LEYB BROVARNIK

LEYB BROVARNIK (1870-1942)

A current events author, educator, and bibliographer, he was born in Lityn, Ukraine. For a certain amount time, he studied and worked in Berdichev, later settling in Kiev. He was a teacher and an active community leader. In the years up to the Russian Revolution, he would hold meetings in his home of Jewish literary intellectuals. They would aloud the new writings of Sholem-Aleichem, Sholem Asch, Dovid Bergelson, Der Nister, and later Perets Markish, Yekhezkl Dobrushin, and others. Together with Shimen Dobin and Mikhl Levitan, in 1911 he founded the Demyevker Jewish School (Kiev) for girls and composed the first arithmetic textbook for the Jewish elementary school. During the Denikin occupation in 1919, he was active in the Communist underground in the city of Kremenchuk. In the first years after the Revolution, he was the manager of the Jewish section of the government’s executive committee of the councils. Later, he was one of the leaders in Ukraine, the division of “Gezerd” (All-Union Association for the Agricultural Settlement of Jewish Workers in the USSR), and steward of the Yiddish Vintshevski Library in Kiev. He also published articles in the Yiddish press, mainly on economic policy. He died during the evacuation.

His writings include: with M. Levitan, Arifmetishe oygabn (Arithmetic problems), for teachers, with a preface by D. Hokhberg (Vilna: B. Kletskin, 1914), 86 pp., and Arifmetishe oyfgabn farn ershtn lern-yor, bukh far talmidim (Arithmetic problems for the first year of school, textbook for students), with pictures, edited by D. Hokhberg (Vilna: B. A. Kletskin, 1914), 94 pp. (second improved edition: 1918, 78 pp.; third improved edition: Kiev, 1919, 78 pp.); Apikoyres (Heretic), anthology for the High Holidays, ed. with Henekh Kazakevitsh and E. Portnoy (Kiev, 1923).

Source: Y. Anilovitsh and M. Yafe, in Shriftn far psikhologye un pedagogik (Writings on psychology and pedagogy) 1 (Vilna, 1933).

[Additional information from:Chaim Beider, Leksikon fun yidishe shrayber in ratn-farband (Biographical dictionary of Yiddish writers in the Soviet Union), ed. Boris Sandler and Gennady Estraikh (New York: Congress for Jewish Culture, Inc., 2011), p. 56.]