YISROEL GUBKIN

YISROEL GUBKIN (May 21, 1899-April 28, 1993)

            He was born in Brisk (Brest), Lithuania.  He studied in a “cheder metukan” (improved religious elementary school), the Brisk yeshiva, a Russian high school, and in a Polish teachers’ course.  He was active in Labor Zionism.  From 1921 he was living in the United States, where he continued his education in the Jewish teachers’ seminary and Teachers College at Columbia University.  He began publishing around 1920-1921 in Bafrayung (Freedom) in Warsaw.  He later published poems and children’s stories in: Idishe velt (Jewish world) in Philadelphia; Kalifornyer idishe shtime (California Jewish voice); Idisher kuryer (Jewish courier) in Chicago; Tog (Day), Morgn-zhurnal (Morning journal), Yontef bleter (Holiday leaves), Idisher kemfer (Jewish fighter), Nyu yorker vokhnblat (New York weekly newspaper), Kinder-velt (Children’s world), Yidishe dertsiung (Jewish education), Bleter far yidisher dertsiung (Pages on Jewish edication), and Brener-zamlbukh (Brener anthology)—all in New York; Hahad (The echo) in Jerusalem; Sefer brisk delita (The book of Brisk, Lithuania) in Tel Aviv (1954), and others as well.  With Sh. Shapiro, he published Dos naye vort (The new word) (New York, 1954), 316 pp.  He translated Y. Ḥ. Brener’s “Min hametsar” (Out of the depths), in Brener zamlbukh (New York, 1943).  Among his pseudonyms: Y. Brisker, G. Yisroel, G. Brisker, Y”g, and Y. G. Tsukerman.  He lived in New York and was active in the schools of the Zionist labor movement as well as in the Jewish teachers’ seminary and people’s university.

Source: G. Menakhem, in Nyu-yorker vokhnblat (December 31, 1957).