Sunday 14 June 2015

KALMAN GALITSKI

KALMAN GALITSKI (1854-1915)
            He was born in Shedlets (Siedlce), Poland, into the family of a poor elementary school teacher.  Until age eighteen he studied in the synagogue study hall, later secular subjects.  He became a teacher and owner of a private school in Shedlets.  He was follower of the Jewish Enlightenment, and via various circles a disseminator of its early ideas among the young.  Because of this he was harshly persecuted by the religious.  He served as an intercessor with the Russian governor in matters of education for Shedlets Jews.  He was the organizer of meetings of Jewish writers and a personal friend of Y. L. Peretz and Dovid Frishman.  He founded the association “Agudat aḥim” (Brotherhood society) and “Yidishe kunst” (Jewish art), in which he gave lectures concerned with Yiddish literature and led scholarly discussions.  He published articles about science, literature, philosophy, and quotidian Jewish problems in: Shedletser viderkol (Shedlets echo), Shedlets lebn (Shedlets life), and the like (1911-1914).  He also contributed to Hatsfira (The siren).  During WWI, he was evacuated to Chernihiv (Chernigov), where for a time he worked as a teacher in a Russian high school.  He died there during the presentation of a lecture.


Sources: Y. Goldberg, in Sefer yizkor lekehilat shedlets (Remembrance volume for the community of Shedlets) (Tel Aviv, 1956); D. Naymark, in Forverts (New York) (January 6, 1957); oral information from the writer Y. H. Fishman in New York.

No comments:

Post a Comment