SYLVIA GUBERMAN

SYLVIA GUBERMAN (March 4, 1914-July 22, 2011)

            She was born in New York, to working immigrant parents from Ukraine.  She studied in a supplementary Yiddish children’s school and middle school, where she took higher level Yiddish classes.  Later, she received a general academic education.  She graduated from Brooklyn College with a diploma in the arts.  She specialized in painting, sculpture, and music.  She received a master’s degree from Teachers’ College at Columbia University.  For a time she worked in a clothing shop, as a Yiddish teacher, and later as a teacher of English for adults.  She began writing in her school years and debuted with a story entitled “A dres-shop in a shtetl” (A dress shop in a town), which dealt with life for middle class people during the Depression years in America; it appeared in Morgn frayhayt (Morning freedom) in New York (1937).  She published a large number of stories and a novel about Jewish American youth.  She contributed pieces to Morgn frayhayt, Hamer (Hammer), Yidishe kultur (Jewish culture), Alef (Aleph), and Vayter (Further), among others in New York.  She later began to compose poems as well and placed them in: Tsukunft (Future) and Tog (Day) in New York; Goldene keyt (Golden chain) in Tel Aviv; Unzer vort (Our word) in Paris; and in literary publications in Argentina and other countries.  She was the wife of the poet Volf Yunin (Wolf Younin, 1904-1984).  She died in New York.

Sources: Y. A. Rontsh, Amerike in der yidisher literatur (America in Yiddish literature) (New York, 1945), pp. 172-74; A. Leyesen, in Tog (April 23, 1955); Sh. Rozhanski, in Di yidishe tsaytung (Buenos Aires) (September 23, 1958).