (today, Нясьвіж) who supported the couple despite Dik’s aversion to Hasidim. Dik considered both Hasidism and lack of Western education to be the most destructive influences on...

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...

Today in Yiddishkayt… January 8 Yortsayt of Isaac Raboy, Yiddish Novelist, Poet, Playwright, and Cowboy Raboy was born November 1882 in the Podolian village of Zawale (today Завалля, Ukraine). His family moved to northern Bessarabia and settled in Riskhan (today Rîșcani, Moldova) then a thriving, multi-ethnic small town. Here he developed a love of secular subjects and Russian, Yiddish, and Hebrew litearture. Following the 1903 Kishinev pogrom and seeking to avoid conscription, Raboy immigrated to New York where he worked in a hat factory. His fellow hatmaker Dovid Ignatov and...

Today in Yiddishkayt… January 4 Birthday of M. Daniel, Soviet Yiddish Author & Playwright The popular Soviet Yiddish writer M. Daniel was born Daniel-Mordkhe, later Mark, Meyerovitsh on January 4, 1897 in Dvinsk (today, Daugavpils, Latvia). Daniel made his literary debut with his short story, “אין אַ צײַט אַזאַ [In Such a Time]” in 1924. He wrote for the literary journal דער שטראָם [The Current] and published his first volume of stories a few years later, before the publication of his most important work יוליס [Yulis], which he later adapted...