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. 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 More1/24 | Birthday of Ayzik Meyer Dik
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...
Read More1/20 | Birthday of Dr. I.B. Tzipor
Today in Yiddishkayt… January 20 Birthday of Dr. I.B. Tzipor (Yitskhok Shterman), Author & Playwright Yitskhok Sterman, who wrote under the pen-name I.B. Tzipor, was born in Făleşti, Bessarabia (today Moldova) on January 20, 1888. When he was four years old, his family moved to Paris, where he went to French schools and received his PhD. He began his literary career writing in French, publishing his first articles in French journals in 1908. In 1912 he moved to Warsaw and worked as a teacher until the First World War. Under the influence of Y.L. Perets, he switched to writing...
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...
Read More1/8 | Yortsayt of Isaac Raboy
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...
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